Teleworking and customer service: are your solutions cost-effective and secure?

For organizations looking to optimize costs, cloud-based phone communications are often part of their solutions. Companies pay based on their evolution and growth. Furthermore, a PBX (private branch exchange) is included in TIPN licences, which is actually a much more economical solution.

Take for example an SME that has a call centre with 5 to 10 customer service agents. Through teleworking, this kind of solution would allow the functionalities and security of a conventional call centre to be migrated to the worker’s residence. Amongst these functionalities are call forwarding and transfer, the configuration of opening hours, accessing voicemail from a PC, and the recording of voice messages for 90 days, for up to 7 years. A TIPN also allows the management of calls within a team composed of, for example, five agents, by establishing a well-defined order of priority for call reception and redirection.

In this kind of cloud-based strategy, telephone-Internet reconciliation and the accompanying cost optimization make for a cost-effective operation so long as you can obtain the right plan rate based on the actual needs of each employee.

In hybrid mode involving working from home and at the office, another point to consider is the ability to offer a unified service. The goal is to avoid duplicated training and technology as well as a potential risk of confusion. This harmonization is also a way of lightening the mental load and stress on employees, which are major factors in employee dissatisfaction and loss of motivation.

Beyond the cliché of hallway or coffee machine conversation, proximity often promotes fruitful discussions. Consider planned brainstorming sessions or informal lunches that sometimes lead to the creation of new ideas.

This is why it’s important to use collaborative tools that promote congeniality as well as competition when teleworking. Evolving out of static videoconferencing, there are now technologies for hosting inspiring and effective workshops and training sessions. The development of augmented reality, and its increased use, heralds the rise of immersive meetings in virtual rooms or in more enchanting locations. This is indeed the start of the metaverse (a parallel space where a community can interact through the use of avatars), which will be the ideal framework for developing new ideas!

In a report titled Le télétravail et la santé mentale, Québec’s Minister of Health and Social Services reminded readers of something that is often forgotten: “Work can have a positive effect on people’s mental health. Many studies have shown that people who are employed tend to enjoy better mental health than those who do not work.” It is rare that any individual or organization has not had to cope with situations involving mental health at work.

Anxiety, depression, and professional exhaustion are still among the issues that affect workers. Amongst the identified causes are overwork; a lack of support, recognition, autonomy, communication, information, or detailed instructions; and even a lack of flexibility when it comes to personal work-life balance.

In addition to filling in the aforementioned gaps, company management benefits from paying close attention to the factors that are key to achieving success. Maintaining social connections, quality, and the performance of work tools are three elements to consider. If many collaborative tools are in use, guaranteeing easy access and use at the office and at home will certainly be among the activities you’ll need to undertake. To this end, cloud-based IP telephony offers a range of possibilities. Here are just a few of its benefits:

• Complete solution including specialized equipment
• Centralized call management
• Adaptable to phone system changes
• Personalized options, call centre functionalities
• Call reception from anywhere
• Backup of call history 

Another competitive advantage is that companies who opt for these solutions make their employees more autonomous, harmonize their communication channels, take control of customer experience, and at the same time optimize a pillar that’s essential for growth.

These collaboration tools integrate themselves into your processes, giving managers access to performance dashboards in real time that display histories and statistics and offer a panoply of management tools. In addition to these functionalities, having technical support available from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., every day, is essential for ensuring continuity in your quality of services.

In terms of human resources, some companies take advantage of cloud solutions to automate the termination of access at a predetermined time, such as at 5 p.m. Employees and managers can thereby ensure their personal and work lives remain distinct, avoiding the overflow into precious personal time that sometimes leads to employee disengagement in the long term.

Through being more informed about communication tools and more efficient as a teleworker, employees and employers both benefit by being on the same page, but this also includes in terms of systems and data security. Remote work has been a prime opportunity for bad actors to commit computer-related crime, such as hacking and phishing.

The combination of cloud-based IP telephony and security as a service offers solutions via the web instead of internally. This solution enables management and IT managers to simultaneously handle security for workstations in the office and at home, including for employees who do not have a firewall, which represents the majority of employees!

Through this approach, it’s possible to back up many levels of service and security irrespective of the number of workers, whether for large, medium, or small businesses. The Videotron Business team offers a complete range of solutions to this effect that are adaptable as each business evolves.

Grâce à cette approche, il est possible de répliquer divers degrés de service et de sécurité sans égard au nombre de travailleurs, que ce soit dans les grandes, moyennes ou petites entreprises. À cet effet, l’équipe de Vidéotron Affaires propose une gamme complète de solutions qui s'adaptent à l’évolution de chaque entreprise.

When it comes to connectivity, employees generally approach this in two ways. The first allows employees to use their personal Internet connection and be reimbursed later by their employer. The second involves providing a dedicated connection to each employee. This is a Business-class connection that ensures greater fluidity and a more stable connectivity to support interactions between collaborators and customers. Network stability, a guaranteed minimum bandwidth, and access to the company network are among the main advantages of having dedicated access. This solution is even more beneficial if your employees already have a home Internet connection, in addition to the one provided by their office. For example, if a member of the family is watching a movie on Netflix, your employee’s business connection won’t slow down since it’s a completely separate connection. So your employee can continue videoconferencing using a camera without experiencing any interruptions.

La solution de sécurité gérée permet quant à elle de bloquer ou de débloquer certains sites web et médias sociaux, d’activer des notifications, de gérer l’endroit d’où peut travailler l’employé, de visualiser l’historique de consultation et donc, d’avoir une meilleure rétroaction des activités professionnelles durant ses heures de travail.

A managed security solution allows the blocking or unblocking of certain websites and social media sites, the activation of notifications, the management of the location from which an employee can work, to see their browser history, and thereby obtain better feedback on professional activities during work hours.

In Québec, a company like fibrenoire offers innovative cloud security and secure connection solutions for teleworkers at medium and large companies.

By taking advantage of integrated and scalable cloud-based communication, you’ll spend less time managing your phone systems so you can focus on ensuring the growth of your company. And if you’re using a hybrid work model, this simple, affordable solution is definitely for you!