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working from home

Business intelligence to support a post-pandemic mindset

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The ‘management versus employee’ battle on WFH continues – but have managers recognised why hybrid working has become such a problem?  Without face-to-face interaction, remote workers have far less trust in the information provided by distant colleagues – or distant business partners/ suppliers/ customers.  And that is leading to a breakdown in relationships across the board.

Furthermore, the pandemic has exacerbated differences in working attitudes: for every ambitious individual wanting to make a fast impact on the business before moving on to the next challenge, there is another taking the quiet quitting approach, coasting along doing just enough to get by.  How do the former engage the latter or monitor their progress to ensure key tasks are done – especially when they have zero trust in the business information currently available? The stand-off will be both inevitable and painful – especially given the continued challenge to recruit talent.

Peter Ruffley, CEO of Zizo, discusses how fast analytics projects that deliver rapid business insight are now urgently required to rebuild trust – and not just in data.

Lost Trust

Hybrid working has thrown up many operational challenges for businesses but one of the biggest issues – and one that is radically undermining business performance – is an endemic lack of trust associated with remote employees. Without face-to-face contact, companies are discovering that individuals simply do not have the same level of faith in the information presented. Untrusted information has zero value to any business.

Individuals instinctively trust information more when colleagues are physically present to support and field questions about it, but not so much when those same colleagues are remote. Information shared in a meeting room has far more credibility than screen shares on Zoom. And that is creating real problems – undermining relationships between colleagues and raising questions of trust between business partners.

How can businesses monitor and manage business relationships if they cannot trust the, typically outdated, performance information being provided? How can managers inspire less engaged colleagues to perform if most of the discussion is an argument about data accuracy? Resentment is building – and the hybrid working problem is far deeper than debates about the number of mandated days in the office.

Given the escalating economic challenges faced globally and the associated need to be far more agile and responsive, no company can afford to be hamstrung by this lack of trust, the business implications could be devastating.

Information Frustration

This issue is particularly painful for those organisations still struggling with weekly and monthly reporting cycles. The less they trust the information presented, the more individuals are demanding it. They want more information, with greater frequency and significantly improved business relevance. The need for data they can use, rapidly, to achieve measurable improvements, is clear.

Individuals are also frustrated that businesses cannot provide the same level of information available as standard within the online consumer market. If an eCommerce provider can show complete order history at any time, with the option to drill down for all the detail, why should the working environment be any different? Why are managers compelled to wait weeks for summary information that, more often than not, fails to provide the insight they require?

Of course, the demand for fast access to trusted information is nothing new. What has changed is the attitude and expectation.  Ambitious individuals want to make their mark quickly.  They don’t want to be constrained by limited access to untrusted data that will inevitably delay the essential improvements in process or customer experience: how would that look on the CV? Plus, of course, every business needs quick wins and a way to achieve incremental digital transformation – and that means taking a very different approach to data analytics projects.

Instant Analytics

The new mantra is not just fast change and confidence in tangible deliverables but: can this be done now? ‘Is the data in place to support this objective?’ is the most important question to ask – and answer. This model is nothing like the ‘build it and they will come’ approach of data warehouse projects that spent years collating data resources before the business even had a chance to verify the relevance of what was being collected, let alone determine whether the information could support business change. Instant data analytics projects must be able to answer the data question within days, assessing whether the data is of high enough quality and completeness to answer the business question.

Any instant analytics project starts with the first step in the data lifecycle (collect, combine, context, change) to determine what information is in place today, what valuable insight can be immediately leveraged and whether that supports the outlined priority business goal. If not – the project can be immediately reviewed, and steps put in place to collect the right data. Cost and time have been minimal and essential knowledge has been gained about the existing data. On paper, a fast fail is also a success, because it is a win to identify the business processes not in place to achieve the outlined goals, as the business can now begin to collect the required information resources.

If the data is already collected it can be the foundation to rapidly achieve the desired goal, combining sources and adding context to unlock essential insight. Critically, this is an iterative process that builds incremental value: a project should deliver within three months and provide a platform for the next iteration.

Business Driven

The other fundamental change is that instant data analytics projects are business, not IT-driven. A business user understands the relevant data – and how it can drive change. A successful instant analytics project is about identifying a process that can be digitally transformed very quickly to deliver quantifiable value to the business, or utilising data to win more customers – and engaging with individuals across the business to ensure this is a fixable problem.

For example, a traditional project would have focused on improving the performance of the entire production line – taking years to achieve any change. An instant data analytics project, in contrast, looks for a very quick win – for example by moving a test process from the end of the production line to immediately after the stage when the failure could happen. This highlights any problems as they occur, allowing immediate remediation and response. The result is a small, fast win that builds confidence in data and encourages further incremental development at other stages of the process.

Plus of course, the process transforms trust – trust in data, colleagues and business partners. Whether it is providing a supplier with on-demand access to a KPI dashboard, allowing the company to click through for detailed information or giving managers immediate access to sales information, rather than waiting for the weekly spreadsheet debate, small, business-driven information wins create a step change in data perception and trust.

Conclusion

Businesses are rapidly recognising the implications of the loss of trust. The breakdown in relationships between colleagues and business partners is not just due to the lack of face-to-face interaction but the implicit concerns regarding the information they are sharing. Without immediate, accurate data insights that are trusted by everybody, how will any business respond with the speed and confidence required to succeed in the current economic environment?

UK businesses experience up to five security incidents each year

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Attackers are seizing on vulnerabilities in hybrid working environments, creating more work – and also larger budgets – for security teams, despite organisations accelerating digital transformation projects.

The latest State of Security Report from Infblox, which surveyed 100 UK respondents in IT and cybersecurity roles in the UK as part of its global sample, discovered that the recent surge in remote work has changed the corporate landscape significantly.

In fact 64% of UK organisations have accelerated digital transformation projects in order to support remote workers since 2020. This is higher than the global (52%) average.  

  As part of this shift just under half (49%) of organisations have increased customer portal support for remote engagement and 43% have added resources to their networks and data basis. Given that over a third (34%) have close their physical offices for good, this investment may prove to be a strong strategic move.  

Cybersecurity still causing headaches   

An increased digital footprint inevitably brings increased digital risk and the reality of a hybrid workforce is causing headaches for IT teams and business leaders. The data reveals that the loss of direct security controls and network visibility has half (50%) of UK companies more concerned about data leakage than anything else. Almost as many (45%) are worried remote worker connections will come under attack.    

It appears that organisations have good reason to worry, given the report found that 61% experienced up to five security incidents in the last year. However, there is some good news: 66% report that these incidents did not result in a breach. This may be because 73% were able to detect and respond to a security incident within 24 hours.   

Of the 44% reporting a breach, insecure WiFi access (47%) was the biggest cause. The data also suggests that UK workers are continuing to fall for phishing scams. In fact 4 in 5 (82%) breaches reported in the last 12 months were caused by this attack method. Phishing usually signals the need for or failure of employee and customer security awareness training that require technological backstops  

Defense in depth   

Infoblox’s report discovered that the majority of organisations are investing heavily in security tools to protect their hybrid environments. In fact, 59% of respondents saw bigger budgets in 2021 and 64% anticipate an increase in 2022.   

Many are turning to defense-in-depth strategies, using everything from data encryption and network security to cloud access security brokers and threat intelligence services to defend their expanded attack surface. As part of this, almost half of organisations (47%) are relying on DNS (Domain Name System) to block back traffic.    

“The pandemic shutdowns over the past two years have reshaped how companies around the world operate,” said Anthony James, VP of Product Marketing at Infoblox. “Cloud-first networks and corresponding security controls went from nice-to-have features to business mainstays as organisations sent office workers to work from home. To address the spike in cyberattacks, security teams are turning to DNS security and zero trust models like SASE for a more proactive approach to protecting corporate data and remote devices.”  

The full report is available for download here.  

Technology ‘increases employee inclusion’ in hybrid work

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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In a world where 60% of employees say a hybrid work model is their ideal work arrangement, only three in ten (30%) strongly agree that their organisation provides them with the necessary technology to collaborate equally and inclusively from anywhere.

That’s according to Jabra’s 2022 edition of the Hybrid Ways of Working Global Report, carried out amongst 2,800 knowledge workers across six countries worldwide to understand the employee sentiments and motivations in this hybrid working era.

The future of work is virtual-first. With hundreds of millions of people collaborating on Teams, Zoom, and other unified communications platforms every day, these digital environments are the new standard for how we connect to one another. In fact, many employees have only ever met some of their colleagues on these platforms. Because of this, it is critical that leaders do all they can to get the most out of the virtual workspace, so employees can create more human and authentic relationships with their colleagues.

Professional audio technology impacts meeting inclusivity

Jabra’s research found that users of professional audio devices reported feeling more included in virtual meetings than those using either consumer audio devices or the microphones and speakers built into their laptops. In fact, users of professional headsets globally were 11% less likely to feel left out of the conversation in virtual meetings than consumer device or built-in audio users. Similarly, professional headset users were 14% less likely to report not being able to hear what’s being said in the meeting than built-in users and 12% less likely than consumer device users.

At present, only 29% of workers are using professional audio devices. As 87% of all meetings are either fully virtual or hybrid, with only 13% happening fully in person, it’s crucial that employees are able to make the most of them with purpose-built technologies. A lack of proper technology may make relationship-building in these virtual environments more tenuous and difficult than it needs to be.

Organisations that prioritise meeting equity have higher hybrid meeting engagement

Since the start of the pandemic and alongside the rise of hybrid work, the term “meeting equity” has entered the discussion to explore how organisations can create equitable virtual environments. In a traditional meeting room, every meeting participant has a place at the table and has equal opportunity to contribute to the meeting. However, a hybrid meeting setting consists of both physical and virtual meeting participants, so true meeting equity becomes harder to achieve.

Luckily, the research finds that organisations that take active steps towards achieving greater meeting equity are likely to increase engagement in hybrid meetings. In fact, 48% of hybrid workers say that their organisation priorities meeting equity, resulting in 53% saying they’re just as engaged in hybrid meetings as face-to-face meetings. This is compared to only 34% of full-time in-office workers who say that their level of engagement in hybrid meetings matches that of face-to-face meetings; amongst in-office workers, 32% feel their organisation prioritises meeting equity. Leaders need to take decisive steps to address meeting equity, regardless of the primary type of work model their organisation practices.

Video increases inclusion and productivity in virtual environments

Roughly half of all employees (49%) consider their office to be their laptop, headset, and wherever they can get a strong internet connection. But the research found a key location-agnostic way to impact an employees’ wellbeing and productivity levels: video. Sixty-two percent of employees say they feel more included and present in meetings when everyone attending has their camera turned on.

Similarly, 53% feel they can collaborate more productively on video calls than on audio-only calls. This is likely why 68% of employees say that standardised professional video cameras would help everyone participate equally in hybrid meetings. Moving forward, leaders have an urgent need to look into the best technology to inclusively connect all employees and business partners no matter where they’re working. This will be an essential part of achieving greater meeting equity and succeeding in the hybrid future.

Holger Reisinger, SVP at Jabra, said: “The way we work has changed forever and the current state of knowledge work requires access to digital platforms and technologies to be successful. As such, leaders need to prioritise the employee experience and ensure that they can thrive in virtual meetings regardless of location. It starts with identifying technologies that will enable both in-office and remote employees to collaborate on an equal playing field, so employees can seamlessly move between these places without feeling left out, unheard, or distracted. Only then will employees truly be able to work a flexible arrangement on their own terms and have a stronger emotional connection to both their digital and physical workspace.”

To download a copy of the full research report, visit: https://www.jabra.co.uk/hybridwork/2022

Remote working has affected employers support the health and wellbeing of staff

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Fifty-nine per cent of employers say that the change in working patterns to a more remote or hybrid approach has affected the way they support the health and wellbeing of staff, according to research from GRiD, the industry body for the group risk protection sector.

Of those employers who stated that working patterns had affected the way they support the health and wellbeing of staff:

  • 49% said they have made it easier for staff to access support and benefits remotely e.g. via apps and online
  • 43% said they have introduced benefits to support employees in this new way of working e.g. for their mental and physical health
  • 38% said that they have increased support that can be accessed remotely e.g. virtual GPs and virtual physio

Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD said: “Employee benefits providers and, in particular, those that offer health and wellbeing support, were really swift to respond to the challenges presented by the pandemic. The pace of change has been breath-taking.

“We are now in a situation where many employee benefits, including embedded support within employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness, have improved in two distinct ways. The method of delivery has been expanded to include additional digital channels to meet the support requirements of employees, no matter where or when they need it. Secondly, the type of support has also broadened: for instance through the likes of online physiotherapy, nutrition and fitness advice; meditation and mindfulness apps; computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT); and access to virtual GPs and nurse practitioners. Some had been available previously, but have now become much more mainstream.”

Given that so much has changed, GRiD believes that employers would be prudent to benchmark their wellbeing provision against current support available and make sure they keep pace with developments, especially in supporting a hybrid workforce.

Moxham continued: “Employers may be under the illusion that they offer really innovative wellbeing support but they may be surprised just how much things have moved on if it hasn’t been reviewed for a number of years. The repercussions of the pandemic are very much still in evidence and employers have a duty to ensure they are providing the very best wellbeing support available.”

How can working from home impact your customers?

 960 640 Guest Post
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Many employees across the country are now working from home, and have been for some time. Transitioning from office to home on the face of it seems like a straight forward task of moving hardware when in fact what we’ve learnt over the passed year is that- one of the biggest mistake’s companies have made is thinking that is actually this straight forward.

Here’s some helpful tips to optimise your home working..

  • Communication

The biggest challenge companies have faced during the pandemic is optimising and directing the flow of information. No longer can you pop over to someone’s desk, organise a quick meeting or even overhearing some cross chatter which may be pertinent to you.

Take Notes: In a situation where people may not be online but would benefit from the information, take notes, write down updates in clear documents so that you can send/e-mail or pass over to whoever takes on the next shift.

Be Present: During meetings of chatter in the office, it’s easy to drift from one conversation to another whilst working.

  • Transparency

Having a clear understanding of workflow when changes occur is vital, again this is a lot easier in an office when you’re 2 feet away from each other but understanding a clear and efficient workflow is key to taking care of your customers.

The On Call Rota System by Ctalk allows you to create templates and rotas which are simple and easy to use. The rota can be changed when needed and send out notifications to your employees to remind them of work patterns.

  • Taking care of yourself

At first, working from home appeared to give more freedom and autonomy, however it can leave some feeling isolated from their peers. Regular exercise, communication and proactiveness can help and so can looking out for your colleagues. A quick call or message can do wonders for many and keep the flow of communication working.

https://www.oncallrota.co.uk/

10 Free Contact Centre Homeworking Technology Health Checks To Be Won

 960 640 Guest Post
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What’s been your biggest contact centre work-from-home (WFH) technology challenge during lockdown?   

For many organisations, it’s been getting homeworkers connected to office comms and data systems. For others, it’s been data security and compliance.  Other common technology challenges have involved recruitment and on-boarding, resource scheduling, communications and general management.

What organisations have rapidly discovered is that what works in the office doesn’t necessarily do so for homeworkers.  Many popular workforce scheduling packages, for example, don’t support homeworker shift self-scheduling, an essential ingredient in successful homeworking for large contact centre and back office teams. 

Many industry-leading communication/collaboration solutions too, while ideal for the office, are not effective at supporting WFH workflows, while their UI/UX constraints create challenges that can actually fragment a hybrid workplace.  What’s required for WFH are comms solutions that give everyone equal information, attention and care…so all work colleagues are together as equal ‘citizens’, keeping them informed, coordinated and synchronised. Not fulfilling these needs can degrade CX, and worse, damage employee well-being. 

Are you interested in a free Contact Centre Homeworking Technology Health Check?  Sensee’s consultants have over 16 years experience in setting up WFH operations and will provide a free 2 hour consultation to the first 10 organisations to apply for a free homeworking health check.  Just email us at marketing@sensee.co.uk to apply.

www.sensee.co.uk

Bot Revolution to Permanent WFH: What 2021 Has in Store for CX

 960 640 Guest Post
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By Content Guru

In the contact centre industry, looking backwards can often give us a clear indicator of what lies ahead. 2020 brought with it both personal and professional challenges no one could have predicted. However, the coronavirus crisis marked a clear turning point for the contact centre – one that has laid the foundations for further changes on the horizon.

Indeed, many of the tools, technologies and techniques that enabled the sector to navigate the pandemic – through lockdowns, infection scares and financial concerns – have put the contact centre on a course of continuing innovation and disruption for the decade ahead.

Let’s take a look at some of the emergent factors set to fuel the contact centre of the future.

Flexible Working Becomes the New Norm

At the start of 2020, contact centres that had already adopted modern cloud technologies were able to pivot in a matter of days to successfully implement new distributed working models. Enabling agents to work securely and compliantly from home, even when handling payments, was just the start. Organisations have also used their contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions to manage everything from workforce performance and wellbeing, to delivering support and training tailored exactly to the real-time needs of individual agents.

For many, the remote and hybrid models implemented in 2020 will determine how they resource contact centre operations in the future. This will usher in an era, in which agents will have more flexible working options, and organisations will be able to access greater operational agility, essential for coping with evolving market demands.

Working Smarter – with Greater Granular Control

Intelligent automation and smart scheduling tools have certainly proved their worth as contact centres strived to optimise resource utilisation in the context of agent availability. Indeed, today’s AI powered Workforce Optimisation (WFO) has proved highly effective at ensuring schedules are kept at peak efficiency, while giving agents maximum control over the hours they want to work.

Alongside automated services, intelligent routing, and real-time reporting, today’s CCaaS solutions make it possible to ensure that agents are always presented with a familiar desktop – complete with the call recording facilities and integrated information databases they needed to perform – regardless of their location.

Some organisations have even taken advantage of their integrated CCaaS and unified communications environment to garner feedback from agents at the drop of a hat via virtual quality improvement ‘huddles’. Using these insights, contact centre leaders are able to tweak workflows to improve how agents interact with calls, or the information systems they depend on to serve customers.

The Rise of the Bot – Delivering CX with a Human Touch

Having found themselves at times wholly dependent on digital and remote services to undertake everyday life tasks, consumers will increasingly expect to encounter streamlined experiences, no matter which channel they choose to interact with brands over.

While AI, chatbots, smart speakers and virtual assistants aren’t new, the rapid expansion of digital channels during the pandemic saw more contact centres adopting such technologies to cut response times and sustain the mass delivery of high-quality personalised customer experiences.

Capable of sustaining humanised two-way conversations and even detecting a caller’s current mood, AI assistants are fast becoming mainstream in digital channels. In time, expect the role of contact centre agents to evolve, as they increasingly work in collaboration with these technologies to deliver efficient customer experiences with a human touch.

The last 12 months have presented contact centres with an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate digital transformation. In the coming years, they will continue to evolve into value-driven customer engagement hubs capable of orchestrating end-to-end, intuitive customer experiences across every channel.

Keep up with customer expectations. Enhance your CX today: https://bit.ly/37DMdJ3

Working from Home: How Blurred Boundaries Affect the Contact Center

 960 640 Adam Aftergut
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Part three of a three-part series by Adam Aftergut, Product Marketing Manager at NICE, on the root causes of work-from-home challenges faced by contact center agents and their employers…

As we detailed earlier in this series on work-from-home challenges, changing boundaries are having an impact on staffing and performance in the contact center. In addition to a new separation between the employee and the workplace, there’s also a blurring of boundaries in the employee’s workday: With many agents now working from home, the boundaries between work and home life have gotten a lot fuzzier.

While many agents enjoy the ability to work from home, it nevertheless creates new challenges. Living spaces have been converted into makeshift offices and interruptions are unavoidable, making it difficult or impossible to truly focus. Over time, distractions and a lack of structure can affect productivity – in fact, 78% of business leaders think hybrid and home-working models have a negative impact on productivity. Over the long term, a lack of boundaries can hamper work-life balance and ultimately also increase burnout, which has a detrimental effect on employee engagement.

Overcoming the challenges this blurring of boundaries causes for agents also overcomes them for the contact center, and vice versa, ensuring that operations run smoothly. Here’s how.

Employers need staffing agility; employees need flexibility

With many families working and learning from home simultaneously, call volumes are less predictable and don’t conform to previous contact patterns, which means that employers need to be very agile in their workforce management capabilities, tools and policies. At the same time, agents working from home need greater scheduling flexibility to deal with unexpected interruptions and obligations in the home environment – but they can also have an easier time pivoting from free time to work time in order to cover unconventional shifts. A failure to recognize these changes runs the risk of greater staffing gaps for the operation and increased employee frustration.

How technology can help you solve this challenge: Contact center leaders can leverage Intelligent Intraday Automation® for more elastic staffing. A solution that continuously analyzes fluctuating staffing needs, identifies shift change opportunities and communicates them to agents can help contact centers prevent overstaffing and understaffing. The agent can interact with such a solution in multiple ways, including through a portal for automated self-service schedule changes and automated “push” offers of preapproved schedule change opportunities sent via text message, email, in-app messaging or displayed as alert popups on the agent’s desktop.   

Employers need occupancy; employees need to avoid distractions and interruptions

Contact centers need to maintain occupancy levels, a key metric that shows the percentage of time employees are occupied, performing call center activities.  However, remote employees are more easily interrupted or distracted at home.

A University of California Irvine study found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to a task following an interruption. This means that home-office distractions can lead to lower agent productivity, effectiveness and service quality. Agents are then unable to meet performance goals, and customer experience suffers.

How technology can help you solve this challenge: Automated KPI-based notifications alert supervisors and agents via text, email, in-app notifications or desktop alert popups when the team or individual agents have hit occupancy and other key goals – regardless of where employees are working from. Alerts and calls-to-action can be used to notify agents that they’re overrunning scheduled activities or have an upcoming event, prompt agents to switch tasks (which can improve focus while adjusting occupancy) and more.

In addition, automated self-scheduling for agents enables employees to achieve unique schedule adjustments that reduce the disruptions inherent in a work-from-home routine, while still ensuring net staffing. One such example of this is NICE Employee Engagement Manager’s (EEM’s) automated self-swap functionality. Rather than having to work through a distraction, such as a repairman working in the home or a child practicing piano, the agent can simply use a preapproved self-swap to move his or her hours around rather than having to take time off or reduce the number of hours they’re scheduled to work.

Employers need consistent team performance; employees need work-life balance

For effective customer service, contact centers need to ensure that their frontline teams operate with consistency and reliability, especially during times of instability. Supervisors and workforce management personnel need to be able to quickly communicate with agents and depend on their commitments. However, when agents feel overworked and overburdened due to a blurring of the lines between their personal and professional lives – and studies have found that the average workday has increased by 48.5 minutes since the widespread move to remote work – burnout sets in and customer service suffers. Unfortunately, just one in three employees say their employers have increased flexibility in recent months to deal with burnout, according to an Eagle Hill Consulting survey.

How technology can help you solve this challenge: Burnout soars when agents have many consecutive days of intense work without breaks or are unable to manage their work-life balance and find themselves pulled into work frequently. Automated self-scheduling, including adjustments like automated shift trades, can help. If opportunities for voluntary time off (VTO), paid time off (PTO) and self-swaps – which are preapproved based on the contact center’s needs – are unavailable in EEM,  there is still the possibility of automated shift trades, which have a neutral impact on net staffing. EEM thus provides a multilayered set of options for agents to achieve work-life balance through highly flexible and patented self-scheduling capabilities while optimizing net staffing.

In addition, communication controls help agents set boundaries between their personal and professional lives to ensure that work does not encroach. Agents can select days and times they can be contacted with scheduling offers, performance notifications and the like. They can choose both when they are willing to be contacted while “off the clock” and how (e.g., email or text message, in addition to in-app messaging and alert popups). If an agent feels the need to completely disconnect from work in order to refresh, EEM’s communications can be silenced during personal time.

Different perspectives, common solutions

With workday boundaries blurred and personal and work responsibilities increasingly intermingled, achieving both productivity and work-life balance can feel like an obstacle course each day. Over time,  the cumulative effects of work repeatedly encroaching on an agent’s personal life can cause burnout. Giving employees a sense of control with automated self-service scheduling increases their satisfaction, and doing so with an intelligent solution ensures alignment with the contact center’s operational needs to consistently improve both day-to-day and long-term operational results.

NICE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM), a key component of the NICE Intelligent WFM Suite, enables contact centers to preserve work-life boundaries in a remote employee’s workday while meeting the needs of the contact center.  The broad capabilities of EEM’s intelligent automation engine not only improve staffing levels intraday and near-term but also drive a wide variety of employee actions for improved performance. Learn more about how EEM helps contact center teams adapt to changing boundaries in the work-from-home environment.

For a more complete understanding of the work-from-home challenges faced by the contact center, see the previous two installments in this series here and here.

Do you need help in generating more efficient schedules and automating the challenge of optimizing your net staffing?

Download our complimentary eBook:  Intelligent Automation and Simulation in WFM for Dummies. 

This book will help you understand how using machine learning based simulation can help create schedules based on true multi-skill efficiencies based on ACD routing rules and skills not just static percentages. It will also help you see how you can automatically and proactively create offers for voluntary time off and overtime based on skills to the exact right agents, thus solving the age-old issue of net staffing optimization.

eBook: Why a Distributed Workforce Wreaks Havoc on Your Business (and what you can do about it)

 549 366 Empirix
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For the first time in recent history, there are more people working remotely than in corporate offices. This shift has substantially changed network traffic patterns for millions of businesses worldwide, creating capacity and reliability issues with firewalls, VPNs, SBCs, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). 

With 92% of the virtual workforce expecting to work from home indefinitely, companies must put a long-term strategy in place for testing and monitoring remote worker technology failures to prevent broader impacts to the business. 

Empirix, the gold standard of contact center and enterprise IT test automation, has developed this eBook titled, Why a Distributed Workforce Wreaks Havoc on Your Business (and what you can do about it). The ebook highlights the 12 most important, actionable steps that contact center operations and IT teams can take to detect and prevent such failures. 

Click here to download the eBook today!

Working from home: How separation affects the contact center

 960 640 Adam Aftergut
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By Adam Aftergut, Product Marketing Manager, NICE

Part two in a three-part series on the root causes of work-from-home challenges faced by contact center agents and their employers…

As we noted in the first essay in this series on work-from-home challenges, fundamentally changing boundaries are having an impact on staffing and performance in the contact center. The most obvious and inherent shift is the physical separation between employees and their workplace in remote work models. In the contact center, that separation has created challenges that may seem unrelated upon first blush but are in all actuality two sides of the same coin.

While many employees view working from home as a perk, remote work nonetheless brings with it some operational challenges that weren’t present in the brick-and-mortar workplace. Remote agents often have less visibility into scheduling and performance as well as fewer opportunities for in-person recognition and professional development. These issues, in turn, translate directly into business challenges for their employer, with a direct effect on service levels, customer experience and efficiency.

Overcoming work-from-home challenges for agents also resolves them for the contact center, and vice versa, enabling seamless operation regardless of the distance between them. The following three critical work-from-home challenges are inextricably linked to the physical separation between the employee and their workplace.

Employees need schedule visibility; employers need agents to be reachable.

Many remote workers lack mobile access to their schedules, which leads to tardiness and more missed shifts, lowering adherence and increasing staffing variances. Moreover, the lack of remote agent views of schedule change opportunities (e.g., Extra Hours or Voluntary Time Off) impedes the resolution of intraday staffing variances.

In addition, in the fast-moving contact center, the surroundings and tempo keep employees on task, aware of the general arc of the day and in close touch with supervisors who can intervene or provide a gentle nudge as necessary. These cues help agents know where they need to be, whether they’re late, what events are upcoming and whether they should move to a new activity, among other things.

How technology can help you solve this challenge:  A scheduling portal for automated self-service in a native mobile app or web-based application allows agents to access and update their schedules while remote. The portal’s intelligent automation technology also enables preapproved schedule change opportunities, giving agents unmatched transparency of their scheduling options and enabling instant changes by agents, all while ensuring that staffing needs are met. Automated push offers of schedule change opportunities also help supervisors ensure staffing optimization for contact center operations.

Employees need personalized recognition; employers need teams that are motivated.

The nature of work-from-home arrangements eliminates informal opportunities to connect with and motivate teams. When workers are remote, it is also harder to quickly recognize top performers and reward effective practices in real time. In fact, a Gallup poll found that three quarters of employees did not receive recognition or praise for doing good work in the last week, leading to lower quality and higher absenteeism.

The motivational challenge for contact centers in remote work environments is two-fold: identifying and rewarding high performers. Personalized and instant recognition of their progress, and rewards for their successes, help agents feel they are on a path toward definite goals. When employees are working on site, supervisors can easily share praise or set up a brief ad-hoc meeting during in-office hours. Agents, for their part, can shadow or receive on-the-fly input from co-workers. Other types of recognition for performance, such as preferential scheduling options, are dependent on being able to inform the agent in a timely manner.

How technology can help you solve this challenge: Automated KPI-based notifications alert supervisors or agents when the team or individual agents have hit key performance goals, such as a daily adherence target. These notifications provide instant recognition for agents and contact center teams when their performance is noteworthy, providing motivation, recognition and reinforcement. In addition, they can move agents through a multi-step progression of goals. By helping supervisors see who is performing well in the moment, they also shed a light into best practices.

Employers need to provide development opportunities; employees need self-improvement options.

In the remote workplace, employees can be harder to coach or train due to the lack of in-person guidance and timely feedback, including indications of the impact of coaching sessions. Supervisors who wish to promote self-directed corrective measures in response to negative KPI trends are faced with the challenge of notifying agents working from home promptly. As a result, performance improvements take longer and occur in less significant increments.

In addition, agents working remotely who wish to manage their own professional self-improvement are often limited in their options to receive the best information on their performance. This may be due to poor remote access or visibility, a dependence on supervisors or a lack of real-time data.

How technology can help you solve this challenge: Agents receive timely, targeted and personalized alerts of KPI trends via native mobile and web-based applications as well as via automated emailing and text messaging, identifying areas for improvement before CSAT takes a hit.  These KPI alerts can also account for correlated KPI trends, such as a spike in average handle time preceding a drop in service levels. Supervisors are also automatically informed of an agent’s metrics – if intervention is needed, the focus of improvement efforts is clear and transparent to both the agent and the supervisor.

Different perspectives, common solutions.

Each of the work-from-home challenges caused by physical separation can be viewed from two perspectives – that of the employer and that of the employee. However, if you solve the challenge for one stakeholder, then you’ve often also solved it for the other.

NICE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM), a key component of the NICE Intelligent WFM Suite, enables contact centers to bridge the gap between remote employee and workplace. The broad capabilities of EEM’s intelligent automation engine not only improve staffing levels intraday and near-term, but also drive a wide variety of employee actions for improved performance.

Learn more about how EEM helps contact center teams adapt to changing boundaries in the work-from-home environment.

The next installment in this series on work-from-home challenges takes a deeper look at another way in which professional boundaries are changing – the blurring of the distinction between work and home.

Do you need help in generating more efficient schedules and automating the challenge of optimizing your net staffing?

Download our complimentary eBook:  Intelligent Automation and Simulation in WFM for Dummies.

This book will help you understand how using machine learning based simulation can help create schedules based on true multi-skill efficiencies based on ACD routing rules and skills not just static percentages. It will also help you see how you can automatically and proactively create offers for voluntary time off and overtime based on skills to the exact right agents, thus solving the age-old issue of net staffing optimization.

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