5 Call Center Solutions For The Gig Economy

Call centers have a bad reputation for being mentally exhausting environments to work in, so its no surprise that agent retention has always been a challenge for customer service departments.

But let’s face it: call center life is not always easy. Dealing with difficult clients that have unreasonable demands, getting yelled at over the phone and complicated issues can all be mentally exhausting. How does one make call centers more attractive then?

The answer is the gig economy.

What Is The Gig Economy?

The changing demographic and needs of the workplace are changing the workforce model. The gig economy concept is based on companies offering workers the ability to work when they want, where they want, and by utilizing part-time and independent contractors for short-term projects.

Gigs move the risk away from organizations to individuals, and trends show that increasingly more workers are relying on freelance gigs as opposed to traditional 9 to 5 jobs.

According to the CEO of Intuit, Brad Smith, the gig economy [in the US] was estimated to be about 34 per cent of the workforce in 2017, and is expected to be 43 per cent by the year 2020. The Harvard Business Review reported that 150 million workers in North America and Western Europe were already engaged as independent contractors.

Technology has enabled the gig economy to flourish, with companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb disrupting their respective industries.

The contact center industry is traditionally stagnant and rigid to change, but it can truly benefit from the gig economy.

How Call Centers Work In The Gig Economy

For call centers, the gig economy allows companies to be more flexible and cost effective with their agent retention. For customers, it enables them to receive better customer experiences, as businesses are able to deliver swifter customer service. Here’s how:

1. Flexibility in Staffing for Seasonal Industries

Every business has their peak times when calls to customer service increase significantly. During peak seasons, call centers agents often struggle to keep up with the high demand.

With the gig economy, companies can now hire contract workers to add staff for these peak periods.

By leveraging part-time gig workers, your call center can proactively plan ahead for peak and idle times, matching agent team sizes to call volumes.

2. Finding Diverse, Global Talent

In the global business environment, you have to speak the language of your customers and understand their cultures.

So why not rely on virtual agents who can carry out work from a different country? With virtual agents from all over the world that have diverse language and skill sets, you can be sure to be prepared for any business or situation.

3. Cost-Efficiency

As the cost of providing customer service is extremely high, cost-efficiency is a major concern for call centers.

As we already mentioned, keeping up with peak demand is often a nightmare for call centers. However, by leveraging gig economy workers, you can not only easily scale up during peak times, but also save costs by only paying your agents when they are needed.

4. Improved Customer Service

It’s no secret that businesses struggle to find skilled employees these days, and call centers, usually seen as a particularly stressful work environment, are definitely no exception.

As gig economy workers usually work on performance-based projects, they are self-motivated, require less supervision and are ready to work whenever they are needed.

Therefore, one major advantage of gig economy workers is that you’ll be able to work with people who are motivated to be experts in customer care, thus your overall customer experience levels will improve.

5. Technology for the Gig Economy

LiveXchange’s technology allows you to easily plug-in remote agents from home, working in harmony to expand or augment your current workforce.

Our PCI certified remote agent software, which installs in less than 60 seconds, connects to a secure desktop environment for credit card processing from any computer.

LiveXconnect is your custom workforce management portal that enables you to legally contract, train, schedule, and manage home agents performance effectively and remotely.

Discover The Benefits of LiveXchange

At LiveXchange, we can connect your organization with thousands of highly trained and qualified remote agents who meet your specific needs.

We can take the burden of hiring and training agents off your plate and:

• Increase sales by 25 per cent
• Operate your agents as their own licensed business
• Manage and schedule agent shifts
• Expand flexibility for scheduling with no shift minimums
• Provide access to “on-demand” agents to support unforeseen peaks

If your company is looking to build their remote agent workforce, then look no further than LiveXchange. Get in touch with us today!

Tracy Carter

Tracy Carter has helped many companies deploy and optimize their workforce with thousands of home agents, providing top quality remote brand ambassadors across the United States and Canada for Rogers, Today’s Shopping Choice, Xperigo, L’Oreal, ClubLink, Pizza Hut, KFC and many more.

With over 12 years of experience at LiveXchange in business process outsourcing services and homesourcing SaaS technology solutions, Tracy’s approach is to provide collaborative solutions with measurable revenue growth and operating cost savings – helping you grow your business with superior customer experiences!

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About LiveXchange

A remote contact center solutions company helping you grow your business and deliver customer service excellence. Our PCI certified home agent model and workforce management systems provide top quality outsourcing services, or the technology and tools to successfully develop and operate your own remote workforce.

With a 150,000 strong agent workforce, we specialize in recruiting and managing robust talent. Our remote enabling technology can reduce operating costs by 25% while increasing productivity results.