The human element of staffing plays just as critical a role as that of technology in the success of your virtual contact center. You’ll have to answer another set of questions that define the numbers and types of contact center agents and supervisors you’ll need.
· Will remote contact center agents perform the same tasks as on-site agents?
· What functions must your remote workers perform, and how many agents will you need to perform each role?
· Will you need your remote agents to work full-time or part-time?
· For what shifts will you require remote agents?
· Is your current job description for on-site agents suitable for recruiting remote agents?
· Will you need additional supervisors to support your virtual agents?
The questions illustrate the new, different demands virtual contact centers will place on your organization. Recognizing and accommodating these nuances in recruiting and managing a virtual workforce will increase your likelihood of a successful implementation.
Whether you’re recruiting for a bricks-and-mortar or a virtual contact center, the goals, objectives, content, and components of the recruiting process are identical. All of the steps in the process—application, interviewing, testing, assessing, background checking, drug testing, hiring, and on-boarding—are the same. Are we starting to see a theme here?
But the manner in which the process occurs differs completely from that for an on-site contact center because your recruiters will have absolutely no face-to-face interaction with applicants. Ever….
Just as the physical environment of your virtual workforce will differ significantly from that of a bricks-and-mortar location, your recruiting and hiring process will too, and requires modification as a result. You must design and implement a process that enables efficient and effective remote hiring. Although the process is different at first, your recruiters can easily take advantage of a wide variety of existing and tested tools, techniques, and services that facilitate remote interaction and hiring, resulting in a successful, productive process.
Your recruiters will need to add new hiring criteria for identifying applicants likely to succeed as virtual agents. Virtual contact center software can provide a complete performance audit trail, tracking every computer keystroke and recording every second of every call to assess whether an individual is capable of remote work. But it can’t forecast whether an applicant is suited for remote work.
An effective recruiting and hiring process will consider whether the applicant possesses not only the skills and capabilities contact center agents need, but also the appropriate attitude towards and comfort with working from home. Working in “office of one” contrasts substantially with working in an office of 10-1000.
I know I said we’d talk about training your virtual contact center agents today but this is already too long! We’ll discuss training in our next post.
If it isn’t virtual,
It isn’t real…