日本語 Start free

Use cases

Virtual office for remote call center and BPO teams: the supervisor desk you can knock on

Published Other products' prices and terms as of October 30, 2026 (their official pages)

A remote call center or BPO team can use a 2D virtual office to get back the floor it lost. Agents knock on the supervisor’s desk with a one-line note, move to a focus desk when a call needs quiet, and coach in a closed room. The office covers the moments between calls: Hotori has no recording feature and does not connect to your phone system, so call recording and quality monitoring stay where they are today.

This guide is for supervisors and work-from-home agents, whether they sit in the Philippines, the US, or both.

For the short version on one page, see For call centers.

What a supervisor loses when the floor goes remote

Most of a supervisor’s work happens between calls: the 10-second question after an agent hangs up, the glance that catches a new agent stuck on the script, the huddle that opens and closes the shift. Remote, each one becomes a chat message, a scheduled call, or nothing. A virtual office puts the aisle back: people see who is around, walk over, and talk.

How the floor works

Hotori runs in a browser with nothing to install. Keep it open in a window beside your phone system; the two do not connect. Each person is an avatar on a pixel-art floor. Get within 3 tiles of someone and your voices connect, louder the closer you are, and it goes quiet when you move away. That is “spatial audio”: voice that follows distance on the map, so one desk’s conversation does not fill the whole room.

Four places matter on a call center floor:

  • Agent desks, one cluster per team. Agents sit here between calls, when a quick question to the next desk costs nothing. On a call, turn the office mic off, so what you tell a customer does not reach the people near you.
  • Focus desks, for a call that needs quiet. No voices reach you here and yours reaches no one. Use one for a difficult call or a new agent’s first calls. Seats there are shared, so agree on who uses them when. A knock still gets through, and you can answer “Later” without a word.
  • The supervisor desk, 4 or more tiles from the clusters. Voice reaches 3 tiles, so the supervisor is visible and reachable here but in nobody’s ear.
  • Booths and meeting rooms. A booth is where a knock ends up: two people, nobody else listening. A meeting room is a closed room for a group.

The supervisor desk you can knock on

The knock replaces turning around to ask. An agent who cannot tell whether the supervisor is free knocks and adds a short note: “Customer wants a refund over my limit. Can I approve?” If the supervisor accepts, both move to a private booth. If not, they tap “Later”, and the agent goes back to the queue knowing an answer is coming.

It works the other way too. A supervisor who wants to debrief after a hard call knocks rather than walking up, because the agent might be mid-call, and a knock reaches a focus desk where a voice does not.

Two habits make this work: put the question in the note, and answer every knock, even with “Later”. Unanswered knocks send people back to chat.

Reading statuses when none of them says “on a call”

Each member has one of four statuses: Available, Focusing, In a meeting, and Away. After 5 minutes without input, a member is set to Away automatically. Hotori is not connected to your phone system, so no status changes when a call starts or ends. Your team decides what each one means. One reading that works:

StatusWhat it means on this floorWhat the supervisor does
AvailableBetween calls, or after-call work that can be interruptedWalk over and talk
In a meetingOn the phones (an inbound or outbound block)Knock, do not approach
FocusingAfter-call notes, a training video, a new scriptLeave it unless urgent
AwayOn break, or stepped awayWait

The Focusing status is only a sign. A focus desk is what actually stops voices.

If phone blocks run on a schedule, each agent can register a calendar’s private iCal URL, and the status changes to In a meeting during those events. Treat the automatic Away with care: an agent working in the phone system has not touched the office and may show as Away while on a call. A status answers “can I talk to this person now?” It is not an attendance record.

Coaching and huddles in a closed room

Meeting rooms work like a video call: everyone in the room hears each other, with camera, screen share, and room chat. Nothing leaks outside, so a long huddle is not heard on the floor and a talk about a difficult customer stays in the room.

Use them for shift-start huddles with script changes on the shared screen, shift-end huddles where agents share what worked, and coaching on the agent’s shared CRM screen, following your center’s rules on who may see customer data. The room is not recorded. If you need a record of a coaching session, someone takes notes.

Bringing a client onto the floor as a guest

BPO work means client visits: reviews, calibration sessions, kickoffs. Send the client a guest invite link that expires in 1 to 30 days, and add a password if you want one. The guest hears only the people nearby or in the same meeting room, and counts toward your plan’s limit only while inside. No voice, video, or chat from the visit is saved on our servers.

Counting people when agents work in shifts

Call centers have more people on the roster than on the floor at any one time, and virtual office tools count people differently. Take a sample program with 50 agents on two shifts of 25.

Hotori charges per space, not per person: register as many members as you like and pick a plan by how many can be inside at once. If more show up, up to 2 extra can still get in; beyond that, the next person sees a “full” message, and the owner can always enter. With supervisors on the floor and shifts overlapping at handover, this program needs Business (up to 50 at once), not Standard (up to 25).

Many other tools count registered members, employees, or active members, so the bill follows the roster. Here are five, as of October 30, 2026 (official pricing page), before any applicable taxes.

Tool and planBilling unitPrice per month, billed monthly / annuallyCost for 50 agents on the roster, per month
Hotori BusinessSpace, up to 50 inside at onceUS$69 for the spaceUS$69
Gather EssentialMember$15 / $12$750 / $600
Kumospace BusinessRegistered member, 5-member minimum$20 / $16$1,000 / $800
RoamActive member (uses it that month)$19.50, monthly billing only$975 if all 50 use it that month
SoWork BasicMember$6 / $5.40$300 / $270
Teamflow SeedEmployee$20 / $15$1,000 / $750

Hotori‘s prices are in US dollars for customers outside Japan, and the final amount is shown at checkout.

The last column is not the whole story:

  • Recording. Gather’s Essential includes meeting recording and transcription hours. Hotori offers neither.
  • Guests. Gather and Roam do not charge for guests, though Gather’s plan sets a number of guest hours. A Hotori guest takes a place while inside.
  • Free plans. Kumospace and Teamflow list free plans for up to 5 people, and SoWork for up to 10 members, each with limits. Gather has had no free plan since September 15, 2025.

For the general comparison, see flat-rate vs per-seat pricing.

What this office does not do

  • It is not a phone system. No dialer, call routing, call recording, or call monitoring, and no connection to those tools.
  • It is not a mailing address, the other meaning of “virtual office”.
  • It does not record or watch how you work. Voice, video, and chat are not saved on our servers.
  • It is built for computers. Phones are still being tested.
  • Servers are in Japan. Hotori is made in Tokyo by a small team. Voice works best in Japan, across Asia-Pacific, and on the West Coast of North America, which suits agents in the Philippines or on the US West Coast. On the US East Coast you may notice more delay. It is not offered in the EU, the EEA, or the UK for now.
  • No sales calls. Support is by email, and we aim to reply by the next business day in Japan.

Trying it with one shift

The 30-day free trial includes everything in the paid plans for up to 50 people at once, with no card. Nothing is charged when the trial ends. To keep going, you pick a plan.

Start with one supervisor and 3 to 5 agents from a single shift. In the first huddle, agree on three things: the office mic stays off on calls, what each status means, and every knock carries a note. Have each agent run the setup check linked from the FAQ on the network they will actually use, then work a real shift on the headset they use for calls. After a week, ask one question: is it easier to get a supervisor’s attention than it was in chat? See pricing and how it works.

We are also looking for early adopters: the first 5 teams get 3 months free, in return for a short email questionnaire and help writing up how the team uses the office. To ask for a place, write to support@hotoriplace.com.

Company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Hotori is not affiliated with them.

Sources