One of the greatest success stories of the pandemic has been the way in which the call centre sector has transformed from working in large offices on desk-based systems to enabling employees to work from home and still serve customers effectively. In the early phases of the pandemic, customers relied on call centres even more than usual, yet the industry was faced with the need to disperse away from traditional systems while still handling huge call volumes.
“The call centre industry has been a hidden success of the pandemic,” confirms Richard Kenny, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Call Centres at Poly. “Within two weeks, pretty much the entire call centre workforce was working from home and the industry has moved quickly and responded to the challenges. At the heart of that is the technology that has given people the confidence to suddenly shift to home working.”
This doesn’t mean the traditional call centre will cease to exist. Significant amounts of workers, especially those with young children or those who work night shifts, will prefer to work from an office. However, for many the flexibility and convenience of home working some of the time will be an attraction and, in common, with other sectors, call centres will increasingly enable this for workers.
While call centres have performed well during the pandemic, there is a need to formally enable this hybrid working environment to ensure customers can always speak to someone. “Call centres have rapidly recognised providing a quick chatbot is not a good service,” adds Kenny.
“What people want is a level of empathy and you can’t do that over email, there’s a real desire for customers to be making a real connection and 80% of employees in call centres are focused on voice for that reason”
However, enabling this has left workers dealing with multiple platforms. Softphones, or collaboration platforms such as Teams might be used for those working from home while desk phones, which companies have invested heavily in, dominate the call centre environment. The challenge is to equip people well at home and also enable them at work. “They will need highly durable headsets as they move from one place to another,” explains Kenny. “These also have to work on multiple platforms.”
He adds that Poly has been preparing for this new environment by constantly developing new products, some of which will serve the needs of agile call centre workers. The latest addition is the new Savi 7300 Office Series’ that features Poly’s Acoustic Fence microphone technology so workers will always be heard, but never overheard. Built with the latest DECT™ wireless technology, designed to the highest level of DECT™ Security Step C, and further enhanced with 256-bit AES encryption ensures that even the strictest internal security requirements for wireless headsets are met with ease. Its top-notch use of the DECT™ spectrum provides two-times better density compared to other DECT headsets and allows more people to work in the same area making it ideal for industries who regularly deal with sensitive information in highly dense call center areas, like finance and healthcare.
“Remember, these aren’t toys that you buy cheaply, these are professional tools that enable and empower workers,” he adds.
“We’re seeing a surge in interest in wireless headsets that can deliver incredible experiences and give workers the freedom that basic handsets don’t provide”
For the call centre industry, in which employee attrition traditionally runs at about 10%, enabling hybrid and home working is a powerful benefit because it provides choice and empowerment to workers. At the same time, the role of the supervisor has changed from being on-site and available to support and train workers to needing to provide the same oversight to remote workers. In addition to hardware, Poly has developed software to replace some of those traditional inputs. Its call centre tools help monitor employee health and enable support to be provided if, for example, they have to deal with loud, abusive calls.
The call centre is a complex environment in which much has been invested but its ability to pivot away from the traditional space in the pandemic has shown a future path to greater flexibility for workers while still assuring the quality of the customer experience and providing the support workers need.
