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27% call centres will switch to Work-from-Home permanently in the upcoming years post pandemic, according to Ozonetel, a provider of on-demand cloud communication/telephony solutions. This study is done by Ozonetel on 50 organizations to uncover the state of the call centre agents during COVID-19 lockdown.
Key findings of the report:
- Drop in agent productivity: 53% businesses reported a drop in productivity of call center agents. Some of the challenges they listed were Internet connectivity issues, Telecom issues, practical constraints of work from home such as lack of privacy, space, noise cancellation, lack of desktops and laptops.
- Barriers to agent productivity: 71% of call center agents mentioned internet connectivity as the biggest barriers to agent productivity followed by telecom issues by 42%. The study found that while 61% call center agents were happy with work from structure initially, gradually their motivation levels dropped.
- Work From Home will continue in call centre industry: In spite of all challenges, most companies continue to realise the risk that commute and working from office pose. 55% call centres are letting agents opt for work from home, while 16% are not opening offices, and keeping work from home mandatory.
- Some contact centres will permanently switch to Work From Home: 27% call centres see work from home or work from anywhere, as a viable long-term strategy and are planning to switch to work from home permanently. What is interesting is that an equal number want to return to office as soon as possible. They do not see 100% work from home as a viable long-term solution.
- Create robust Work From Home processes: Many call centres have seen the value in creating a robust work from home process even if they do not switch to work from home permanently, or if they are still undecided. 38% call centres will create a robust work from home process.
Many of the productivity challenges that call center agents face, can be solved when provided with better hardware such as better handsets, better headsets, laptops or desktops, direct telecom DID numbers, reimbursement of Wi-Fi charges. When companies reimburse Wi-Fi, agents can opt for better plans and ensure better connectivity. These are some of the things that Contact Centres can provide the agents to make work from home viable.
Speaking about Contact Centres moving to work from home, Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Innovation Officer, Ozonetel said, “The pandemic has made contact centres look at the services that they provide and how they provide it. Ozonetel being a pioneer in cloud services have worked very closely with its clients to ensure that we have seamless transition to work from home. At the start of the lockdown in March, we promptly assisted many of our clients to move their agents to a work from home mode to help with Business continuity plan very quickly.”
“We have analysed various metrics to determine and understand trends in customer experience as well as agent efficiency as call centres switch to work from home. We believe this report has value as an insight provider for the industry.” Chaitanya added.
