Need virtual call center software?

If you have a distributed team of agents or reps who regularly need to communicate with customers, employees, prospects, then you probably need a virtual contact center or virtual call center.

Dialpad’s robust customer engagement comes with industry-leading AI and CCaaS tools to empower contact center teams to not only improve their service levels and customer satisfaction, but also coach and train new hires more efficiently. How? Keep reading.

What is a virtual call center?

Unlike a traditional call center, virtual contact centers (sometimes also called remote call centers) typically consist of service agents who work remotely in different office locations or work from home.

Everything you need in virtual call center software and more

An AI-powered virtual contact center solution

How to start a virtual call center (or contact center): Some hints and tips

1. Have the right tools in place for your team to work virtually

In order for your agents and supervisors to start working remotely, they need to be able to communicate with each other (and your customers) even if they're not working in the office. To do this, they need some type of customer engagement or contact center solution that lets them make and receive phone calls, answer live chat and social media messages—essentially, handle any communication channel that your company supports.

A tip here is to choose a solution that consolidates all these different channels into one place (as opposed to using one video conferencing app, a separate social media tool, another phone system, and so on). This will make it easier for your agents and managers to keep track of all the different simultaneous conversations, and keeps all that interaction data in one convenient place.

2. Have a solid workflow and QA process

When you're running a virtual call center, your team won't all be in the same room, or even the same building. If agents have questions, they can't just tap their supervisor on the shoulder to ask. This makes it more important to have your policies, product information, and any other knowledge sources that your agents will need all in one accessible place.

You could have an internal wiki or some kind of online database, but the most important thing is to make sure that anyone on your team can easily find the information they need, especially when they're live on a conversation with a customer. On a related note, your supervisors also need to be able to do quality assurance easily. You could use AI to help with analyzing or auditing calls, which can speed things up for managers.

3. Understand your team goals (and communicate them)

To start a virtual call center successfully, it helps to have everyone on the same page from the onset. Once you onboard new hires, make the company goals, team goals, and individual agent goals clear for them during training. They should know what they're being measured against, whether those are metrics like CSAT scores, average handle time, or whatever you think is most important for your contact center to run smoothly.

Run your team of agents from anywhere with virtual call center software

If your organization is ready to open up your hiring to include remote agents, then having virtual call center software is a must. Depending on whether you're ha

ndling incoming calls or outbound calling, or both, you may consider outbound or inbound call center software, or blended call center software—but generally, an omnichannel solution that's versatile enough to handle both is best.

If you're managing instant messaging and other channels beyond phone calls, then you might consider a virtual contact center platform instead.

Having the right software is essential to being able to do onboarding and training—and used together with self-service options, can help you provide excellent customer experience.