Beat The Downturn: Calabrio 

As today's workforce becomes increasingly global, contact centers are relying more and more on virtual agents who can work from any location. During an economic downturn, the financial benefits of virtual agents become even more appealing: reduced facility costs, flexible work shifts, and greater efficiency in responding to shifting customer call demand.

But contact centers need to guard against pursuing efficiency at all costs at the expense of effective customer service. By integrating applications such as Calabrio Workforce Management and Calabrio Quality Management, supervisors can track call service levels and schedule adherence, make scheduling adjustments in real-time to optimize staffing, view Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and coach virtual agents to keep them on track and identify requirements for training.

Virtual agents also can monitor their own productivity on a daily basis with Web-based performance tools, which motivates agents to perform their best, improving customer service and, ultimately, the organization's bottom line.

Tim Kraskey is vice president of marketing and business development at Calabrio, Inc. www.calabrio.com