What is a Virtual Contact Center?

A contact center is a customer service function that handles customer issues and questions from multiple channels, such as phone, chat, and email. A virtual contact center does this as well, but without a physical facility.

Contact centers used to have to house their agents and technical equipment in large, specialized spaces or offices. But cloud computing has changed the model, making virtual contact centers possible. The agents work from home and the hardware is hosted, meaning physical facilities are unnecessary.

Adopting the virtual contact center model can be beneficial to the right type of operation. The primary benefit is not having a facility to pay for and manage. Other benefits of working with a cloud partner include eliminating IT overhead for purchasing servers, applying software updates, and allocating staff time to system maintenance. In a virtual contact center, this is all handled by an independent software vendor.

Of course, virtual contact centers don't come without challenges, primarily due to the need to manage a remote workforce. Businesses need to think through issues like maintaining data security, keeping agents engaged with their virtual contact center teams, and making sure agents are doing what they're supposed to do.

Fortunately, there are tools and best practices to help overcome much of those issues. For example, agent activity can be monitored with live listening and quality reporting, and agent engagement can be managed with dashboards and collaboration tools.