Snow Problem at All!

The Met Office issued a weather warning yesterday for snow across most of the country, warning the public to be prepared for the risk of disruption. As predicted, temperatures plunged to -9°C overnight and the snow is now a couple of inches deep, with the worst yet to come.

Inevitably much of the UK has gone into meltdown. With widespread travel disruption and employees unable, or unwilling to get to work, this can mean lost revenue, and for contact centres, a customer service blackout.

Many contact centre staff are unable to operate from home due to tired on-premise technology and archaic business policies. This ‘ice age’ technology has always been physically in the office, so that’s where agents have had to be as well. It’s the lucky staff in the roles that involve less call handling that get the option of working from home.

For us and our customers, it’s business as usual. We run our own call centre with a telemarketing team that make outbound calls, and yesterday, planned for staff to work at home.

This morning I had a remote meeting with the team, and for the rest of the day, they can continue as normal. As a true cloud call centre, our agent’s need only a phone line and an internet connection, and calls, and call monitoring continue as they would in the office.

This latest bout of bad weather won’t be the last, but while other businesses are losing two or three hours to increased travel times and weather delays, our employees are starting at the normal time and getting a full day’s work done.