Text by: Alexis Gizikis – Project Manager – European Emergency Number Association (EENA112)
One of the three pilots in the WorkingAge project is about testing the use of the WAOW tool in a teleworking environment, which has become a lot more popular since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Customer service call centres are not an exception in this practice. Their staff has been working remotely during the pandemic, answering customer queries and requests as they would do when working from inside the actual call centre. The practice of remote working has been very effective in continuing the business operations during COVID-19, including the daily operations of call centres.
Emergency call centres have been experiencing similar challenges. Their business continuity is a top priority and cannot be put at risk. Their incoming communications significantly increase at times of crisis and all calls must be handled without delay.
The operation of an emergency call centre has several security considerations and at first, security might be considered as a possible barrier to teleworking. However, remote call-taking was not new for some emergency call centres. Other centres successfully managed to overcome this unique challenge in short time and ensure the continuity of the high-level services they provide by implementing remote emergency call-taking. The article “Teleworking for emergency call-takers” on the EENA Blog describes how it was achieved.
