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Employee Wellness Monitoring and the Call Center Industry

In early February, Time Magazine declared that the Coronavirus has become the “world’s largest work-from-home experiment”. In the following month, Gartner published an analyst report on managing costs during the Coronavirus outbreak and revealed that 74 percent of CFOs surveyed expect that at least some of their employees that were forced to work from home because of COVID-19 will continue to work remotely after the pandemic ends.  Later in mid-May, Michael Dell stated that work-from-home will be a “permanent feature” of the company’s structure and culture.  

However, in recent weeks, a concept that has become known as Zoom Fatigue has emerged, which describes how many employees are struggling with their new work-from-home routines.

Impact on Call Center Space

In general, the call center space already suffers from rapid agent burnout and high turnover rates. So, how will the new work-from-home scenarios impact the call center industry?

Despite many humorous stories about call center agents working from home that have been published, including a recent article on the Wall Street Journal about a rooster interrupting a customer service call, change in call center operations is occurring rapidly in response to the new work-from-home mandates that should trigger the attention of managers at all levels. 

Many call centers, both in-house and outsourced, are adapting Cloud-based technologies to allow their agents to access their call center functionality remotely and continue working from home as if they were in the office. In addition, technologies for remote employee collaboration, such as video conferencing, are rapidly being incorporated in call center operations, but despite these technologies that are enabling call center agents to continue working remotely, managers are unable to fully understand and measure how these new conditions are impacting the performance and overall state-of-mind of their agents and other call center employees.

To begin with, both HR staff and managers must make an extended effort to be in ongoing contact with call center agents forced to work from home and do their best to assess their agents’ wellbeing so they can assist the managers to predict and be prepared - and even help prevent, if relevant - future events. This contact can be through both formal online meetings and informal conversations. Of course, if call center agents express specific problems then corrective measures can be taken immediately, but what happens when a call agents tells a manager that everything is okay working from home, when in reality they are frustrated and struggling? This situation is highly problematic and can lead to low agent productivity and damage the overall call center performance.

Today, more than ever before, monitoring remote call center agent wellness by applying the same voice analytics that is used on callers is crucial for the operational continuity. This approach is opening up many new opportunities for maintaining satisfied call center agents and call center performance during work-from-home mandates.