Some business leaders are still skeptical about remote working. Millions of businesses worldwide were forced to allow employees to work from home for the last couple of years, and they discovered many benefits. Employee satisfaction and productivity increased, but there were doubts about customer experience.
It is natural to assume that communication with customers will suffer if your team is not onsite. But it does not have to be this way. There are technological solutions to make sure that customers get the same great service wherever you work.
In this blog post we will show how the benefits of agile working do not need to come at the cost of customers. With the right tools, customer experience can be even better.
Unified Communications
Some businesses operate on multiple systems, and it can be hard to keep track without in-person contact with colleagues. This leads to remote workers feeling isolated.
iPECS ONE brings all your business communications into a single platform. This allows you to connect with colleagues, clients and customers on one system, accessible from anywhere. You can access calls, instant messaging, video conferencing and more at a single click.
This enables you to blend remote and in-person working seamlessly, which helps customers in many ways. If agents can access the information they need more efficiently, it becomes easy to deliver first-contact resolution. This means better service for your customers, and greater productivity for your business.
A new approach to video conferencing
Since the COVID-19 pandemic initiated, many businesses had to use video conferencing for the first time. It worked, but there were drawbacks. Meetings could be slow to start if somebody had to update or download the latest version. For internal meetings, this is inconvenient and inefficient. For communicating with customers, it is even more problematic.
WebRTC is the solution that makes this so much easier. It allows your team to use iPECS ONE on a web browser, with no downloads. All they need is a device and an internet connection, and they can access the full suite of communications tools. This makes the transition to agile working seamless. Instead of wasting time on downloads, updates, and IT problems, your team can focus on customers and the business.
Integrations
Technology is vital to successful agile working. This is especially true when it comes to maintaining customer relations. Even the suggestion of unprofessionalism is bad for business. To keep delivering, your team needs the same tools they have in the office.
iPECS ONE integrates with over 60 major CRMs, which means you can access your full system from anywhere, with no downloads. With inbound record population, customer details appear automatically when they call – including notes left by other staff. You can make and log calls with a single click. All of this makes customer interactions more efficient for you, and smoother for customers.
Call Recording
Call recording is well understood as a crucial part of managing customer relations. It helps with dispute resolution by giving all parties certainty about what was said and when. It is also important for training and monitoring. This is an important tool for remote workers too.
With iPECS ONE, call recording is simple. Wherever you are, you can access call logs and search by customer or user. It even allows random sampling, to help you manage quality assurance. This means that you can ensure that your team is giving the best possible service and assist any agents who are struggling.
Analytics
Some managers feel that remote work makes it harder to keep track of their team. Without the right tools, this is likely to be true. Assigning and monitoring tasks is not easy if you cannot see what people are doing. If workflow is not managed well, everyday tasks become inefficient. Some people are doing too much, others are not doing enough, and ultimately customers will get a poorer service.
This is why analytics is so important. iPECS offers analytics tools that offer rich insights into your business, allowing you to make informed decisions about how you manage your team and their work. You can view KPIs on an individual, departmental or enterprise-wide basis, enhancing your understanding of the business. You can identify strengths and areas for improvement immediately, analyzing and managing workflows according to your needs.
This is not simply a substitute for managing a team in the office – it is an improvement on it. You can use these tools to manage call volumes, and enhance the efficiency of everything you do. The knock-on effect for customers is significant. If you can offer them more service in less time, they will notice.
The next steps
Flexible working is here to stay. It presents dilemmas to businesses, but iPECS presents solutions. There is simply no need to be held back by technological limitations. You can offer the same great service, and even improve what you do with the right tools. In a few simple steps, your business can be agile enough to offer great customer experience anywhere, any time.
iPECS provides a full range of leading-edge communication tools for businesses of all sizes and sectors. This includes UC platforms, integrations, hardware and more. Like you, we place the customer at the heart of everything we do. If you want to make agile working easy, speak to your nearest Ericsson-LG Enterprise Global Partner.
