A call center typically conjures up images of a large office space and an army of agents fielding calls onsite. However, with the benefits of the remote work model becoming more and more apparent, the possibilities and benefits offered by virtual call centers have taken center stage. And with today’s advanced call center software, companies are now able to embrace a fully virtual customer support model.
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While virtual phone service was initially thought of as something to help agents work safely during the peak of the pandemic, its advantages as a general business communication tool soon became apparent. In addition to being simple, adaptable and cost-effective, it also helps in lowering attrition rates, improving agent productivity, optimizing customer experiences and increasing sustainability.
This article will help you learn more about virtual call centers, how they’ve benefitted the industry and how you can make the most of them. Let’s dive in!
Article Roadmap
- What Are Virtual Call Centers?
- Traditional vs. Virtual Call Center
- How To Start a Virtual Call Center
- Benefits
- Top Virtual Call Center Software
- Features To Look For
- Trends
- Next Steps
What Are Virtual Call Centers?
A virtual call center, also called a virtual contact center, is a platform that facilitates interactions between customer support staff and customers. Agents work remotely, either from home or a third-party location, connecting through the internet. These call centers use VoIP or cloud-based software to manage inbound and outbound calls regardless of timezone or location.
Virtual call centers are highly revenue-oriented, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, as they help reduce the costs of space and equipment. Setting up a virtual call center requires both hardware and software components. Devices for agents to use to make and receive calls, the interface through which calls are made and adequate networking infrastructure.
Along with voice calls, agents can use video conferencing tools such as Zoom, 500 Conference and Google Meet, and real-time instant messaging for additional communication channels. This ensures that customers feel truly connected to the customer service staff at all times.
Traditional vs. Virtual Call Center
Although traditional (on-premise) and virtual call centers serve the same purpose, they go about it differently. Let’s go over some of the differences between the two:
| Traditional Call Center | Virtual Call Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Analog phone system. | Online live calls and communication. |
| Hardware/ Software | Requires installation of physical equipment on-site — landlines, headsets, servers, a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) system and more. | Requires cloud-based PBX system, VoIP technology and high-speed internet connection. |
| Integrations | Tough to integrate with new software. Agents may need to do everything manually. | Can easily integrate with other existing tools such as BI tools, billing software, CRM, project management tools and more. |
| Maintenance | Needs regular updates due to potential hardware issues such as overheating servers. | Minimal. If software issues occur, the service provider handles them remotely. |
| Scalability | Sometimes costly and time-consuming. You may need to add new phone lines and servers and may require additional office space. | No additional hardware needed. You can easily add new user accounts to the software. |
How To Start a Virtual Call Center
If you’re looking for a cost-effective and scalable option, virtual call centers present a clear advantage over the traditional model. Let’s look at the steps you need to take to start a virtual call center.
Step 1. Outline Your Objectives
The first step is to outline the goals and objectives of your call center. What purpose do you want it to serve? Do you want to create an inbound call center, like a customer service center or help desk? Or are you interested in an outbound call center to support sales and marketing?
Also, what role does the call center play in your business? Is it for your own organization, or do you want to offer outsourcing services for other companies?
Questions like these bring out the factors that shape your call center. This in turn affects things like the type of training you need to provide agents, and the kind of software that will benefit you most. Some software solutions are more geared towards customer service operations, while others come with a range of dialers and lead management tools to support sales and marketing campaigns.
Step 2. Determine a Budget
When starting any business venture or project, the budget is always a major concern. The upside of going virtual is that you don’t have to worry about the expenses of renting offices or buying equipment. However, you still need to consider staff salaries, software expenses and other operational costs like insurance and licensing fees.
Step 3. Do Your Research
Any call center requires software and hardware infrastructure, even virtual ones. Apart from call center software, remote agents will likely require laptops and noise-canceling headphones to do their jobs effectively. Make sure you look into the best products to suit your specific needs, and research any legal requirements you need to meet, like licensing or permits, in order to start your call center.
Step 4. Deploy Infrastructure
The deployment phase sets your call center up for operations, which can involve a lot of work. Fortunately, virtual call centers use mainly cloud-based infrastructure which is relatively easy to deploy. Cloud-based call center software with VoIP support and integrations, help desk software for customer service-oriented call centers, CRM tools and workforce management tools are some types of software to consider.
Step 5. Hire and Train Staff
Human agents are the heart of any call center. While companies are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence with their customer service operations, even modern generative AI like ChatGPT has its pitfalls, and may not be the magic bullet solution some companies want it to be.
Hiring the right people and training them well ensures the greatest chance of success. Apart from agents, you’ll also want to hire team leaders, managers and directors. Investing in your staff is critical. According to Zendesk, companies that are rated as high performers in the realm of customer service are 6.4 times more likely to invest in training their agents.
Step 6. Design Operational Procedures
Once you have what you need to launch your call center, you’ll want to create operational procedures to ensure things go smoothly when you’re up and running. Having clearly defined, systematic procedures and workflows are especially important for remote operations, since physical supervision isn’t possible.
Call center software usually comes with features like workflow automations and scripting tools that can help standardize your business practices. Project management and workforce management software can also help ensure proper adherence to procedural guidelines.
Primary Benefits
So, why are so many companies making the shift to virtual operations over traditional setups? Let’s look at the key benefits of virtual call centers.
1. Less Overhead
A virtual call center is more cost-effective than a traditional setup. You can save the cost of leasing an office space, as well as associated expenses like electricity, heating and cooling, internet service and furniture.
Reducing overhead frees up money to provide better call quality, software integration, data analytics and other modern tools for a better customer experience and improved agent performance.
2. Better Call Quality
Since traditional phone lines are impractical for remote call center agents, virtual call centers use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) instead. VoIP technology has come a long way in recent years. With new technological developments and the introduction of 5G, the VoIP market now holds a valuation of USD 43.92 billion in 2023 and is expected to hold 40% of the global market by 2033.
This is mainly due to technological advancements that help eliminate distortion, static and echo, all common issues in traditional phone lines due to old copper wiring. VoIP also offers features like auto-attendant that can help reduce call wait times and improve customer satisfaction.
3. Customization
Since virtual call centers don’t rely on private branch exchange (PBX) systems or specific telephone models, you can easily integrate them with CRM software, analytics and more. This improves information and data sharing, helping you generate better reports and more useful insights.
4. More Hiring Flexibility
You can hire the best people from across the world without being limited by geographical location. Remote work opportunities attract a wider talent pool. Remote roles are also more attractive to potential hirees because of their flexibility and convenience.
Hiring agents from multiple time zones across the globe means you can have a support staff available to handle calls nearly 24/7. Having the human resources to accommodate variations in call volume results in better response rates, reduced wait times and improved customer experience.
5. Employee Engagement
Remote jobs can play a significant role in reducing agent turnover and improving productivity. Eliminating dress codes, commutes and traffic jams allows employees to attend work more easily.
Moreover, remote work schedules are usually more flexible, creating a better work-life balance and allowing employees to work during their most productive hours. This is probably the reason why Gartner found that over 70% of customer service representatives want to continue remote work even after the pandemic.
6. Customer Satisfaction
The link between employee happiness and customer satisfaction has been well known for a while, but it’s often underappreciated. When you employ the best agents for the job and offer them complete flexibility, that tends to trickle down into the service they give your customers. Better employee experience is the key to better customer experience.
Virtual call centers also help you track call center metrics. Better insights mean you can monitor your team’s performance more closely, ensuring customers have a consistent quality experience.
7. Lower Attrition Rate
The call center industry faces one of the highest empoyee turnover rates because of hectic schedules and monotonous work.The constant flow of new hires and training can tie up existing staff and decrease their overall productivity. Moreover, the stress of constantly training new staff is financially draining and frustrating.
Having a workforce that’s engaged and has work flexibility can increase the retention rate for remote agents compared to in-house agents, while also reducing HR costs.
Top Virtual Call Center Software
Having the right software tools is hugely important when it comes to running a virtual call center. Since your business is operating remotely, you need reliable cloud-based infrastructure to support your day to day. Let’s look at some of the best cloud-based call center software platforms on the market.
RingCentral
RingCentral Contact Center is a unified contact center management, collaboration and communications system. The cloud-based platform streamlines and organizes call center operations, enhances collaboration, improves lead conversion and ensures high customer service standards. RingCentral comes with comprehensive tools for both inbound and outbound call management as well as omni-channel communications.
Call management with RingCentral. Source
Avaya
Avaya is a cloud-based business communications and contact center automation tool. It offers unified communications, enhanced collaboration, workforce engagement and extensive support for both inbound and outbound call management. It comes with softphone and remote agent support which makes it perfect for virtual call centers.
Call center management with Avaya. Source
Vonage
Vonage Contact Center is a cloud-based call center management tool and phone system that offers a reliable, secure and easy-to-use platform for both inbound and outbound call centers. Vonage offers extensive call management and collaboration tools to help you provide high quality customer service. It also offers campaign management tools for telemarketing operations and auto-dialers to help improve the efficiency of outbound call centers.
Vonage dashboard. Source
Features To Look For
Cloud deployment and VoIP support are necessary, fundamental attributes for a virtual call center. In addition to these, we recommend looking for the follow features in your software search:
- Central platform: Using a single, consolidated platform helps keep things organized. Constantly navigating between different platforms can be confusing for employees and increases the chances of missed messages and mistakes. Look for a system that can combine features like calling, chat and internal communications.
- Performance management: Remote work comes with new challenges for employee supervision and performance management. It’s important to choose a platform that provides adequate performance tracking and supervision tools like whisper, call barge and listen in.
- Unlimited user accounts: Some vendors provide only a limited number of free agent accounts and charge extra per additional user. Since call centers depend hugely on human agents, it’s better to choose a provider that offers unlimited agent accounts. Not only does this save money, it also helps with scalability as your organization grows.
- CRM integration and customer data: When a customer calls, agents are better equipped to handle them if they have all the information they need in front of them. Integrating your virtual call center with a CRM, like Salesforce, helps agents quickly get up to speed on previous interactions with customers and find the best solution.
- Surveys: Make sure your remote customer support package comes with post-call surveys that gauge customer satisfaction with the product and their agent’s support.
- Scripts: Scripting reduces ambiguity and helps agents know what to say and when. This helps them work faster and provide more consistent quality support. Some solutions come with a built-in agent scripting, while others may have it as an add-on feature.
- Noise cancellation: Working from home can create unique challenges for agents. Since they aren’t in a controlled environment, background noise is a potential issue. Noise cancellation technology helps reduce this risk by identifying and eliminating unwanted noise from calls.
Top 5 Trends Driving the Growth of Virtual Call Centers
In bridging an important gap between organizations and customers, virtual call centers are an indicator of major trends in the workforce. Let’s take a look at top five trends contributing to the growth of virtual call centers.
1. Popularity of Remote Work
The pandemic kicked off an unprecedented remote work revolution. As we enter a post-pandemic world, some of these changes seem like they’re here to stay.
A KPMG report found that the telecommunications sector is a leader in adopting and implementing remote work policies. The Gartner study mentioned earlier also indicated that most employees are also in favor of working remotely over returning to the office.
The New York Times found that, even as late as November 2022, office buildings were still struggling to find tenants. Another study found that the value of US office buildings might plummet by as much as 39% in the coming years.
This rise of remote work has been a key trend driving the growth of virtual call centers. As companies begin to see advantages in cost reduction and employee engagement, virtual call centers become more common.
2. Increasing Customer Expectations
Customer expectations have been rising. In 2022, Zendesk reported that 60% of customers had higher standards for customer service than they used to. Customers want personalized service, omni-channel support and immediate issue resolution. Meeting these expectations requires major investments in staff and infrastructure.
Scaling a virtual call center is much more feasible and affordable than trying to scale a real-life one. Since office space isn’t a concern, organizations can hire more agents and expand operations without having to worry about increasing overhead or finding enough physical space and equipment.
3. Technological Advancements
Technology continues to change the way we work. Virtual networks, cloud computing, high-speed internet and VoIP have all proven to be critical business IT tools in recent years. With secure computer access and the requisite software installed, agents can fulfill their responsibilities efficiently from anywhere.
The biggest technological advancement leading the remote work revolution is arguably cloud-based software. Salesforce forecasted that cloud-based software will overtake on-premise software to command 61% of the market share by 2026. VoIP technology continues to grow too, and is forecasted to cross a valuation of USD118.86 billion by 2033.
Advances in digital communication help keep virtual teams informed and motivated. You can send urgent notifications immediately through desktop alerts. It’s also easy to share AI-generated reports on user behavior with agents so that they gain insight into serving customers better.
4. Globalization
The internet has turned the world into a single global marketplace by removing trade boundaries. Even small businesses offering niche products can promote their services to the world and find a global audience.
With this opportunity comes the demand for additional business resources. When buyers from across the globe invest in your product, they also expect support in their time zones. Virtual call centers can offer customer service in multiple locations, time zones and languages to meet the needs of an international customer base.
Apart from the globalization of business itself, outsourcing services have also been booming. The global market for business process outsourcing for customer service is anticipated to reach a valuation of USD 30.4 billion by 2027. The opportunity to provide BPO services can be a major driver for the growth of virtual call centers.
5. Talent Scarcity
Staff turnover is one of the biggest challanges for employers. For many, call center jobs are transitory — a first step towards a corporate career before advancing to higher roles.
Attrition rates have only increased since the pandemic. McKinsey reported that nearly half of the managers they surveyed in 2022 saw increased attrition in the past 12 months. Poaching by competitors, followed by employee dissatisfaction, lack of advancement potential and lack of work-life balance were the main drivers of employee attrition.
Training employees that leave an organization within a few months is not only costly, but also a drain on resources and time. Providing workers the flexibility to work from anywhere, in addition to investing in proper training and support, can incentivize them to stay with you long-term.
Next Steps
If you’re looking for ways to enhance your customer service or to expand the scope of your business, investing in a virtual call center may be the right next step. Virtual call centers allow you to increase your bandwidth to serve customers while also creating more flexible work opportunities, resulting in better customer and employee satisfaction.
We hope this article answered your questions about virtual call centers and helped you understand them better. For more insights, use our free comparison report to compare top software leaders, or talk to our experts to help find the best solution for your business!
How has your company been dealing with remote work? Do you think virtual call centers hold the potential to revolutionize call center operations? Share your insights with us in the comments.
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