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coronavirus

FREE EBOOK: Managing Contact Centre Homeworkers – 20 Quick Tips

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Being a home worker will give you (as a Manager) a different and better perspective on the unique issues and pressures facing colleagues.
That said, are you finding it difficult to support your remote teams? Unsure how to motivate and boost work-at-home productivity? Or are you struggling with information security and compliance?
The new eBook from Sensee will teach you how to get on top of these and many other remote management issues.
View the ebook here (no need to register)

COVID-19: A catalyst for change in the contact centre

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By Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO and Co-Founder, Content Guru

When COVID-19 caused mass lockdown across the UK, nearly every single organisation was required to send its employees home to work remotely, or face having to close business operations entirely. There is no escaping the monumental impact that COVID-19 is having and will continue to have on both individuals and businesses on a global scale.

From grandparents using Zoom for the first time, to legacy-reliant organisations modernising in the cloud, there is a huge wave of ‘digital acceleration’ building towards a ‘new-normal’. We are now seeing efficient remote working across industries that previously thought it impossible, as well as the clear environmental benefits resulting from this. Work-life balance may be somewhat strange, but employees are now being trusted more openly by their employers to work from home in an environment that suits their needs.

In light of this monumental shift to remote working and cloud-based technologies, the long-term effects of COVID-19 as a catalyst for change in all aspects of life will be profound, and one particularly strong instance of this can be found in the contact centre industry.

COVID-19 in the Contact Centre

The traditional contact centre environment – often characterised by its low-paid employees packed side-by-side into drab offices or warehouses under strict supervision – could be described as the mill of the modern age. While typically associated with a high employee churn rate, this environment is quite obviously a hotbed for spreading germs. The crowded spaces may make for unappealing working conditions during normal circumstances, but with the battle against COVID-19 firmly on the nation’s mind many contact centre agents now see their traditional working environment as a risky and dangerous place to be.

Social distancing measures have been in place for almost two months now. It is therefore surprising – if not shocking – to learn that research over this period has revealed many non-essential contact centres are still requiring agents to work in their offices on a daily basis. Undertaken by the University of Strathclyde, the research suggests only a third of contact centres now have social distancing measures in place, and half are still working face-to-face. When you consider that the majority (two thirds) of contact centre employees have asked to work from home and yet just four per cent of those requests have been granted, it seems likely that this is an industry not only taking a lackadaisical towards the pandemic, but one that is similarly uninterested in the wellbeing of its employees.

The dangers are real. More than 2,000 contact centre workers have answered the survey so far, reporting insufficient social distancing, multi-occupation workstations, poor sanitisation, and re-used headsets. On top of these poor practices, large on premise contact centres are potentially spreading germs through heating and ventilation systems in multiple open-plan offices. For an industry that employs around four per cent of the UK’s working population, these statistics paint a stark picture.

The time to innovate is now

It should be blatantly obvious that the contact centre of yesterday is not suitable for operation amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. However, looking beyond the pandemic, it is also suppressing the necessary evolution of the contact centre from a reactive centre of cost reduction, to a more proactive, value-driven engagement hub. Lifting these restrictions will provide the catalyst for the same digital acceleration we are now seeing across industries, while also empowering employees with the latest technologies, remote working capabilities, greater responsibilities, and more rewarding careers.

The contact centre industry employs more than a million UK workers, and this typically conservative, on-premise industry has faced a mammoth task of pivoting operations to react quickly and flexibly to the largely unforeseen pandemic. With cloud-based contact centre technologies leading the charge, organisations that have acted quickly to deploy remote working capabilities are now demonstrating to the industry as a whole how they can provide an excellent engagement experience for their customers, even under extremely strained circumstances.

Those organisations that have acted fast to move to a cloud-based technology platform are now breaking away from the pack. These are the architects of a revitalised industry, modernising in a post-pandemic world and rethinking how home agents can work in a liberated yet secure and supervised way – even in sensitive situations such as PCI-DSS-compliant card payments.

Beyond the pandemic

The influx of email notifications from service providers in all industries detailing a drop in contact centre service levels shows that many organisations still have some way to go. However, almost all will be taking action now and this will prove vital in the months and years ahead.

While the ‘new normal’, in which all businesses must operate, is certainly very different to the previous business landscape, the key issues and challenges facing the contact centre are the same. For those comfortably operating in the cloud and supporting secure remote working capabilities, the traditional challenges of reducing agent churn, managing learning and development and ensuring employee wellbeing will be far easier to overcome. COVID-19 has led many contact centre operators into an enforced proof of concept that will deliver them significant operational benefits in the long term. Those that were once scared or unsure about how to make the leap are quickly realising the benefits of a modern, cloud-based contact centre, remote workforce and a more environmentally-friendly industry.

Broken barriers

The pandemic has broken down barriers to innovation that blocked progress in the contact centre industry for decades. Agents across the country are comfortably performing their jobs in the same secure, compliant way as they would have in a physical office. Where there may have been a lack of trust around home working, the capabilities of cloud contact centre technology, such as real-time screen reporting and Quality Management for supervisors, have enabled contact centre managers to maintain complete visibility over their remote agents’ wellbeing and workload. Never has the call to innovate in the contact centre been more clearly heard than now.

This pandemic will change many things. For the contact centre, it will fundamentally alter the landscape forever – and for the better – marking the start of a more caring, efficient, agile and environmentally-responsible industry.

Discover a CCaaS solution built for The New Normal.

Five reasons contact centres are moving to the cloud right now (or should if they aren’t already)

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By Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO at Content Guru

We are on the precipice of another great cloud migration. It’s something we’ve seen with data storage, software and consumer services and over the next few years, we will witness the same journey in the contact centre industry – from the on-premises contact centre of old, to completely cloud-based, omnichannel contact-centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) infrastructure. It’s a move that is long overdue, which has become all too clear in the chaos created by the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses worldwide scrabble to implement safe and efficient remote-working solutions for their agents.

The contact centre in particular has historically been seen as a place where organisations can save money. This has led to narrow performance metrics and a general desire to reduce headcount. However, with the colossal shift across industries to a focus on customer experience as the key business differentiator, it is time for businesses to realise that a cloud contact centre model is now the only one that makes sense.

Here are my five reasons why, if they haven’t done so already, it is high time for organisations in the contact centre industry – as one of the largest employers in the UK – to make the move to the cloud.

1. Employee health and wellbeing is more important than ever

Among the UK government’s latest guidance on lockdown regulations was the update that those who cannot work from home are now encouraged to return to work if possible. What does this mean for the contact centre industry?

Even throughout the strictest lockdown period, many non-essential contact centres still had employees working in their offices on a daily basis. Research since the outbreak began, undertaken by the University of Strathclyde and conducted among 2,750 UK contact centre workers, suggests only a third of contact centres now have social distancing measures in place. More worrying still, a further three-quarters said that social distancing when moving around the building was either ‘hazardous’ or ‘very hazardous’, and half are still working face-to-face.

The dangers of continuing to allow call agents to work onsite in potentially unsafe premises are evident. Now is the time for contact centres to implement a homeworking strategy that will help to protect the health and wellbeing of their employees. Cloud-based CCaaS technology can enable organisations to quickly deploy remote working capabilities. Organisations who have already made that move are demonstrating to the industry as a whole how they can continue to provide an excellent engagement experience for their customers under extremely strained circumstances, all while keeping employees safe.

2. The workplace is evolving for a modern-day workforce

Even before COVID-19, there was a widespread shifting focus to home working across all industries, which has only been accelerated by the current situation. According to research from the Office of National Statistics published prior to the pandemic, 50 per cent of UK employees were already set to work remotely in 2020. Remote working is a subject bound to divide opinion across small to large organisations in every sector, but nowhere more potently than in the contact centre industry. These concerns are perfectly understandable – the contact centre has always been a very physical workplace, with call agents hooked up to a legacy phone system, answering calls on multiple lines, in-sight of employers. Right now, permitting home working may simply be a case of survival as a business. However, in future, businesses will have a strong case to answer if they do not offer home working in some form.

Cloud-based CCaaS is browser-based so agents can access the system wherever they are, whenever they want. The ability to home work gives employees more flexibility and control over their working hours, making it easier to fit their career around busy schedules in a way that benefits both themselves and the organisation. Their working schedule can coincide more easily around family and home life, as they have the opportunity to log in while the children are at school, for example. This not only delivers something for the reward strategy of a contact centre, but increased satisfaction and happiness for the employee in a more flexible workplace landscape.

3. Omnichannel should now be seamless

In common with many other areas of today’s data-driven economy, solutions provided by cloud-based service providers are disrupting the way technology is applied in customer service environments. Businesses are making a strategic move away from traditional on-premise infrastructure and software platforms in favour of versatile ‘as-a-service’ options which broaden the functionality available while reducing the need for big ticket capex investment. Providers who can offer a holistic omnichannel solution are often better placed to meet the strategic and operational needs of customer service teams. Communications now need to be kept consistent across multiple channels, working together with no disparity, to provide a seamless customer experience. This is easily achieved using cloud-based CCaaS with a one-window view where communications are collated in one space, making it easier to navigate across multiple channels.

4. The need to scale-up and scale-out on demand is clear

Even for contact centres that are used to dealing with high volumes, handling spikes in demand can prove extremely difficult using traditional legacy infrastructure. As we have seen in the current pandemic, those working with cloud-based CCaaS across an omnichannel environment are ideally placed to deal with high levels of enquiries and can ensure strong service levels even when demand jumps. For example, screen-pops bring customer data and information on past interactions directly to agents, reducing customer frustration, as callers don’t have to repeat information they have already provided. Intelligent automation can be used to route enquiries to the most appropriate available agent or chatbot, who are also equipped with the right information to engage with the contact. This ensures that customer service is consistently best-in-class, even for contact centres with thousands of seats.

5. Long term cost savings are achievable

Traditionally, the contact centre has been viewed as an area of business in which to save on costs and resources. However, as a result of this oversight, staff turnover continues to be one of the greatest costs to the contact centre industry, which ‘enjoys’ a relatively low employee satisfaction rate and high churn. This is costly and time consuming for contact centre leads and their management teams, so finding ways of reversing this ratio is imperative. Employers should be researching and investing in technology that will make agents’ jobs more streamlined and more rewarding. Making a short-term investment in a CCaaS platform can massively reduce wider costs in the long term.

For example, the introduction and implementation of AI into the contact centre can have a massive impact on the day-to-day agent experience. Many simple enquiries won’t even reach a human agent thanks to AI-driven self-service, therefore automating tedious and mundane tasks, as well as reducing wait times and speed to resolution for customers. Augmenting agents’ ability with AI while reducing channel complexity with effective omni-channel capabilities will have a significant impact on churn if approached with the goal of empowering agents to better manage service enquiries.

A final word

In the midst of the confusion and upheaval caused by COVID-19, it is understandable that businesses may be hesitant about investing in new technology. However, it is clear to see that moving to the cloud is one step in a company’s digital transformation that makes perfect logical sense right now. For businesses operating in the contact centre space, it may turn out to be the make or break in maintaining relationships with their customers during these challenging times. Migrating to the cloud will help to meet the ever-changing demands of the modern business – and societal – landscape now, and into the future.

Find how to move your contact centre to the cloud, click here.

Why VPN is a poor choice for enabling a remote call center staff

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By Steve Bell, TalkDesk

In my previous blog, I stressed the importance of using cloud technology to quickly move call center agents to a safe, work-at-home environment, to continue support for their customers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. In this blog, I explore the challenges and pitfalls of a common alternative tactic many companies are employing to enable remote agents: using Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections to their legacy on-premises phone system.

Decision Time

IT executives across the globe are currently facing the urgent need to remote enable their contact center staff. If you’re still running an on-premises phone system, chances are you already have a VPN network in place to support a percentage of teleworkers – maybe 10 to 20% – for disaster recovery scenarios. So, one reaction might be to extend that VPN network to your entire staff, leaving your on-premises phone system in place.

On the other hand, you know you’ve been wanting to move your contact center to the cloud to take advantage of efficiencies, cost savings and better customer experiences, but haven’t had a compelling event to make the move. If there was ever a compelling event, COVID-19 is it. This is your company’s justification to move to the cloud immediately. Why not embrace the opportunity?

Which of these alternatives – VPN or Cloud – makes the most sense in terms of speed, cost and reliability? Spoiler alert: the right answer is NOT VPN. Click here to discover why.

Upgrade your on-premise PBX to support remote working with ContactOne’s BCP

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With on-premise telephony systems PBX, the remote homeworking functionality is often limited to call forwarding extensions to mobile phones and other landlines. Using this method will get your calls answered, but the user-experience will be very limited, as many of the functions a business uses a PBX for, such as transferring customer calls to colleagues within the business, and internal 1:1 / extension-to-extension calling are impossible.

When working in a contact centre environment this becomes even more challenging as agent presence cannot easily be detected or call volume workload easily balanced.

To meet these challenges ContactOne have introduced a business continuity plan (BCP) product that is designed to work seamlessly with on-premise PBX platforms enabling seamless remote working. What is more ContactOne have ensured that there is a pathway to remove dependency for the on-premise platform should remote homeworking become the new norm.

By using our own softphone, costs have been reduced to the bare minimum with short-term plans available, all that is required is the ability to call forward from the main numbers in use to our service numbers. These service numbers are then used to reproduce the functionality of the on-premise PBX and ensure that companies can get back the full functionality of the phone system. All your employees’ need is an Internet connection and a laptop, smartphone, or PC, it’s that simple.

To support contact centre-style engagements an optional module supports full agent presence detection, live call monitoring and call recording. The BCP provides full reporting and real-time extension status monitoring.

We understand timing is everything, which is why our BCP product has been designed to be installed remotely with setup times as short as two days from receipt of order. The platform is also designed with longevity in mind, so can be transitioned to become the primary voice telephony platform, in most cases, by simply porting the existing numbers once the BCP is in place.

For more information on how ContactOne can turn your on-premise PBX to a fully functional agile / remote working platform contact us on 0330 880 4444 or email info@contactone.net.

https://contactone.net

Connect ESAT to CSAT in Times of Crisis: NICE introduces WEM@home

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At a time when human connections matter most, are your frontline employees empowered to perform, and inspired to care? Are you doing all you can to keep your agents engaged and motivated?

Now, more than ever, every moment in the customer journey matters. The COVID-19 crisis has evolved to render face-to-face touchpoints less frequent, thereby highlighting the value of connected experiences in channels from phone to chat to SMS text.

Contact centre agents are in a unique position to deliver personalised, seamless omnichannel customer experiences that synthesise a variety of interactions – and to put the “care” in “customer care”. To this end, contact centre leaders that use actionable insights gained from agent experience feedback can inform successful evolution in times of disruption.

Would your agents recommend your company to a friend?

Employees, when engaged and empowered with the right tools and training, can be your most valuable brand asset – and increase customer loyalty while reducing customer churn.  Successful companies use the power of Net Promoter Score (NPS) along with direct, indirect and operational customer feedback to refine and deliver superior customer experiences, all along a holistic journey. Just as NPS reflects customer experiences from the outside in, it is equally as important to gain insights from the inside out.  Would your agents recommend your company to a friend? How they feel about their experience directly reflects to the experience they provide to the customer.

With insight comes opportunity

Especially in times of crisis, Voice of the Employee (VoE) and agent experience insights are a key part of the holistic feedback mechanism that powers customer experience management. Enhancements to customer experience cannot be accomplished without a keen understanding of the customer experience agent.  How do they feel about their ability to successfully engage when their work environment changes? Do they have the tools they need to deliver? This critical connection cannot be overlooked when working situations evolve. As the human connection to your brand, you must understand their situation and align to their changing needs.

Igniting a holistic CEM program that elevates CSAT

Times of crisis offer an opportunity to authentically engage with your customers, as well as your employees. This open outreach can nurture a collective appreciation of individual feedback that can shift CX programs into high gear. When agents on the front lines feel their feedback is important – their voice is heard – spirits are lifted, and that is infectious. Opening that feedback channel can inspire an ongoing, company-wide culture that not only elevates performance, but values input. And it is that input that is critical to a holistic understanding of all experiences that affect CSAT.

Our challenging times have surfaced human connections as a premium. As contact centre agents connect with your customers, it is more important than ever to connect to their input. With a durable, integrated feedback framework, agents can be inspired to see problems, find solutions, and feel more accountable to a holistic customer experience that delivers on your brand promise.

Integrated feedback management is an essential tool to gather and synthesise actionable frontline insights. NICE Satmetrix offers integrated listening for a 360 degree understanding of multidimensional behaviours that impact customer loyalty. To learn more about how you can gather and use employee experience feedback to drive engagement, and gain visibility and ensure performance, visit wem@home.

Coronavirus: CCaaS from Home

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By Content Guru

COVID-19 is spreading, and nobody knows how the situation is going to develop. Governments around the world are responding to the situation with bans on public gatherings and travel, and even quarantining whole cities.

The impact on business is already huge. Dozens of factories, schools, and offices around the world have closed, while conferences, meetings, and trips have been cancelled globally. Contact centres are especially exposed to this risk. Organisations planning their response need to look at two things – protecting their workers, and ensuring business continuity in the face of this threat.

How to Safeguard Continuity?

How do organisations not just operate, but thrive, in the face of this threat? Businesses responding to events like COVID-19 need to be one thing above all others – agile. They need to know that they are equipped to respond rapidly and appropriately to ongoing events, whether it is an outbreak like COVID-19, or a more common form of disruption like a power outage or severe weather.

Do your current disaster recovery protocols allow you to continue working after your office has been closed with little to no notice? How, in the face of adversity, do you deliver great experiences to your customers?

You need to provide your colleagues, and your customers, with continuity of service. In order to enable your organisation to rapidly move to distributed working models such as homeworking, you need to be backed by technology that offers that agility. Without the technology to back up your plans, your organisation risks having to cease operations as well as close your contact centre.

How We Can Help

Now is the time to act. Our award-winning CCaaS solution, storm®, gives contact centres the flexibility and, crucially, the speed that you need. Our cloud contact centre solution can be deployed in days and ready-to-use wherever your agents are, whether that’s in the contact centre or at home.

Due to its browser-based nature, all an agent or supervisor needs to carry on is an internet-enabled device, such as a laptop, and a headset. This means that your business can rapidly adapt in the face of disruption, and continue to provide your customers with great experiences. Content Guru can guide you through this process with a hybrid deployment, in which initially numbers and intelligent routing capabilities are moved to the cloud, whilst keeping the same familiar agent desktop. This deployment model acts as a stepping stone for organizations to rapidly move to a full CCaaS deployment as and when required.

Meanwhile, our scale means that even the largest contact centres can have a ready-to-go cloud contingency plan. Without significant investment, many on-premise contact centres are not set up to cater for all agents working from home. As storm is a true cloud solution, however, the location of the agent does not matter, and it can scale immediately in line with a rapid move to homeworking.

A concern many organizations have with a move to homeworking, especially one which has to be implemented relatively quickly, is in how they ensure standards remain high, and that they are able to continue their auditing and compliance monitoring. Our Quality Management tool set, storm SYMPHONY™, delivers screen recording and omni-channel recording through the cloud, while our reporting interface, VIEW™, ensures that your supervisors can continue to monitor the contact centre both historically and in real-time.

To find out more about how to implement an effective disaster recovery solution for your contact centre: https://www.contentguru.com/storm-dr/

TTEC launches T-NOW COVID-19 business solutions

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TTEC has announced the availability of T-NOW, an enhanced suite of customer service and technology solutions that it says makes CX continuity possible in days rather than weeks.

As the world has responded to government mandates and people have transitioned to being confined to their homes, TTEC says there has been a massive effort to rapidly add capacity to global customer experience programmes, with organisations reinventing their business models to seamlessly and continuously engage with their customers on the digital channels necessary for survival.

In this new world, TTEC says at-home solutions at scale will be a required element for all business operations going forward.

TTEC has enhanced its best-in-class Humanify@home solution to provide organisations with everything it takes to stand up virtual, cloud-based, omnichannel contact centres in a matter of days, including the people, process and technology. These solutions include:

  • AddNOW: Deploys immediately-available, highly-scalable and extensible at-home technology, and customer service associate solutions to support companies and their customers’ needs, ensuring business continuity.
  • MessageNOW: Improves utilisation, capacity and optimises interactions by rapidly deploying AI-enabled conversational messaging channels (e.g., in-app chat, SMS, web-based chat, social) allowing customer service associates to quadruple the number of customers they can handle concurrently.
  • AutomateNOW: Increases workforce productivity by automating customer interactions using IVA’s (intelligent virtual assistants) and business processes using RDA (robotic desktop automation) and RPA (robotic process automation).
  • ManageNOW: TTEC’s technology solution for contact centre as a service (“CCaaS”) which includes our Humanify cloud platform in addition to the design, implementation and ongoing managed services of the technology for both captive and outsourced customer service associates.

Ken Tuchman, TTEC’s Founder, Chairman and CEO said; “In the last three weeks, we have partnered with our customers to migrate over 31K of our employees to a secure, work-from-home environment. In addition, we have technically-enabled over 43K of our customers’ employees to be able to work using at-home technology. This massive effort was only possible because of our state-of-the-art Humanify@home platform which we have continuously innovated over the last 12 years, enabling our clients to rapidly move at home with confidence.”

Currently, TTEC has thousands of open positions for immediate hires of Humanify@home associates.

WEBINAR: How leading organisations are responding to the impact of coronavirus

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CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR WEBINAR

The coronavirus outbreak has had an unprecedented impact on organisations, their operations and the management of workforces. With some organisations needing to respond to substantially increased demand and others facing a situation where customer demand has virtually stopped, the extremes of the impact are clear. When combined with the natural uncertainty and anxiety that everyone will have, this has created a scenario that has never been faced in modern times.

Ember Group offers a number of customer engagement solutions including customer management consulting, analytics and learning and development, providing them with insights on what drives performance, and how to effect change.  They are helping to support their customers respond to this crisis and have been inspired by the effort, innovation, commitment and resilience being shown as teams rally around to get things done; and in response, adapt their support for customers and their teams.

Ember Group will be hosting their webinar, ‘How leading organisations are responding to the impact of coronavirus’ on Thursday 9th April at 2pm (GMT), designed to share their experience which they are seeing across the market. Presented by Ember Group’s Mike Havard, Chairman, and Carolyn Blunt, Director of Learning Solutions, they will share examples and learnings from the market on how organisations are adapting their operating model, establishing new ways of working, innovating by using digital and automation technologies, and critically, preparing to operate differently for an as-yet-uncertain future.

Ember Group would like to invite you to join them for this webinar and to provide you the opportunity to share your own experiences. To register, please click on this link – https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2894098628282620171?source=Newsletter+-+mycust

Live webinar details

Date: 9th April 2020

Time: 2.00 pm – 2.40 pm 

If you have any questions as to how Ember Group can support you today, please get in touch with Ember Group directly on info@embergroup.co.uk.

For further information, please visit www.embergroup.co.uk.

CxEngage Rapid Response: In 48 hours get your contact centre in the cloud

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Contact centers are the frontlines for organizations as they respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19), but are stretched thin in every way. Coupled with the fact that many contact centers agents are working at close proximity, ensuring their health and safety to continue to deliver optimal customer experiences requires a major—and quick—operational reboot.

To help keep contact centers working, safely, Serenova has created the CxEngage Rapid Response Program. The program addresses the urgent need to accelerate contact center work-from-home deployments—in as little as 48 hours—to keep agents safe, without complexity or compromise. CxEngage Rapid Response allows contact centers to immediately scale with the cloud. It takes a cloud solution to burst to scale and move agents to work from home at the rate necessary to keep people healthy and keep your contact center working—while still addressing your customers’ needs.

Contact centers that were slowly testing the waters of the cloud have found themselves quickly in the deep end of the pool – struggling to both allow agents to work from home while handling spikes in volume. To help them stay afloat, CxEngage Rapid Response allows contact centers to immediately scale with the cloud. That means implementing flexible remote work policies while maintaining business continuity—for agents and customers—during this crisis.

Learn More >> https://bit.ly/39xB8r8