Enterprise Connect: Employee Experience Key to Successful Hybrid Workforce
Remote and hybrid work styles are here to stay.
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Omdia asked organizations about their top investment areas over the next 12 months, specifically around improving hybrid working. The top investment area focuses on employee support, the research firm’s Adam Holtby said. Improving employees’ digital skills and investing in tools to help improve employee experience are top areas.
“It’s really interesting to see where investment is going to be pitched over the next 12 months and where priorities are going to be for organizations,” he said. “It’s things like service management platforms that help organizations integrate different business functions at that process level, as is their facilities management tools.”
In addition, workflow automation platforms will be important for organizations, as well as 5G data services for employees, Holtby said.
There are three steps businesses should follow to better understand their workforce so they know what capabilities will be valuable to people within the business, Holtby said. These will help businesses maximize the value they gain from investing in new technology, new working practices and process improvement efforts.
These steps are:
Identity how people currently work and the challenges they face. In addition, identify solutions and new working practices that will help improve those tasks and processes.
Assess if desired outcomes are being achieved.
Act on identified improvement opportunities.
In addition, it’s important to integrate different business units, Holtby said. IT can lead in this type of initiative, but they’re going to need to the help and support of other teams like HR.
When it comes to the transition to more remote and hybrid work styles, it’s important that organizations don’t just “plaster” those legacy, traditional ways of working onto these new work styles, Holtby said.
“The future of work is a journey, not a destination,” he said. “And organizations need support in that journey. They need companions on that journey. So technology and service provider partners are so important in helping organizations realize value against some of these digital objectives.”
The pandemic has influenced business decisions around which partners organizations are going to work with in the future, Holtby said.
“Seventy percent of organizations are going to be exploring new partnerships based off their experience with existing partners during the pandemic,” he said. “And when we look at the partner capabilities that businesses are going to value most going forward, they’re looking to work with partners that can really provide best-of-breed technologies, and technologies that support organizations in their digital journey. So it’s understanding what it their organization is looking to achieve, and delivering capabilities that can help them overcome their challenges and their issues.”
Partners that help improve people, process and technology are going to be key, Holtby said. Moreover, employee well-being should be a key objective that organizations should be looking to work with partners around.
As organizations plan their hybrid workforces, they are looking for communications platforms that are easy to deploy and adopt with higher productivity as a top outcome.
That’s according to 8×8. During their Enterprise Connect session, Jinal Vichhivora, 8×8’s director of apps and e-com user experience, and Russ Chadinha, 8×8’s senior director of solution and vertical marketing, unveiled findings and insights from research uncovering what companies are planning next when it comes to communications.
Some 82% of organizations are planning to implement a hybrid work model.
“And with the new surge in COVID-19 cases, maybe even more will be considering this model,” Chadinha said.
Organizations were asked the most important communication channel they want to deploy going forward. Email is still considered the most important communication channel selected by 88% of respondents, according to 8×8.
However, when it comes to collaboration and communication, video becomes one of the most important channels, Vichhivora said.
“IT sees email as a key communication channel while the rest of us see the need for a communication channel buffet that includes chat as the main course,” Chadinha said.
The notion of back office, middle office and front office doesn’t exist anymore, Vichhivora said. It’s all morphing into a full company engaging with their customers.
“Going forward, the entire company is responsible for the customer satisfaction and customer outcomes,” Chadinha said.
There’s an interesting shift from investing in unified communications to contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, he said.
In addition, a surprising 72% of companies have already integrated some form of artificial intelligence (AI) into their communications, Chadinha said.
“That’s an incredible acceleration given that just a few years ago only 4% of CIOs had any form of AI in production for their entire organization,” he said.
The most used key performance indicator (KPI) over the last 12 months remained customer satisfaction.
“Going forward, we’re going to shift from reactive to proactive communication,” Chadinha said. “And to be able to do that, companies are recognizing that employees need access to the information immediately so they can provide the information, answer the question or engage a subject-matter expert as part of the first-call resolution.”
Also at Enterprise Connect, Talkdesk led a session stressing the importance of collaboration to solve customer problems faster, and drive customer retention and loyalty.
Taylor Grace is Talkdesk’s product marketing manager. She said allowing employees to easily connect and work together isn’t “really a nice-to-have anymore.”
“And for the companies to not only survive, but to grow in the coming years, an integration between the contact center and unified communication and collaboration (UCC) tools is what’s going to set you apart,” she said. “Everyone in the company contributes to the customer experience, and by bringing your tools together to bring people together, you ultimately are able to get your entire organization more engaged with the heart of your business, and that’s the customer that makes it possible.”
There are three key building blocks to fostering and employing collaboration for better customer experiences, Grace said. Those are:
Empowering your teams with the right apps to connect with teams across the organization.
Simplifying tools to lower barriers to cross-department collaboration and reduce costs.
Sharing customer insights across the entire organization.
“Agents today spend roughly 15% of their time just navigating the communication hurdles they face,” Grace said. “They are juggling on average six apps within a typical workday. This results in inefficiencies and redundancies in basic functions, and so the average time it takes an agent to ramp is about three and half weeks.”
Over the last year, IT teams in some cases set up dozens of new tools just to get their virtual teams up and running, she said.
“And now, IT leaders are taking a more strategic look into the tools that they have and are evaluating if there are any points of interoperability or opportunities to eliminate any redundancy,” Grace said.
Information from the contact center can transform an organization’s ability to innovate, meet customer expectations and provide great experiences, she said.
Kevin Pierson is Talkdesk‘s senior director of product management. He said bringing together collaboration and contact center tools presents an opportunity for simplification.
“It’s all about where the customer enters and exits the business, and how to make it a seamless conduit,” he said. “I would be inviting people to think about the idea that the products and tools that you used in the past were often reflected as a very robust tool, but what we hear a lot of times is that the tools were robust and had great features, but most of them were never really utilized.”
It’s all about creating a much simpler calling experience and going back to the essence of what a communication system was and always will be, and reducing the complexity and the unnecessary features, Pierson said.
“It’s an opportunity to simplify and consolidate tools “so we get better communication,” he said.
Call center leaders are trying to get more call center investment included in 2022 budgets.
Chris Sorensen is senior vice president of sales at Hiya. He led an Enterprise Connect session on increasing call center spending in 2022.
Hiya sells caller profile information to identify incoming calls and block suggested unwanted ones.
Sorensen said data is the biggest asset when making a compelling business case for additional budget.
“We need to make the case for increased investment to really drive the results that are meaningful for our business and for the outcomes that we look to see,” he said.
Sorensen outlined a three-stage process for driving investment in the contact center. Those include showing desired outcomes, showing the required investment and having surety in additional data.
“Often in many budget cycles, the request is to come in with what you’re asking for,” he said. “We think this needs to be turned around where you come in and say this is the outcome that you’re going to drive, and that’s the first and foremost thing that you present to your CFO or budgeting committee. We believe that by focusing your presentation at the start on the outcome, a couple of good things are going to come along for the ride. One, the positives of your case, what it is you’re going to deliver to the organization, will be played out before you start to discuss it. Additionally, you’re going to get that investment group, that CFO, sympathetic to your cause before they actually experience it. And the other thing is you’re going to actually then anchor everybody in the audience to the outcome numbers.”
Furthermore, you want to make that outcome highly strategic and measurable, Sorensen said.
“The contact center is poised to help us increase market share by X percent,” he said. “The contact center is well-positioned to help us increase customer acquisition by X percent. The contact center can drive and touch X percent of customers in 2022, ensuring that we’re talking to our customers and making it more difficult for our competition to do.”
The next step is showing the required investment, “bold results, bold investments,” Sorensen said.
“What you want to make sure that you do is tie that investment ask directly to the growth and the outcomes that you look to drive,” he said. “You want to be exceptionally clear. If your outcome is bold enough, if it’s big enough and strategic enough, the investment that you’re asking for can almost look trivial in exchange for what it’s going to bring to the company.”
The third stage is having additional data that no one else has, Sorensen said.
“We believe … the probability of a successful outcome increases when the availability, accuracy, relevancy and reliability of data that’s outside what you currently use can be applied to your model and the outcome you’ve projected,” he said.
Examples of third-party data include historical phone use data, phone reputation data, audience analysis and spoof analysis, Sorensen said.
Call center leaders are trying to get more call center investment included in 2022 budgets.
Chris Sorensen is senior vice president of sales at Hiya. He led an Enterprise Connect session on increasing call center spending in 2022.
Hiya sells caller profile information to identify incoming calls and block suggested unwanted ones.
Sorensen said data is the biggest asset when making a compelling business case for additional budget.
“We need to make the case for increased investment to really drive the results that are meaningful for our business and for the outcomes that we look to see,” he said.
Sorensen outlined a three-stage process for driving investment in the contact center. Those include showing desired outcomes, showing the required investment and having surety in additional data.
“Often in many budget cycles, the request is to come in with what you’re asking for,” he said. “We think this needs to be turned around where you come in and say this is the outcome that you’re going to drive, and that’s the first and foremost thing that you present to your CFO or budgeting committee. We believe that by focusing your presentation at the start on the outcome, a couple of good things are going to come along for the ride. One, the positives of your case, what it is you’re going to deliver to the organization, will be played out before you start to discuss it. Additionally, you’re going to get that investment group, that CFO, sympathetic to your cause before they actually experience it. And the other thing is you’re going to actually then anchor everybody in the audience to the outcome numbers.”
Furthermore, you want to make that outcome highly strategic and measurable, Sorensen said.
“The contact center is poised to help us increase market share by X percent,” he said. “The contact center is well-positioned to help us increase customer acquisition by X percent. The contact center can drive and touch X percent of customers in 2022, ensuring that we’re talking to our customers and making it more difficult for our competition to do.”
The next step is showing the required investment, “bold results, bold investments,” Sorensen said.
“What you want to make sure that you do is tie that investment ask directly to the growth and the outcomes that you look to drive,” he said. “You want to be exceptionally clear. If your outcome is bold enough, if it’s big enough and strategic enough, the investment that you’re asking for can almost look trivial in exchange for what it’s going to bring to the company.”
The third stage is having additional data that no one else has, Sorensen said.
“We believe … the probability of a successful outcome increases when the availability, accuracy, relevancy and reliability of data that’s outside what you currently use can be applied to your model and the outcome you’ve projected,” he said.
Examples of third-party data include historical phone use data, phone reputation data, audience analysis and spoof analysis, Sorensen said.
ENTERPRISE CONNECT — Employee experience is a growing priority amid organizations’ hybrid workforce transitions, and the right partners can help them in this effort.
That’s according to Adam Holtby, a principal analyst at Omdia. During day one of this week’s virtual Enterprise Connect, he led a session on enabling the future of hybrid work. He also disclosed insights and data from Omdia’s 2021 Future of Work survey. It highlights digital workplace objectives businesses must prioritize to improve employee experience and business results. (Omdia, Enterprise Connect and Channel Futures share a parent company, Informa.)
Omdia polled organizations globally for the survey.
Omdia’s Adam Holtby
“If we look at the data, 36% of employees are going to be primarily home- or remote-based with minimal time in the office going forward,” Holtby said. “Only 24% of employees are going to be permanently based in an office working at a dedicated desk, with 22% of employees embracing a more hybrid work style going forward. So if you think about hybrid work styles and those primarily home or remote-based work styles, that accounts for 58% of employees in total, which is a huge number. What organizations need to do now is focus less on work locations and more on building infrastructures, investing in capabilities that help them as a business support employees in working from whatever location they want to work from, and with limited compromises to security and employee productivity.”
Improving Employee Experience Presents Challenges
Getting employees the equipment they need and connected has been difficult, Holtby said. So provisioning and access will be important going forward.
“But more people-centric elements were found to be quite challenging for businesses, too,” Holtby said. “Namely, businesses found supporting employee well-being and ensuring that employees stay productive quite difficult. This ties into that whole employee experience focus that organizations are going to have going forward. It will be important to understand not just the work that people are doing, but how people feel about that work.”
Encouragingly, there are new technologies coming to market to help organizations better understand employee experience, he said.
There are three key elements that organizations need to understand in measuring and positively impacting employee experience, Holtby said. Those are technology experience, employee well-being and processes.
“Processes need to be optimized and automated where possible to deliver those positive employee experiences,” he said. “If processes are monolithic and work isn’t efficient … then people are going to feel bad about it ultimately.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more on Omdia’s future of work survey and other happenings at Enterprise Connect.
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