I recently met with an outsourced call center executive, with more than 78 call centers distributed around the globe.  They employ more than 70,000 people and have a highly distributed environment.  One of the biggest challenges in convincing a company to outsource their customer care, sales and technical support is to provide a level of control and comfort that the operation will run as efficiently as the in-house work and that the quality of the agents will equal that of the current call center.

Outsourcers provide detailed reports outlining performance and allow them to listen to calls, but for many companies who outsource, seeing is believing.

Below are my top 10 reasons video, and especially MVaaS, is a great fit in the call center world:

1) Call centers tend to be distributed and the geographical challenges of getting to them makes inspecting what is going on very difficult. Many are distributed around the world which makes travel expensive, difficult and time consuming.
2) Basic security - most have basic video, but only at exits, in parking lots, etc…  There is a huge issue with theft, especially with stealing of supplies, hardware in customer labs, pc’s, printers, and others.

3) Call centers have plenty of bandwidth to allow remote viewing.
4) Video can be used to check on policy adherence and to ensure that managers are with the teams, not locked in their offices. For example, call center agents are not supposed to have cell phones or writing info on their desks due to taking credit cards. There are big fraud issue with these types of transactions. Smoking policy adherence, shredding of docs, cleanliness and other policies can be checked as well.
5) By adding Audio to training rooms with video, remote call center management and HR can inspect training procedure effectiveness and employee engagement.
6) Outsourcers can give “control” which is the biggest concern of outsourcing, to the clients, to look into the centers where they have their work done to check status.

7) Integration with access control systems to ensure only employees who are supposed to be there.
Call centers across the globe can share documented best practices.
9) Many call centers have cafes and will have some POS system, so looking for anomalies and exceptions can reduce shrinkage.
10) There are a lot of shenanigans in call centers. Drugs, employee misconduct, and many other issues arise, espeically with the density of people in a call center.  The employees tend to be younger (especially overseas), paid between 2 and 10 dollars per hour, and are not mature professionals.