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As the customer service industry landscape changes rapidly, companies that want to provide high-quality customer service are seeking for new advanced solutions that will add competitive advantage to their customer service strategy and help them to improve customer experience and increase customer retention.
One of such solutions is called hybrid call center, which refers not only to the workforce management model but also to the type of call center software infrastructure solution. The main demands of call center executives are flexibility, ability to handle high inbound calls volumes, data transparency and advanced analytics, and also integration capabilities.
A modern call center solution isn’t just a software tool that allows you to handle customer calls and analyze the call center performance, but also a full-fledged business intelligence and analytics solution that will help to build a single environment for call center employees to manage customer interactions.
Thus, let’s find out whether the hybrid call center can cover the above-mentioned needs and how hybrid work models for contact center work in current conditions of the call center industry.
What is a hybrid call center?
Hybrid call center is a customer service center that uses hybrid work schedule or hybrid call center infrastructure to operate call center operations and manage human resources.
In other words, there are two different definitions of hybrid call center: one refers to the hybrid work call center uses as workforce management strategy, and another points to the type of infrastructure solution that is used to integrate cloud-based and on-premises capabilities in one software.
Hybrid call center as a workforce management model
Hybrid call center in the aspect of workforce management is a contact center where a part of employees are working from the office, while others are working remotely.
This solution is a perfect way to balance the employee demand for remote work and business requirements to place employees in the office. Even though most studies prove that remote workers are more effective than their office-based colleagues, most companies are shifting toward traditional workforce management models as placing employees in the office brings irrational confidence to call center managers in better control of employee performance.
Thus, most companies are willing to see their call center agents working from office, but this is the one-way path: many call center employees aren’t ready to come back to office, especially if taking into account that most call center agents are either students or people who can’t afford working 5/2 and 8 hours a day.
Taking this into consideration is the only way to find balance between employee satisfaction and effective call center functioning, which made the hybrid call center the only suitable options for companies that aren’t ready to go fully remote.
Benefits of hybrid call center workforce management model
High employee satisfaction
Call center agent satisfaction is a much more important aspect of call center performance than you can expect - and the fact is that average agent satisfaction is much lower than it could be, if most call centers were following some basic rules and tips as it could have a positive impact on agent experience. Agent satisfaction influences most aspects of call center performance, including agent productivity, customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer retention,overall call center revenue, and so on. Ignoring issues with agent satisfaction may lead to massive negative consequences. Hybrid call center is a solution that allows you to improve agent satisfaction with providing your employees with an option to work remotely and plan their schedules in order to balance their private life with work.
Advanced flexibility
Hybrid call center provides improved flexibility for most call center operations as it provides an option to manage agent schedules in order to deal with peak hours and high call volumes without a need to involve too many office-based agents into this process. You can even set up a 24/7 customer service department with the use of a hybrid call center by scheduling remote agents for night shifts and office-based contact center agents for day shifts, which will open opportunities for your customer service department and have a positive impact on the quality of customer service experiences you provide. Also, contact center leaders will have more options to switch remote employees schedules or office-based customer service representatives when needed, meaning that your inbound call centers will be ready to handle customer calls during business hours without any issues.
Lower operational costs
It is not a secret that setting up workplaces for office based employees isn't a cheap task to accomplish, as it requires you to purchase some must have hardware and equipment, such as headphones, laptops or personal computers, chairs, and other equipment without which working in a call center isn’t possible. Therefore, switching a part of your customer service team to the remote is a good option to reduce your operating costs, which combined with above mentioned benefits makes a hybrid call center a perfect option for a modern hybrid contact center. Hybrid model is also a great option for outbound call centers, as remote workforce can generate outbound calls to customers more effectively with right design of schedules.
Better customer service
Hybrid call centers are also a good option for call centers which want to improve the quality of customer experience they provide, and also the quality of customer service. The biggest impact on the level of customer satisfaction is made by satisfied agents who are more willing to do their best in order to provide high-class customer service to all customers they interact with. Additionally, a hybrid call center is more effective in terms of handling high inbound calls volumes and dealing with seasonal peak hours, which means less abandoned calls and reduced customer churn. Thus, setting up a hybrid call center is the perfect solution if you try to win the competition with the help of superior customer service.
Lower agent turnover
One of the biggest problems many call centers are trying to deal with is high agent turnover and attrition. On average, the turnover rate for call center agents is above 40%, which means four of ten call center agents are going to leave your company in less than a year of working. This sounds even worse when it comes to calculating the agent turnover costs, which can strongly harm your call center budget and thus disable your ability to invest in important advancements and upgrades of your system, which harms a business growth and success, respectively. Providing employees with an option to work remotely is a good start on the path to dealing with agent turnover, and beating agent turnover is the key to building a rockstar call center team.
Hybrid call center as a solution
Рybrid call center as a solution is the hybrid cloud-based technology which is focusing on integrating the key benefits of cloud-based call center solutions and on-premises contact center software - thus such solutions are called hybrid contact centers.
There are many advantages of using cloud-based technology for your business, including powerful integration capabilities, advanced scalability, ability to switch to remote work, fast set up and free maintenance, customization opportunities and some advanced features that are unavailable in on-premises solutions.
Nevertheless, there are many enterprises that don’t want to migrate to the cloud here and now, and their concerns are absolutely logical. First of all, there are security concerns - even though cloud service providers are totally responsible for data security and stable functioning of your solution, the SaaS (Software as a Service) model means that numerous instances of the software are based and functioning on the same infrastructure.
Moreover, there is the issue with data migration that affects many businesses, especially large enterprises which often have different formats of data stored and numerous different sources of data which just can’t be integrated as entire operation system. Thus, migration of data to the cloud becomes an unbeatable task, while hybrid call center software allows to eliminate this issue.
How does hybrid call center solution work?
As we have mentioned before, hybrid call center is a symbiosis of cloud-based call center software and on-premises call center solutions. This means you can decide which processes and functions of your call center can be placed in the cloud, and which operations should be processed through on-premises software.
For instance, you can place your omnichannel communications in the cloud to use all the advanced advantages of cloud-based omnichannel communication platforms, while key processes and storage of vital data can be processed through physical servers of on-premises infrastructure of your hybrid call center.
Thus, hybrid call center as a solution allows enterprises to kill two rabbits with one stone by using the benefits of cloud technology and avoiding all the concerns related to these solutions. It is cheaper than traditional contact center in terms of scalability and integration, as well as it offers the same options for employee engagement and employee experience for customer service agents that cloud communications offer. You get cloud environment with modern business landscape to meet customer expectations and provide frontline employees with all cloud features, while your data is stored on-premises - thus you can build both in-house and remote call centers, or use hybrid approach.
Benefits of hybrid call center solutions
Reduced scalability costs
Hybrid call center solutions offer the main advantage of cloud solutions - simple scalability with the reduced costs compared to on-premises solutions. In other words, you receive an option to scale up your hybrid call center for the price and effort of the cloud solution without a need to go for a full-fledged cloud-based contact center.
Scalability is an extremely important part of call Center functioning, because at some stage of call center lifecycle there appear new needs in additional features and capabilities, especially when it comes to hiring new employees or switching to a blended hybrid call center from inbound or outbound hybrid contact center.
Data control and security
Even the most concerns regarding the cloud solutions and their “insecurities” are nothing else but myths, it is extremely important for some companies, especially large enterprises, to get total control over their data and key business processes, so why shouldn’t the call center developers offer such an option? Hybrid call center is exactly the solution that provides control over crucial infrastructure without a need to reject benefits of cloud solutions.
Putting aside security concerns, there are many industries and niches where there are precise legal requirements and regulations that establish specific standards of data protection and storage, which means that cloud-based solutions just can’t meet these requirements yet.
Effective data migration
Data migration is one of the biggest challenges for enterprises which are looking for replacement of their legacy solutions, and, as we have already mentioned, that can be many issues and pitfalls regarding the data migration process, because many companies create their databases during long periods of time, and in most cases, these databases exist in different environments and formats, which makes it difficult to sync and integrate data from different sources.
Thus, data migration to the cloud can cover only a part of all data, and this is not a suitable option for businesses. Hybrid call center solutions can resolve this issue, as you can integrate all the old data on your on-premise facilities, while you can also set up needed cloud-based features.
Conclusion
As we have discovered, there are two different terms meant by the word “hybrid call center”. First of all, it refers to hybrid call center workers, which means division of the labor force into two groups - some employees work from the office, while others work from home or any other location remotely. This is a compromise solution to find balance between employee demand to work remotely and business requirements to operate in-house customer service teams. Such hybrid call centers become more and more popular, and their main purpose is to optimize agent satisfaction and reduce agent turnover, which can directly improve customer satisfaction and overall call center productivity.
Another meaning of hybrid call center is a software solution that integrates on-premises call center infrastructure with cloud-based features - this is why it is called hybrid call center. Such solutions are popular among large businesses and companies from specific industries, which are strongly regulated by law.
To summarize the above said facts, let us say that both hybrid call center workforce management and hybrid call center solutions are current trends in contact center industry, so if you want to reduce agent turnover and win competition with higher call center performance, then adopting hybrid call center solutions is a good option for your business.
