When New Zealand went into COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Telnet was better prepared than most. We’d been investing in cloud contact centre infrastructure for several years, which meant our transition to fully remote operations took days rather than weeks.
The technology that made this possible was our cloud-based ContactSuite CRM platform and our Amazon Connect telephony integration. Both are designed to work identically regardless of where the agent is located — in an Auckland office or a living room in Rotorua.
What Cloud-Native Contact Centre Technology Enables
Location independence: An agent with a computer and internet connection can access every tool, every system, every piece of customer information they need. There’s no VPN complexity, no remote desktop lag, no dependency on being in a specific physical location.
Supervisor visibility: Our supervisors can monitor agent status, call queues, and quality metrics in real time regardless of where agents are working. The management information available to a supervisor at their desk is identical whether their team is in the same building or distributed across New Zealand.
Business continuity: Geographic distribution reduces the risk of a single event — a weather event, a local power outage, a pandemic — taking down an entire operation simultaneously.
The Human Side
Technology is the enabler, but the human side matters too. Telnet invested significantly in supervisor training for remote team management, communication tools that maintain team connection, and support resources for agents adapting to home working environments.
The agents who thrive in remote environments tend to be those who are self-disciplined, comfortable with technology, and able to maintain professional focus in a home setting. Telnet’s hiring process now explicitly assesses these attributes.
The future of contact centre work is hybrid — some agents in offices, more agents at home, all connected by the same cloud infrastructure. We’re well positioned for that future.
