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James MacKenzie
President and CEO
The past month has been a blur, as we realized that the COVID-19 threat was at our doorstep and it was time to respond. As of this week, viiz has implemented the tools to allow our entire team to work remotely if they choose, as we collectively do our parts to reduce the impact of COVID-19 within our communities. This shift in our operations is thanks to our cloud-based business continuity model, which has enabled us to move to remote work without impacting service levels. For many service-based businesses like ours, maintaining service levels is a critical focus – not just because it’s important to us, but because it’s important to everyone.
Customer Support is Essential – and So Is The Safety of Our Teams
In the jurisdictions where we operate (and beyond), telecommunications and call centers are designated as essential services. Every hour of every day, people across North America rely on our teams and our networks to connect them to the information they need, the people they’re looking for, and even to emergency support services in times of crisis. So to protect the safety of our teams while continuing to provide continuous service in these uncertain times, we activated our teams – fast.
While our application focuses on our current operations, the lessons (like the services we support) are transferable to any business or operation where the ability to support customers and their needs is paramount.
How We Shifted to Remote Work
viiz solutions are powered by our redundant and resilient cloud-based network. This network formed the foundation of our business continuity plan, namely, to transition employees, including our call center agents both onshore and offshore, to work from home.
This flexibility was built into our network from the beginning. Right now, we’re facing an unprecedented global pandemic, but there are all sorts of reasons why the ability to transition operations from on-to-off site quickly can be important: think about natural disasters and building security issues like fires, and how frequently they impact our communities, and you can get a sense of why flexibility is essential for any operation.
To deliver this transition, our IT team and operations team joined forces to make sure that we effectively coordinated the technology and people sides of our business. From round-the-clock testing, to working with individuals to get their in-home set-ups in place, it was all hands on deck. Our call center agents adopted new processes to support the work-from-home environment. Once our agents had their VPN access configured and their anti-virus software unified with our corporate standards, we were set.
Enhanced Customer Support
Many of our call center agents have been working from home for over a week now. We’ve also been able to provide back-up and overflow support for our customers whose operations have been compromised or don’t have the same cloud-based architecture to support remote-focused business continuity measures like ours. And for our customers who are leveraging viiz’s proprietary Live Agent platform within their own operations, they can benefit from the same flexibility that we enjoy, to allow their internal teams to work remotely as well. The value of an architecture that supports cloud-based business continuity extends beyond what you might need now; it allows us to quickly evolve to support what you might not know you’ll need in the future.
We’ve always felt a deep sense of commitment to our communities; this time has really reinforced for us how important and meaningful our work is. Implementing work from home capabilities for our entire workforce, including our call center agents, means that we can provide continuity in these uncertain times, without risking the safety of our teams or the integrity of our network.