Where Do The Call Center Workspaces Evolve?

Currently, the workforce demands goal-oriented work, flexible schedules, avenues for professional progress established in advance and a balance between personal and work life. Companies respond by offering flexible options and investing in digital technologies to facilitate telecommuting. The design of the call center office has also evolved: fluid, multi-use, bright, open and aesthetically pleasing spaces.

Exposure to natural light, the variability of tasks and the freedom to move around the office are just some of the factors that increase productivity while studies show that employees exposed to the views of nature report feeling healthier.

The implementation of wireless equipment further increases flexibility in the workplace, where wireless headphones allow sales or call center personnel to move while receiving calls, rather than being chained to a desk. In fact, these changes in the adaptations of the workspaces, the design of the workplace and the nature of the work itself are being so widely studied that they are collectively known as the ‘Future of Work’.

What Trends Mark The ‘Future Of Work’?

1) In the new contact center offices, quiet areas are designated for research, independent work or private phone calls, while collaboration spaces such as conference rooms, small meeting rooms and sofas are designed for meetings and socialization in general.

2) The most advanced office designs include interactive office furniture, which even allow workers to reconfigure spaces in real time, such as converting a quiet “meeting room” into a larger conference room as needed.

3) The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend and integrated technology are natural by-products of a multi-purpose workplace. Instead of having an assigned desk and computer, employees can bring their own devices to perform their daily tasks.

4) Intelligent visual and audio solutions will soon be an option in all offices, which will facilitate conversations for large virtual teams. Meanwhile, smart furniture, such as standing desks and adjustable mobile screens, offers workers a sense of autonomy within their workspace.

Why Is Workplace Design Important For The Call Center?

Companies in all industries have readjusted many factors in order to attract the best talents, who like the mission of the organization in which they work to match their own personal values.

By recognizing the link between customer experience and employee experience, contact centers have responded by providing telecommuting or hybrid positions (working in the office and from home), which offer their workforce greater flexibility and balance between work and personal life.

Other call centers have invested in professional progression, as well as training and development to counteract a high turnover rate of 30-45% in an industry where salaries range between $ 12-14 per hour and agents stand out the lack of internal promotional opportunities. Workforce management tools are increasingly sophisticated and empower agents to take control of their work schedules, monitor their performance and receive personalized training and development.

The fact is that customer service is a stressful job, hence the importance of people-centered workplace design. While organizational culture and work adjustments are an important step towards talent retention, investments in technology are equally important. Some call centers have invested in wireless technologies to prevent call center representatives from moving from their desks and getting up or stretching their legs, thanks to the wireless headphones, while talking on the phone with a customer.

Other contact centers have invested in virtual assistants that combine voice analysis, voice-to-text capabilities and natural language processing to listen to calls and show the best recommendations, show relevant user data and even automate administrative management, such as entry of data or account inquiries.

Emerging technologies have led to an increase in human-machine collaboration, such as the combination of artificial intelligence and process automation in the call center environment, to reduce the administrative burden of agents and provide them with a more rewarding work intellectually.

Given the increase in self-service systems, agents handle increasingly complex requests, which require them to have a 360-degree view of the user, including website activity, chat history and the most recent purchases. Agents are equipped with a comprehensive view of the user, including demographic data, transactions and interactions in the history, without having to log in to multiple systems.

Without a unified control panel, call centers are poorly equipped to offer an omnichannel customer experience, which requires a presence of customer service through a variety of channels, so that agents can alternate between numerous user interactions simultaneously, such as chat, social networks and SMS.

Meanwhile, collaboration tools combined with a unified control panel allow supervisors, agents and teams to offer real assistance and support to each other with visibility of tasks and the status of call queues.

The Changing Agent Profile Needs A Changing Workplace

As contact centers evolve to offer an omnichannel customer service, including social media support and self-service, the typical customer service function has undergone a change. In the world of call centers, it is more a matter of how bots can scale customer service while improving the work of agents by automating tasks, such as call routing and data entry.

Interestingly, the rise of automated customer service is concurrent throughout the industry to build more “human-centered” relationships with users, two movements that may seem contradictory, but that make sense in the context of predictive customer service and proactive.

Organizations that have recently emerged from a digital transformation may need to invest in the training of agents with more years of experience, as well as new hires. Given the greater sophistication of self-service tools, users turn to agents with more complex questions and problems that are inclined to solve problems with simple frequent questions or account inquiries. Analysts predict that while the volume of phone calls will decrease, the complexity of interactions will increase.