November 14, 2022
Today is the final part of a three-part article discussing Customer Experience (CX), Work From Home (WFH), and Call Centers in Japan. This post will discuss options to bring this all together. If you missed Part II click here to read it.
As reported before, one of the main concerns with remote agents in call centers is customer data leakage. Call center service providers are not only performing a function for the client; they are trusted with their data. Having the customer’s data stolen would be detrimental to both the provider and the client.
There is no way to guarantee a breach of security will not occur, even in the office. The question is, will the benefits of allowing remote agents outweigh the costs of ensuring secure remote work?
What are the potential benefits of allowing remote agents?
Firstly, working from home has its own pros if agents know how to leverage the strength of technology.
For example, an omnichannel customer experience system that integrates with other business applications to put all your customer support interactions in one place can ensure smoother and seamless interactions for customers. This helps optimize customer experience and thus leads to improvements in customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
In fact, Zendesk’s CX Trends 2020 survey reported that agents offering omnichannel customer service saw an increased efficiency of ticket handling.
Meanwhile, WFH improves agent job satisfaction, which could reduce agent turnover and add to customer satisfaction. An agent that is happy with their job is likely to provide customers a more pleasant customer experience.
Using a WFH strategy would also reduce corporate space costs per agent and disperse agents to reduce DR-type events. And in the year of COVID, it can also minimize the chance of team-wide infections.
How to optimize customer experience while WFH?
Now that we know some of the potential benefits of WFH with an omnichannel customer experience system, what do we need to do to make it happen?
1. Identify which internal business systems will benefit your agent
For an omnichannel customer support system such as Zendesk, you will need to identify internal business systems that would benefit your agents. These discussions would also benefit from Sales, Support, and any other team that interacts with customers working closely together to create a “smooth” customer experience.
Working with an experienced integrator – like Unwired Logic – would help your company through this complicated discovery process and integration planning.
2. Use virtual desktop solutions to prevent data leakage
If data leakage is a significant concern, then the best way to make this work would be to use virtual desktop solutions. A virtual desktop solution would leave the working system in the office protected behind IT security systems. In layman’s terms, only the screen is sent to the agent’s computer, be that a corporate laptop or personal PC.
With many popular virtual machine vendors, you can enable options that do not allow interaction between the virtual machine screen and the physical system. For instance: no using the USB port to upload or download files from the virtual machine, no printing to a local printer, and no screen captures.
Some virtual machine solutions even require the agent’s system to be patched and configured a particular way before allowing access to the virtual desktop, furthering security measures.
The only issue would be bandwidth from the employee’s home. If that does not work, the employee can go to the office.
3. Agent “kit” to go along with virtual desktop
Since these agents would, most likely, require audio and video as well, we suggest that the IT department create an agent “kit” for each employee, for example, a laptop with a camera and a headset.
Virtual desktop requirements are surprisingly light on the agent’s laptop, so inexpensive laptops can be used to set up agent kits. IT can configure the laptops to the corporate security requirements, ensuring agents that their system is approved.
Final words
Enabling your agents to work from home while ensuring secure work and integrating an omnichannel customer support system can potentially bolster your brand’s loyalty and bottom line in many ways. Improving your customer and employee satisfaction seems to be a win-win proposition.If you wish to discuss CX, omnichannel support systems or creating a WFH strategy further, please contact Unwired Logic today. We would be happy to discuss.
