Why Customer Care Directors Love Virtual Desktops

Desktop virtualization via desktop as a service (DaaS) benefits a lot of departments:

• IT because of the clear technology implications
• Business leaders because of the business benefits
• Security professions for the increased controls and data security (and compliance with some solutions)
• Finance for the benefits of moving from CAPEX to OPEX

But one of the lesser thought about roles that benefits greatly from virtual desktops is Customer Care Directors and Chief People Officers – particularly when the organization has remote employees or outsourced customer service agents. Virtual desktops help these roles directly address and minimize challenges they traditionally face.

Fast (& Affordable) Provisioning

One of the biggest challenges for anyone managing customer care agents is getting them productive as fast as possible. The first step in that process is provisioning the necessary hardware and applications. In the past, this has often required an organization to ship devices to remote agents or get a virtual environment set up on the agent’s personal endpoint (which can present compatibility challenges).

Virtual desktops negate all those challenges. Remote agents can use their own devices without compatibility or security concerns. Organizations that do what to provide employees with equipment no longer need to ship expensive laptops. Instead, they can rely on more affordable thin clients that are simple to ship – the size of a USB drive or modem – and easy for the agent to set up. This also means that there is no equipment or much less costly equipment to get back in the case of agent turnover.

Case Study
Transcom, an international business process outsourcer with work at home agents, had agents use their own personal devices for work, but it took the organization 6-7 hours to get each agent set up (and an additional 6-7 hours if the agent’s desktop ever needed to be re-provisioned). After switching to Dizzion desktop as a service, implementation times reduced to just 15 minutes per agent.

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Easy Training Environments

After agents are provisioned, they need to undergo training. Having remote agents (or agents in a BPO environment) come into a brick and mortar center is an outdated process and isn’t always a viable option.

Virtual desktops make it easy to push a training environment to agents regardless of location. The virtual desktop can be pre-loaded with training videos, tutorials and practice applications. Once their training is complete, simply swap out their desktop for a live environment accessible in exactly the same way. If you want to push a new training element to all agents, it can be added to the Golden Image (“master desktop”) and will automatically be pushed to all agents using that desktop image.

Built-In Monitoring

Any number of modern customer care platforms have built in monitoring features that are integral to running an effective and efficient team. Desktop as a service solutions can take that monitoring and insight to the next level.

With virtual desktop management portals, you can see things like:

• Application usage metrics – are agents using the apps you think they are?
• Agent active vs idle time – do you have too many people logged in versus need?
• Agent activity – are they using video capabilities to watch ESPN?
• Session trends – are there usage peaks or valleys you didn’t know about?

This information can shine light into dark corners and help you verify findings from your other management platforms. It can also arm with you with quantifiable data and recommendations when the business is looking for cost cutting opportunities. Prove the company needs an application or make a cost-cutting recommendation that’s better for your team before an arbitrary decision is handed down from above.

Quick Troubleshooting

When an agent is offline because of technical issues, they’re not serving customers. Sometimes the cause of an issue is a true technical problem, but sometimes it’s some form of operator error or environmental challenge. In many cases with remote agents, the root cause isn’t discovered until the agents sends their device in for troubleshooting – prolonging their spell of unproductivity.

The same virtual desktop management portal that gives you valuable insights can also help IT quickly troubleshoot issues and get agents back to productivity faster. Having the ability to dig into a specific user environment can quickly highlight the root cause of an issue – whether it’s a technical problem, a user error or an environmental factor that’s impacting performance. The faster an issued can be identified and resolved, the quicker agents can get back to work.