How to Create a Virtual Call Center

Business needs change rapidly in this modern world and adapting to necessary transformation doesn’t have to be challenging. If your customer service volume has dramatically increased and it’s time to rethink how you support your customer experience, developing a virtual call center might be the answer.

Shutterstock; Photo by Nadia Snopek

So, if that sounds interesting, how do you go about creating a virtual call center? We’ll walk you through some things to think about as you make your decision.

Market Feasibility

What’s the temperature like in your industry? Is it heating up or cooling down? What are your competitors offering? Are there regulations you must follow that you need to deep dive on or your legal or business departments? And what is the risk involved to your bottom line if things don’t go as expected? Doing your due diligence will help guide you to a solution to grow your business successfully.

Staffing Up

As you make your plans for your team, there are a few things to consider. Do you have agents already, or access to more locally? Will you need agents in other parts of the country or the world? How will you recruit and train them? Who will manage them and be the day-to-day point of contact? Will you invest in programs to keep training up to date? Finding the right team members who are friendly, knowledgeable, and empathetic is no easy feat, and neither is managing a local or global team. Make sure you have worked through these details in advance.

Tech Stack

Do you have the most beneficial tech setup to help you reach your business goals? What about your team’s needs? Are you using computers and/or mobile devices? Agents will need phones, headsets, internet service and the appropriate software. Does your software allow monitoring? These types of programs give you access to stay connected remotely, help with training and responses during live conversations with customers, and act as documentation when you need to go back and review an issue. You can listen in without anyone knowing (spy) or jump on when needed (barge) and of course, record the call for training purposes or to revisit specific situations.

Think about what’s most effective for your needs at launch, and then further down the line. Do you need automation or IVR (interactive voice response) to help direct calls to an agent only when necessary? How will you address security issues or manage disaster recovery? Finally, how will your team communicate? An internal messaging platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams might be the answer, particularly when those applications also allow for collaboration.

What’s Your Strategy?

Here’s a few core items to review as you build out your strategy. How will you address problems or crises? Who’s managing your team? What should be developed to support your knowledge base? Do you have buy-in on the business need for creating a virtual call center from internal stakeholders? And what makes you stand out from the competition? How do you communicate that effectively?

Planning for Growth

Have you thought about what happens six months or a year or five years out? Where do you want your business to be and how can you achieve that? How will you manage scalability? During peak seasons or hours, are you financially able to bring on seasonal staff or support overtime hours for your current team? And how are you measuring success and resolving issues? Are you looking at analytics and measuring efficacy?

While there are a lot of things to consider when planning to create your own virtual call center, it’s not impossible and in fact, the information shared here will help you to develop a strategy, team, and the right technology to drive your success. If you need help, we’re giving you a handy checklist to map out your plan. As always, our experts are ready at any time to talk you through it.