How Virtual Call Center Solution Helps Businesses During a Crisis

The world today is amidst a pandemic with unparalleled economic repercussions. Businesses are facing unprecedented losses with some caught within broken supply chains. For others, hopes of complete revival are diminishing with each passing day. The crisis is most severe for small-scale businesses and enterprises. However, even in this gloomy situation, solutions are bountiful.

Humankind is blessed with a trait that has helped us survive against greater odds in adverse conditions, adaptability. Today, businesses need to adapt and incorporate new technologies. Creating a robust structure to overcome current and possible upcoming hurdles has become more urgent than ever. Cloud telephony and virtual call center software offer an easy to implement and pocket-friendly solution empowering businesses to sustain and potentially grow during a crisis.

Remote working has been a unique offering for quite some time now. However, it gained wide acceptance only recently. The work from home (WFH) and remote working model of businesses not only breaks innumerous barriers for employees but also enables businesses to attract talent from throughout the world, irrespective of one’s geographic location. Earlier, cloud telephony and virtual call center software might have been a mere choice but today are absolutely essential for businesses to survive in the chaotic and unpredictable environment.

The following section shall guide you through the HOW and WHY of a virtual call center, giving a detailed description as to how it can help businesses during any crisis.

What Is a Virtual Call Center and How Does It Work?

As the name suggests, a virtual call center is a digital replica of the traditional call center setup, wherein agents can be remotely located (anywhere in the world) instead of working within the same office complex.

The working mechanism of virtual call centers is simple yet effective. When a customer calls a business, it is automatically forwarded to a virtual number integrated with an interactive voice response software or auto-receptionist, which in turn redirects the call to the appropriate agent. Finally, the call lands on the agent’s personal device, who can quickly assist the customer. The entire process is seamless and the customer reaches the agent within a matter of a few seconds.

Benefits Of a Virtual Call Center

The world today needs a sturdy foundation to build its business. One that not only helps enterprises survive through a crisis but also enables it to reach greater heights. There is a need for an inexpensive, uncomplicated, and timesaving infrastructure that thrives through the thick and thin of the business world. Virtual call center software offers all the above-mentioned benefits and more. Let us look at some of these in detail:

1. Helps save expenditure

The first and foremost concern during any crisis is to reduce a company’s liabilities and optimize its assets. Cloud computing and virtual call centers enable businesses to reduce their spending on redundant infrastructures such as landline, routers, wiring, server space, and more. In addition, a company may also let go of the recurring maintenance and training costs associated with traditional call centers. Using virtual call center setup, agents can work with minimal apparatus. All one needs to start working is a stable internet connection. These measures sharply decrease the expenditure of a company, thus helping them fight a crisis with heavier pockets.

2. Ensures 24*7 global connectivity

Pandemics like Covid-19 forced individuals to operate from their homes. Future crises might have similar implications that force people to work remotely or away from offices. Therefore, businesses must adopt virtual call centers to facilitate the same. Since, a virtual call center to open 24*7, it offers the possibility of flexible working hours to the employees from any location of their choice. While, it allows customers to call at any time, as per their convenience. It further helps businesses never miss any call thus ensuring each potential lead is explored.

3. Improves Intra-Team Communication

One of the challenges of working remotely is to ensure clear and result-oriented communication. Without the same, no business can expect success. Virtual call center software offers a seamless communication medium (or channel) for employees to work and collaborate effectively from various locations. Cloud also enables teams to work in tandem with each other and share important files and data, securely and easily at the click of a button.

4. Enhances customer service

A crisis of any nature is a truly testing time for businesses. Customers start to withdraw from services and the remaining ones are fought for by all competing entities. In such a scenario, it is imperative that businesses provide top-notch customer service and provide instant redressal. Virtual call center software is equipped with a highly functional dashboard, which gives ready access to the agents about the customer. This can be related to the customer’s previous queries, preferences, and more. These details go a long way in assisting an agent to better understand a customer.

5. Facilitates lead generation

Each call, especially during a crisis becomes extremely important. Businesses cannot afford to let a call or rather an opportunity go by. Virtual call center software records all the incoming calls. Even in case any agent does not answer a call, an alert with caller details is generated on the dashboard, which may be accessed by the agent for a callback. In addition, call monitoring and analytics ensure that agents are giving apt information to the customers. It helps managers and marketers to analyze call reports and offer feedback or plan campaigns around the same.

In Conclusion

Darwin’s famous quote “survival of the fittest” is no longer applicable only to the evolution of species but also to the business atmosphere and society as a whole.

The current global economic crisis is a wake-up call for many. Businesses can no longer wait and hope for the situation to go back to normal. They must adapt to the changes and leverage the best cloud telephony solutions to thrive through the present and future crises. There are immense possibilities for growth and success with virtual call center software. It offers ready-to-go solutions to fight such crises and is now necessary for all businesses.