Contact Center Strategy During
COVID-19 and Going Remote

Contact centers present a uniquely complex set of real estate challenges. They are large — often among the largest single-location footprints in a company's portfolio. They are specialized — purpose-built with raised flooring, dense power infrastructure, and acoustic treatments that make repurposing or subleasing difficult. And they are workforce-intensive — the concentration of employees creates both operational efficiency and concentrated risk.

When COVID-19 forced contact center operators to rapidly transition to remote work, it exposed all of these vulnerabilities simultaneously. Organizations that had been skeptical that contact center work could be performed remotely discovered — with varying degrees of disruption — that it largely could. That discovery has permanent implications for how contact center real estate should be thought about going forward.

The Contact Center Challenge

The core challenge for contact center real estate is the mismatch between the flexibility of the work and the inflexibility of the leases. Contact center work is, in many cases, highly portable — an agent needs a computer, a headset, an internet connection, and access to the relevant software systems. The work itself does not require a specific physical location.

But contact center leases are typically large, long, and difficult to exit. A 100,000 square foot call center in a secondary market, built out with specialized infrastructure over a 10-year term, is not easily subleased, buyout economics are complex, and the landlord has limited alternative uses for a purpose-built space. This combination — highly portable work, highly illiquid real estate commitment — is the defining tension in contact center portfolio management.

Operational Continuity

The immediate priority for any contact center operation during a disruption is operational continuity. The decisions that support continuity — enabling remote work, establishing clear productivity metrics for remote agents, maintaining quality monitoring and security protocols — are primarily operational rather than real estate decisions. But they interact directly with real estate in important ways.

Organizations that can demonstrate sustained productivity in a distributed model have a fundamentally different real estate conversation than those that cannot. If remote agents are demonstrably as productive as on-site agents, the business case for large, centralized contact center facilities weakens significantly. That changes the calculus on lease renewals, expansions, and existing lease strategy.

Real Estate Implications

The shift to remote contact center capability creates three categories of real estate decision that need to be evaluated simultaneously:

• Existing large-footprint leases: If the workforce can operate remotely, what is the right size and utilization model for the physical facility? Does the lease have flexibility provisions that allow contraction? Is a restructuring or buyout economically attractive?
• Near-term expirations: Leases expiring within 24 months are opportunities. Rather than renewing at similar scale, evaluate what the post-remote footprint should look like and right-size accordingly. Negotiate flexibility provisions — termination options, contraction rights, sublease rights — that provide protection against further shifts.
• Specialized buildout: Contact center buildout is expensive and creates complications for subleasing. Prospective subtenants are unlikely to be contact center operators. The specialized infrastructure reduces the market of potential subtenants and typically requires significant investment to convert. Factor this into any exit strategy analysis.

Workforce Distribution

Contact center workforce distribution interacts with real estate in ways that are worth analyzing explicitly. Large, centralized operations typically draw from a single labor market — constraining both the talent pool and the leverage of workers. Distributed models access multiple labor markets simultaneously, potentially improving both talent quality and cost.

The real estate implications: a distributed model may support a network of smaller, flexible locations rather than a single large facility. Smaller locations are easier to sublease, more flexibility-friendly from a lease negotiation perspective, and less exposed to any single market disruption. The tradeoff is management complexity and potential loss of operational efficiency at individual locations.

Lease Strategy Going Forward

For contact center leases renewing in the current environment, the priorities are clear: shorter initial terms, meaningful termination options, explicit sublease rights with minimal landlord consent requirements, and flexible expansion/contraction mechanisms.

Landlords in markets with significant contact center inventory — secondary cities, suburban markets with large available labor pools — understand that contact center operators have genuine alternatives now that remote work is established. That awareness, combined with the general softening of commercial markets in many geographies, creates real opportunity to improve lease terms significantly over what was achievable two years ago.

Long-Term Portfolio Thinking

The long-term trajectory for contact center real estate is toward smaller, more flexible, distributed footprints — supplemented by remote workforce capacity that can flex with volume. Organizations that are still carrying large, legacy contact center leases should be actively evaluating whether those commitments still reflect their operational strategy, and if not, what the path to right-sizing looks like.

This is not a simple analysis, but it is a necessary one. The cost of carrying the wrong real estate in a contact center portfolio is very high — not just in direct lease costs, but in the operational inflexibility and talent market constraints that an over-committed physical footprint creates.