How Do You Manage a Call Center Remotely?

Now that thousands of companies have moved offsite, it can be tricky to understand how to effectively oversee your team remotely. How do you manage a call center when there’s no call center?

Technology has made it possible for employees across a variety of industries, including call centers, to work remotely. But, without the proper tools and protocol, this can impact your company’s profitability and worker productivity to a point where you’re losing thousands of dollars per employee.

Ensure that everyone in your organization is able to work seamlessly, efficiently, and securely no matter where their office is located. Learn how computer monitoring software can help call centers manage their remote teams.

Keep Employees On Task

While many call centers already use software to track the time their employees spend using proprietary applications, those programs don’t show how workers are spending time on social media, playing online games, watching videos, etc.

Using a comprehensive monitoring software will give you a full view of everything your employees do on company devices. Using web filtering and time tracking tools, employee monitoring programs can determine whether or not users are staying on task during their workday.

Real-time remote reporting allows you to view each employee’s data using:

• Idle session tracking
• Browser and search engine history
• Screenshots of unauthorized websites and activity
• Keylogging
  

By knowing that their online behaviors are visible to their employers, workers are less likely to veer off task. Making this single adjustment in your remote IT plan can save your company thousands of dollars in just the first few weeks after rollout.

Improve Customer Service and Response Time

Studies show that companies which employ remote customer service representatives are known for providing sub-par service to consumers. This is largely due to time management and morale issues caused by a lack of belonging and accountability on the employee’s part.

Using a fully equipped computer monitoring system gives managers and team members the tools they need to stay focused and communicate throughout the workday. This is proven to improve remote company culture, which also positively impacts retention and recruitment.

Incorporating a monitoring program into your IT structure can also help employees take on more calls without negatively impacting their level of support. Organizational tools like project lifecycle tracking and timekeeping give employees an easier way to stay on top of quotas and ongoing accounts.

For commission-based call centers, improving internal organization can provide workers with additional incentive to utilize a monitoring system. More calls means more conversions, which creates a larger profit margin for everyone on the team.

Providing remote workers and managers with a secure, easy-to-use communication tool can drastically minimize downtime caused by communication delays, approvals, and poor collaboration.

Improve Worker Compatibility and Accountability

Like any sales-based role, performing well in a call center requires patience and a high level of accountability. Workers need to be able to stay on task and within compliance guidelines to succeed, and this is especially critical for remote teams.

Additionally, ensuring that you’re hiring the right people for the job can make or break your organization. Monitoring software takes the wait time and uncertainty out of every employee’s trial process. While traditional monitoring methods can’t do much for managers of remote teams, monitoring software can determine in real time whether or not your workers are adhering to company standards.

Understanding that their online behaviors are being tracked right off the bat can completely transform the way employees interact with corporate devices. By preventing illegal online activities, noncompliance, and cyber crime, this one tool has the potential to save your company thousands in labor-based profit loss – or potentially millions in legal costs.

Reduce Absenteeism

Employee absences are expensive for any organization, but this is one financial element that is often overlooked. There are a variety of reasons why working remotely improves company-wide attendance, according to recent studies. If you’re on the fence about expanding your remote infrastructure within your company, using monitoring software makes it easier than ever to move part (or all) of your office offsite.

Making this change in your organizational plan could potentially save your operation upwards of $3,600 per year, per hourly worker.

Prevent Time Clock Theft

In general, the more calls your employees are able to successfully accomplish directly correlate with business growth and production. While it’s fairly simple to walk around and see if employees are wasting time in the office, it’s much more difficult to understand if they’re slacking off at home.

However, this is made much more simple with browser, download, and file tracking. Using monitoring software that has the ability to track and record data shared accessed via company devices, you’ll never have to wonder if your employees are wrongfully completing their timecards.

In total, time clock theft costs American companies billions of dollars a year. Nearly half of US employees admit to performing some level of time theft, so now’s the time to safeguard your company against this form of fraud.

Protect Your Company, Staff, and Consumers

Using company devices to access illicit or unauthorized information can do more damage than simply costing your business in lost wages. In fact, you and/or your company can face legal action if your employees are accessing the wrong information on company time.

Web filtering and blocking tools prevent employees from looking at inappropriate websites, which can keep your company out of subsequent illegal or non-compliant activities.

Not only can your company fall at risk, but the employees themselves might not be aware of the dangers of the information they’re using online. Using monitoring software is one of the most accessible and affordable solutions for this costly (but common) workplace problem.

No matter the level of control or security you need for your remote call center, using computer monitoring software keeps everyone protected. If you want a secure and simplified way to oversee your telecommuting teams, try InterGuard employee monitoring software today to protect your network, employees, vendors, and more.