Future Travel, a division of the Co-op Travel Group,
has upgraded its virtual contact centre to cope with an increase in
staff numbers and improve reporting on their
performance.
The unit is using a hosted service from Teamphone instead of the
proprietary call-handling system it had used for more than two
years. The legacy system had limited reporting capabilities and was
"near to breaking point", said David Picking, Co-op Travel's IT
general manager.
More than 600 home-working staff spread across the UK are now
using Teamphone's browser-based Smartnumbers software to take
holiday bookings for the direct operation travel agency.
Call-handling statistics are fed via data feeds to the firm's
dedicated SQL Server datawarehouse, with queries being run using
the Report Building module of Microsoft's Reporting Services 2005
software.
Picking said the Smartnumbers software was being used to report
staff performance on a batch basis for senior managers, but sales
support managers with direct responsibility for the contact centre
were using real-time data to help monitor performance and manage
staffing levels to meet peaks in demand.
"Compared with a traditional call centre, we have massively
reduced operating costs as we are siteless," said Picking. "We also
have better staff attrition rates than in traditional contact
centres, where 40% annual agent churn is common."
But Picking said the challenge of running a virtual contact
centre was managing training needs and maintaining adequate staff
communication.
"We have an intranet site which is the main way for the business
to communicate with home workers," he said.
"But it is training that poses the real challenge. Our principal
way around the problem is to put training videos on the site for
staff to download and replay. We are constantly introducing new
packages and updates, so all staff need to be fully briefed to
maintain the service."
For staff who encounter technical difficulties with their
broadband connection or PC, Picking said there was a dedicated IT
helpdesk for remote workers, with IT staff being able to take
control of the PCs remotely to deal with the most common
problems.