The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a vulnerability that many contact centres hadn’t previously considered: geographic concentration. When Auckland went into lockdown, organisations with all their contact centre staff in one city faced severe disruptions. Those with distributed workforces were more resilient.
Telnet’s workforce spans New Zealand, with agents in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and regional centres. This wasn’t initially a deliberate business continuity strategy — it evolved as we expanded our remote work capabilities. But the resilience benefits became obvious, and geographic diversity is now a deliberate design principle.
What Geographic Diversity Achieves
When a natural disaster, severe weather event, or infrastructure outage affects one region, agents in other regions can absorb additional volume. During Cyclone Gabrielle, which devastated parts of the North Island in 2023, Telnet’s South Island agents stepped up to ensure our clients’ customers still received timely service.
This isn’t just about disasters. Local events — sporting events, public holidays, traffic disruptions — affect contact patterns in ways that are predictable for local managers but invisible to centralised operations. A geographically diverse team is better at anticipating and managing these variations.
The Technology Enabler
Geographic diversity is only practically achievable because of cloud technology. Amazon Connect and ContactSuite work identically for an agent in Invercargill as for one in Auckland. Supervisors have full visibility and control regardless of where agents are located. Quality assurance, reporting, and coaching all function the same way across the distributed team.
The infrastructure that enables remote work also enables geographic diversity. These aren’t separate capabilities — they’re the same capability applied at different scales.
