The coronavirus pandemic has taken the world by storm. First reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the outbreak has been reported in over 154 countries across the globe. Health organizations, governments, businesses and individuals from North America to Asia Pacific are in a haste to contain COVID-19 and minimize its impact on their local economies and way of life. Some of these efforts include travel restrictions, social distancing and business closures across nearly all industry verticals.

What are coronaviruses?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV).

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a new strain that was discovered in 2019 and has not been previously identified in humans.

At the time of this writing, there are 197,140 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 7,916 deaths with 81,738 patients recovering after contracting the virus (see Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University).

Working from home. A new reality for many.

As COVID-19 continues to spread and place hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, companies have been quick to respond. Organizations such as Google, Amazon and others have announced a mandate for staff to work from home. For many, this convenience comes with a new set of challenges and introduces a new reality — and a new possibility. While they’re forced to find strategies to manage time effectively and communicate with fellow coworkers in different ways, the flexibility and freedom of remote work forced upon millions of individuals in the labor force is a major boon for the future of telework.

The future of work for customer service, sales and support.

At Qubicles, we have been hard at work building a new future for the contact center industry. With over 750 million customer interactions handled to date, our cloud-based contact center is being paired with a patent-pending staffing marketplace to power the future of customer service, sales and support. Built upon the Telos blockchain, we’re ushering in a unique on-demand work at home digital economy designed to incentivize and empower millions of contact center professionals across the globe.

“In response to COVID-19, Barry University is utilizing the contact center software underlying the Qubicles platform to offer remote learning and continuity to our students,” says Freddy Brea, Director of Engagement Center for the Division of Enrollment and Digital Strategies at Barry University.

“Our ability to respond quickly to a pandemic such as the coronavirus and offer remote work and business continuity is paramount.”

Remote work as a core function.

An increasing number of organizations utilizing the Qubicles contact center software are taking advantage of its 100% cloud-based infrastructure, allowing in-house customer service, sales and support teams to work remotely. While this can be a challenge for the unacclimated remote worker, there are more benefits than disadvantages to adopting such a model. This is especially true in today’s environment, where nearly 50% of the labor force will participate in the gig economy and global pandemics such as COVID-19 are a possibility.

We encourage all businesses to support remote work as a core function of their operations and to research the various services available to help facilitate the development of a remote workforce.

To learn more about how Qubicles is powering in-house and remote customer service, sales and support staff across the globe, visit our cloud service at https://fenero.io.