So a year on how would you describe how the pandemic has affected your company and how you work? If you can add some notes about your business to help readers understand what your center and/or company does, please add them here.
It has accelerated our growth. In particular our work from anywhere solution has been helping call centers extend their existing on premise phone system and all the associated systems (recording, agent management, etc) as if they were cloud based. This enables safe and secure (compliant) communications with no retraining required.

When the pandemic hit and if you had to adapt, what went well or better than expected in the change of the way you work??
Our team was used to working remotely, so that was not a problem for us. But we did need to pivot our product a little to add the WFA solution to our inbound call solution.

Since the start of the pandemic has call, email, chat traffic increased, decreased or stayed the same? AND, how? share some details on what you have noticed
There has been a move to more voice and video communications as people move away from chat tools as they want to talk to a human being.

Before the virus hit, did you have an emergency plan should something like this happen? and if so, did your plans work as expected?
Yes, as part of our ISO27001 certification we had an emergency plan in place. So, when this hit we were ready to cut over immediately.

In the early days of the pandemic there were lots of ideas how to keep staff now working from motivated - what activities / things did you do that worked well?
We moved to regular team calls to discuss what we were working on and any problems that we were experiencing. We did a lot of Slack communications to keep everyone engaged.

How often do you meet with your team / colleagues and how ? zoom? skype other ? and also how well does this work for everyone?
We have calls 3 mornings a week via Zoom or our own Jitsi service. This has been very effective.

Have you found colleagues are working harder, about the same as before or maybe a little less and why do you think that? please explain
Our team is working the same, or slightly more, than when we were in the office. The lack of commute has been great.

Longer term do you think you may continue working like you do today or do you think you will get back to like it was before the pandemic hit us all?
We will continue with a hybrid solution with the development team in the office several times a week.

If the pandemic did not really affect you tell us why - what made it a non event for you?
We were ready for emergencies, and had a lot of remote work because of travel, so it did not affect us too badly.

Do you think your company is now better prepared to deal with a crisis like this or any other crisis (flood, fire, earthquake, hurricane etc) if it happens in the future and if so why?
We have a better, tested, plan that has expanded beyond our original plan and will help us in the future.

If you manage a team - how have you coped with the change ?
We moved to the 3 times a week calls from a more informal method before this crisis. Now we know more about how to share information and keep the processes moving.

If you are a manager how do you help your team if they are struggling with personal issues at home or anxiety about the future?
I am having regular calls with everyone to help them deal with various problems that have arisen. Be these family members that were exposed (or actually sick) requiring isolation.

Many people were concerned about security of information with remote agents - how have you handled this in your business so its not an issue?
We are using our own services to make sure that we keep things secure.