COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and your Call Center
We’re going to be talking about the pandemic and what you can do as a call center and organization to keep your associates, supervisors, and managers safe and healthy. Your employees are not just workers. They are here in the call center for a majority of their day, but they all go home to friends and family that also want the best for them. We need to take as many necessary steps as possible in order to keep everyone in our organization healthy. Here are some of the steps we are taking here at Expivia
Disinfect EVERYTHING.
No matter what time their shift starts we ask that our associates wash their hands immediately when arriving to work and before they go out onto the call center floor. Clorox wipes are our best friend. Every time an agent goes out on break, goes to lunch, starts, or ends a shift, we ask them to use a Clorox wipe and wipe down their stations. Each agent is given about 2-3 wipes to use throughout the day. We’re calling it “breakfast, lunch, and dinner” to disinfect their stations! We also have someone coming around every morning to wipe the doorknobs and our clock-in kiosks.
Limit outside traffic coming into the Center.
We have a lot of associates that will use Uber Eats or GrubHub to order their lunches, and we have asked them to hold off on food deliveries for the next couple of weeks to limit the number of people coming into the center. We have also been strategically scheduling our interviews for potential new associates so no more than three people have to be in the lobby at any given time.
Taking it further than just sanitation.
Having at-home agents was a practice that Expivia never really believed in— considering we work with many financial service organizations. However, the seriousness of Covid-19 has forced us to take measures we otherwise wouldn’t. We are taking the necessary steps needed to phase our associates to an at-home work setup. Our system is Cloud-based, and all we need are our associates to have access to the internet and they can keep taking calls. Unfortunately, different clients require different levels of security, so we are setting up secure VPN’s on computers that might be taken to associate’s homes.
Keeping in Communication.
We are using Zoom, Instant Messaging and Slack channels to keep in contact with our agents and supervisors when we have to send them home to work.
We know that some of the measures we are taking are probably a little unnecessary, considering there are no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in or around Erie, Pa yet. That could change very quickly as we have seen in other cities, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. Stay safe and stay healthy.
