Case Study: How Poly Enabled Success in Their Virtual Contact Centre

Jim Foster at Poly shares key advice for virtual contact centre success, looking into the importance of people, space and technology.

At Poly, our products have enabled many employees with the benefits of flexible working and working from home for many years – whether it’s been the occasional day working from a remote location, a regular schedule of working from home one or two days a week, or permanently working from a home office.

With seven very busy call centres across the globe, our Poly customer service representatives have always had the opportunity to embrace a flexible working policy, so they can focus on delivering smarter customer interactions wherever they happen to be.

As we’ve discussed in other recent blogs, a lot can change in a short time, as is evident with the impact of COVID-19 on the global call centre industry.

Similar to many of customers, in the last few weeks Poly had to quickly move to a fully remote model for our call centre to provide a safe environment for our employees and maintain our customer support promise.

Fortunately, our previously tried-and-tested flexible policy put us in a strong position to swiftly change to a full working at home policy for all employees, knowing that they all have the skills and tools to work efficiently and effectively from their home offices.

We were able to do this with the full confidence and peace of mind that we had everything in place to make this transition smoothly, all the while ensuring a positive experience and maintain business continuity and the excellent levels of service that we proudly provide to our partners and customers.

The methodology we have used to turn on our global virtual call centre follows the principle of: “People, Spaces and Technology”.

People

Remote management skills with mutual trust being the core value for all associates. Training best practices for video and voice collaboration and how to work remotely. Virtual team building and motivational skills.

Spaces

Ensuring that home-working locations were set up to enable staff to work remotely. Replicating a work environment at home – with a dedicated workspace and Poly professional-grade headset and camera.

Technology

Video and voice-enabled global cloud CRM and systems in place to drive metrics to manage performance. Ensuring that Unified Collaboration and Communications (UC&C) tools are in place to enable easy collaboration amongst the team.

Don’t get me wrong, the transition to permanently working from home for a call centre — and for any department, is a challenge that you can’t manage alone.

Buy-in and support from key business partners such as IT to provide expert guidance around the right equipment and software to ensure productivity, as well as security protocols, is crucial.

HR policies may need to be adapted to support everyone – taking the lead on training staff on how to work from home.

Additionally, management training to support team leads to ensure that newly remote teams will be managed effectively is also critical to success.

Companies like Poly know that around-the-clock support is key to customer’s experience and they are committed to continue offering support and offer “business as usual” service.

Author: Robyn Coppell