7 Questions for Business

A column on the site SearchCRM from May of 2007 has a list of 14 Best Practices for managing remote call center agents.

It’s not a bad place to start when evaluating a remote program. Several of the points the article makes are valid. It talks about online training and doing a remote readiness evaluation.

However, the author makes a common error. She attempts to recreate a bricks and mortar environment remotely. Not only is this obviously impossible, it is undesirable. The real strength of a remote workforce is in the quality and flexibility of the people it attracts.

A CNNMoney article today covered a new partnership between Altigen and Skype to use Skype’s VOIP network to facilitate remote agents for Altigen’s call center platform clients.

Usually, remote agents subscribe to a local VOIP vendor and use standard telephony/headset setups to connect to the call center’s servers. This new partnership apparently allows users to bypass some of these steps and connect directly builtin Skype connectivity.

Deploying a remote agent program is often a matter of overcoming technical hurdles. This new partnership looks to be a big step in that direction.