How to Manage a Remote BPO And Data Entry Agents
The workforce keeps changing as technology advances. With the availability of high-speed internet and cloud networks, BPO and Data Entry are two of the thriving industries that have found a home off the physical workspace. BPO agents can connect to a similar system with their computers. It is all thanks to the available robust software that has gotten them into a more flexible work situation other than their regular office cubicles. All the agents need is proper training, the right software, a high-speed internet connection, and a quality headset. Remote work has grown into a great system for BPO and data entry organizations around the world.
While many BPO companies are already enjoying the benefit of remote working, there are some downsides to it. The most notable downside is the maintenance of proper agent management. As a manager of a BPO center with this kind of concern, below is a guide to agent productivity and performance management tips, that can help you to maintain your BPO and data entry center progress across time zones.
How to effectively manage a remote BPO and Data Entry center?
Since your employees are working from different locations, it is tricky to manage a hybrid team compared to regular office management. Although you cannot monitor your employees physically, you still have the daunting task of keeping them productive and engaged. With the following tips, you can efficiently manage remote agents to achieve great success in your BPO business.
- Develop a detailed training program: You need to get it right from the hiring and training process. It is your best bet to building the best remote teams of remote BPO agents. Provide your candidates with a clearly defined list of skills and qualities that you want to see in members of your virtual team. Adopt the use of assessments, video interviews, relevant interview questions to hire the best agents. Once you have hired an agent, you should proceed to teach them the rudiments of working from home. Many of these agents might have little to no prior experience working remotely. You need to offer them resources that offer the same level of knowledge, that will guarantee that they can work efficiently alongside your experienced agents.
- Foster a Strong Company Culture: To be successful as a manager, you need to commit time and energy to ensure the creation of a positive work environment. Your job is to ensure that your remote workforce doesn’t feel disconnected from the company. Let your expectations be made clear to all agents and show them how your company wants them to attend to customers. Let them know they are important team members and foster an environment that encourages engagement.
- Use remote agent monitoring tools: In your role as a BPO center supervisor, you need to ensure that you efficiently manage your virtual team. You can use numerous employee monitoring software to help monitor your remote team while providing visual data of productivity metrics of your agents. The software provides time tracking data that will help you to fully understand how long each agent has worked. With the data available, you can evaluate each agent’s performance against your standards. Training can then be adopted to improve on the weaknesses of the agents.
- Offer collaboration tools: Collaboration is important as you r agents are separated far ad wide by thousands of miles. They can only rely on the tools and apps that you adopt for team collaboration. You need to source agent related communications software that can allow agents to message each other and share files internally. Use your resources to support the work of your agents. Ensure that your agents do not get too lonely as is common to a long period of working from home. You can use CircleCare, a corporate social media app to overcome such situations and encourage employees to interact with each other.
- Gather customer service feedback: Customer feedback is another reliable means of knowing how well your BPO and Data Entry center is performing. Through customer feedback, you will observe the areas that require improvement. But for this to work, you need to keep an open mind, learn to accept criticism and differing opinions. While you don’t need to take action on every feedback but it is important to keep records of the feedback to better improve the BPO center processes for optimized productivity. Customers can rate their experiences and share their opinions with ease and it increases their satisfaction with your business.
Final Thoughts
You can only get the best out of a remote BPO center when you adopt the right tools. CloudDesk is a remote employee monitoring software that can be used to boost productivity. It can help to reduce the cost of managing teams and maintenance of a fully staffed team through its integrated features. All concerns attached to remote work can be mitigated with the features of CloudDesk software. The software takes random screenshots of the computer device of the agents as well as Face ID recognition during working hours to confirm the identity of the person working for you. These features of CloudDesk help to manage your hybrid team efficiently in the BPO and Data Entry industry today. Try it today.
