Appia Foresees the Growth of Virtual Call Centers
For Appia Communications, the call center industry is decentralizing. The managed communication and networking services provider recently reported that its clients are starting to deploy the so-called ‘virtual’ call centers. In this setup, agents are situated in small offices or at home instead of the traditional call centers.
Being able to locate supervisors and agents anywhere brings significant cost savings as far as operating expenses are concerned, says Appia president Victor von Schlegell. Companies get to save on office rent as well as commute costs and time. But there are also other soft and hard advantages that flexibility decentralization offers. For instance, it allows call center managers to hire the right people for the job regardless of their physical location. This makes it even easier to schedule resources to meet various requirements. Von Schlegell also added that this flexibility is actually one of the many advantages of using a managed service.
He explained that one of the reasons why their clients can move in this direction is due to the implementation of a managed approach to call center technology. When you host technology in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about where your supervisors and agents are located so long as there are connected to the internet.
However, von Schlegell also warns users against the use of a dispersed staff without putting a robust internal communication system in place.
One challenge of decentralization is making sure that everyone is on the same pace. This can be a serious problem if you don’t have the right tools and a good private cloud.
