COVID-19 forced contact centres to make the transition to remote work faster than anyone had planned. For many organisations, including Telnet, what was originally a temporary measure has become a permanent component of how we operate. The challenge now is maintaining the culture, connection, and performance that made our contact centres effective — without the physical environment that traditionally enabled them.
What We Learned in Lockdown
The first discovery was that remote work is more operationally feasible than most contact centre operators had assumed. With cloud telephony and CRM, agents can work as effectively from home as from an office. Supervision, quality assurance, and team management can all be conducted remotely.
The second discovery was that culture requires more deliberate effort in a remote environment. The spontaneous moments of connection — a conversation over coffee, a team celebration for hitting a KPI, the visible energy of a busy floor — don’t happen automatically when people aren’t physically together.
Building Remote Culture Deliberately
Telnet has invested in several approaches to maintaining culture in our distributed workforce:
Regular team connection: Using Workplace from Facebook to maintain ongoing team conversation, share achievements, and celebrate successes. This isn’t just about announcements — it’s about creating the texture of team life that happens naturally in a physical office.
Individual check-ins: Supervisors conduct regular one-on-ones with their team members, with at least as much focus on wellbeing as on performance metrics.
Virtual team events: Celebrations, training sessions, and social events conducted online rather than postponed indefinitely. The format is different, but the intent is the same.
The Performance Picture
Our performance data post-COVID has been encouraging. The agents who transitioned to home working have maintained and in many cases improved their quality scores. Absenteeism has decreased. Staff retention has improved.
The culture challenge is real, but it’s solvable. The organisations that invest in solving it will have a significant advantage over those that either force everyone back to offices or accept that remote work means a diminished culture.
