Imagine the modern
day equivalent of “The Two Ronnies” leaning
on the farm gate chewing the fat! Seamus and Sean,
two successful owner operators of call centres in
Ireland, who have been friends for years, sitting
in a Dublin bar watching the world go by.
Seamus had inherited his call centre operation from
his father and was making a pretty good job of running
the business whereas Sean was the entrepreneur who
had set up his call centre operation from scratch and
knew the business inside out. When Seamus had a problem
he always turned to Sean for advice – normally
under the pretext of “let’s go for a drink!”
"So what’s on your mind Seamus?”
The same old story, lack of good quality Agents.
We’ve
always managed to recruit in the past but now it’s
getting really difficult to find good people within
commuting distance of the Call Centres. We’ve
just won another large contract which I need to run
from the Shannon call centre because they have the
right skills but I need to recruit another 50 – 60
Agents with similar skills, but can I find them in
and around Shannon? There are plenty of suitable people
in Dublin and Cork with the right skills but none of
then want to commute or move to Shannon. And anyway,
even if I could recruit the necessary Agents I’d
have a problem squeezing them all in the existing building.
I suppose I will have to build another extension to
the call centre to replace the relaxation area – which
is now allocated to the new people that I haven’t
been able to recruit yet.”
“
Seamus, it’s time you started thinking about
introducing more flexibility into your operation. You
have got three call centres which are now getting so
big that you are having trouble recruiting locally – and
its getting too expensive to build new call centres
in Dublin where there is a much greater skills pool,.
What you need Seamus is a “virtual call centre!”
“
A what?...a virtual call centre? you mean one that
doesn’t exist? That doesn’t make sense –please
explain
“
Seamus, a virtual call centre isn’t smoke and
mirrors but it might as well be as some or, all, of
your call centre Agents can be literally working anywhere
you, and more importantly they, choose to work. You
have to realise that Work is a thing you do...not necessarily
a place to go so why continue to drag the workforce
to a centralized place of work when, with technology
available today, you can, just as intelligently, literally
take the work to the workforce, no matter where they
are located.
You have to start thinking in terms of access to a “global
workforce” where everybody with the right skills
are all linked seamlessly together with voice and data
communications, and managed remotely as though they
were in one central place of work by supervisors and
managers that can literally monitor everything that
is being done. You can even listen in on Agents calls,
and record their conversations if you want to. It really
is powerful stuff these days.
I know a travel agent in the UK who set up possibly
the first truly virtual call centre back in 1998 with
4 agents all working remotely from home. Now he has
hundreds of highly skilled agents all working from
home – a business turning over £40m from
an office of a few thousand square feet where he runs
the back office administration!”
“
So your saying that I could recruit people who live
all over Ireland to work from home – or presumably,
from smaller offices or call centres close to where
they live and I would have the same level of management
control as if they were working in my actual call centres?”
“
Exactly Seamus! You see, there are so many extremely
competent people available for work, who want to work,
but simply cannot go to a place of work who could be
gainfully employed using this technology. The disabled,
single parents, young mothers who have to leave work
if they want a family – you might even be able
to recruit all the additional people you need in and
around Shannon”
“
Or I could even link my three call centres together
and operate them as a single call centre – and
no need to build the extension” exclaimed Seamus.
“
Now your talking! Said Sean – now where’s
that beer you promised me!
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