Global phone agents have been moving offsite and working from anywhere (home office, mobile) for quite some time. Corporations debated within themselves about the pros and cons of letting agents work offsite. But in 2020, every company had to figure out how to move agents offsite and maintain a high level of service continuity for their customers.
It’s 2021, and many quickly deployed work-from-anywhere designs are starting to show cracks, especially in the realm of compliance. Let’s tackle how to reshape a temporary mobile call center design plan into a permanent, compliant, high-quality solution.
Solidify Your Work-From-Anywhere Plan
World circumstances kicked off the mass adoption of work-from-anywhere, but it’s becoming clear as pandemic conditions lessen, work-from-anywhere is here to stay, especially for call centers. At the outset of the 2020 pandemic, regulatory agencies offered more than a bit of compliance slack to companies sending workers home. But standards were inevitably due to return, and now these standards are beginning to acknowledge the work-from-anywhere business model’s legitimacy.
Use the cloud to bring the office anywhere
Put simply, the issue with dispersed work-from-home employees is that they no longer benefit from the security and compliance measures built into the premises where they previously worked. Our work-from-home plans need to phase out the roughly sketched, temporary solutions and leverage the cloud to deploy viable permanent strategies.
Regulatory bodies are well aware of how much they can fine companies that fail to adhere to compliances they set in place, and now they’re beginning to look more seriously for the violators. That means it’s time for CFOs, COOs, compliance officers, and IT folks to plot a path for security, communication, commerce, collaboration, and training through the cloud.
You’ll need to record from anywhere
One of the most considerable challenges is adapting an agent’s home setup to behave like their work setup. Security can be handled with a good VPN and company-issued hardware if needed. Company collaboration, sales, and customer support are employing UC platforms widespread already.
But, when that employee sat at their on-premise desk, all calls were recorded for (say it with me) “quality and training purposes”. Customers hear “quality” and rightly figure you’re trying to serve them better. However, you also know that “quality purposes” are government-mandated regulations that become costly when you fail to meet them. Figure in a way to securely and compliantly record those work-from-anywhere agents because, without that part of the plan, all the other aspects you’ve made portable could wind up costing you.
Give Data Security Your Utmost Attention
Data criminals are not miraculously getting dumber. With so many people leaving the security of their work premises and continuing to work-from-anywhere, these criminals have gotten wiser and bolder.
The cloud lockbox
I present a tale of two files. The first file is sitting locally on a home-based agent’s PC, and the second file is nestled somewhere in the cloud. It’s a short story. The local file is stolen by data thieves who quickly extract critical customer data from it. On the other hand, the cloud file is safe in the cloud fabric, where the thieves can’t get to it.
And that would be a nice conclusion for any tale, but there are a few details that make it a truly happy ending. Cloud infrastructure isn’t just generally more protective of your files; it’s entirely built for maximum security with web application firewalls, constantly updated intrusion detection systems, 24×7 monitoring, and suspicious activity alerts. There’s no comparison between the safety of the cloud-stored file and the locally stored file.
The moral of the story is the more data your dispersed agents’ store in the cloud (as opposed to locally), the safer your customers, your company, its reputation, and society as a whole are.
Your employee will need to connect to work through a VPN, but when it comes to file storage, especially storage of communications your agent has with your customers, those files should be encrypted and redundantly tucked into the cloud.
Quality AND training purposes
Employees must be trained to understand the need for security and how to avoid becoming a liability. With so many people working on their home routers, data criminals target people who take credit cards over the phone, sometimes parking outside their homes with laptops and hoping to extract some of those number strings that let them spend other people’s money.
Teach your employees why they need that VPN; warn them about social hackers and other cyber threats that have quadrupled in number since 2019.
Learn more about making your call center work from anywhere
CallCabinet has pioneered work-from-anywhere call compliance. Reach out to us today if you want to learn more about protecting your customers and your call center, no matter how and where you’re deployed.
Brian is a freelance technology writer and media editor based out of Central New Jersey. He’s logged 20 years of experience in the Telecom industry and side-hustles in the record industry. Brian started his career in technology at a company that made analog modems. He migrated to a marketing career in the call recording industry where he learned exactly how and why calls are monitored for quality assurance. These days Brian fuses his skills together to deliver his researched observations about telephony and compliance laws in polished articles and videos. He’s also composed the music for a long list of big Hollywood trailers. He does not miss the sound of analog modems but he is endlessly fascinated with phones.