It’s Hot And Hybrid
Customers want hybrid CX solutions, employees want a hybrid work model, and the industry leaders are reeling with a slew of challenges.
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The traditional nine to five model might as well be dead, and it’s about time.
Feeding the baby while making a work call, having a meal while analysing data, or filing a story while waiting for your child in school
parking, remote and hybrid working has increased employee experience and work-life balance. Despite an afternoon nap, an hour at the gym, or spending time with family, the new way of working has increased productivity, and several surveys and studies support it (we’ll get to that in a bit). Meanwhile, would a customer want to have a phone conversation about order information or prefer to send a text and get an instant reply? The latter, of course. Customers are going hybrid too, and marketing teams are devising innovative strategies that align with the new customer behaviour. Unless the problem is complicated, customers want quick and seamless support and product experience without talking to live agents. Marketing teams realise that hybrid marketing is here to stay.
Research revealed that 61 per cent of organisations plan to permanently add a hybrid work model to their business operation strategy. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Shopify, Twitter, and Slack have already adopted fully remote or hybrid work models. In the new normal, industry leaders are reeling from a slew of challenges.
Tech need for hybrid efficiency
One size doesn’t fit all approach is now valid for employees.
While a PwC study revealed that both executives and employers agree that the future of work is a hybrid of remote and in-person assignments, employers are looking to find the sweet spot between employee well-being and work efficiency.
Several employers stated that they need to double down on investments in technological tools and resources that can help maintain hybrid models. An Accenture study also revealed that productivity could be satisfactory only when the right resources are handy.
If only Google Meet could automatically transcribe meetings and Spaces could summarise conversations, wouldn’t it make remote and hybrid work life more manageable? It absolutely can. Google recently rolled out updates to its productivity tools suite to capitalise on the future of work.
To help avoid the can-you-hear-me and am-I-visible time loops, Google Meet is debuting portrait light, portrait restore, and a de-reverberation option to help people look and sound good on Google Meet. Google Workspace includes features to keep up with interactions, quickly get meeting notes, and better represent themselves on video calls.
CX platform Talkdesk launched Talkdesk Feedback and Talkdesk Performance Management to its workforce engagement and analytics solutions suites. The solutions enrich the Talkdesk CX Cloud platform by working seamlessly with CX analytics, including comprehensive real-time and historical reporting and AI-automated quality management. LifeSearch, UK’s life insurance broker, chose Talkdesk as its contact centre solution provider.
Talkdesk Virtual Agent can streamline workflows and improve routing efficiencies as LifeSearch blends inbound and outbound activities for a seamless customer journey. Its AI-powered features, the company claims, offer real-time coaching opportunities to help live agents make customers feel supported by a trusted adviser.
Even Zendesk recently announced a new employee experience offering to help companies transform internal operations and create a hybrid work experience. Other platforms such as Genesys BeyondCX, Salesforce Trailhead, ClickUp, Slingshot, Range.co, and Infragistics also help provide hybrid model solutions and ensure a smooth transition.
One of the best ways to successfully implement hybrid work is to manage supply and demand better. Dynamic occupancy management is vital to avoid unnecessary challenges. With the available technology today, avoiding manual workload in coordination and strong peaks and gaps in workplace occupancy is possible. Mapiq is an office platform that includes several tools to make hybrid working models easier to deal with. Here are some of the most effective tools.
Office capacity calculator: With smart office technology, employers can determine the optimum office capacity on any particular day.
Desk booking: Having an app or software to allow employees to book or cancel their in-office shifts can help manage space efficiently.
Social connector: Using applications to book virtual or in-person meetings can help avoid a half-show meeting.
Colleague finding: With a colleague finder software, one can locate the location of a colleague anywhere.
Office heatmaps: This tool can help an employee figure out the busiest areas within the office and find a more quiet and better place to work.
Over 91 per cent of employers find remote working more productive, but cooperation remains a challenge. Developers are also struggling to maintain collaboration with their teams, affecting the overall productivity. Having the right tools to promote collaboration and interaction for remote employees can be part of a well-defined organisational vision.
GitLab created an all-remote handbook and discussed proximity bias’s danger you cope with it. The best way to fight it is to ensure synchronised communication for the distributed teams.
Additionally, one centralised location for developers to do all collaboration tasks can maintain productivity. They don’t have to jump across platforms and tools that can cause unnecessary stress and lose time and resources.
Experts suggest automation to eliminate synchronous communication for contact centres. For instance, a contact centre employee who works from home has minimal access to resources when faced with a technical problem. Artificial intelligence technology can store knowledge bases and provide text-based or voice-based information to solve the issue.
Experts recommend customer support teams can also leverage hybrid working models and provide satisfactory service and experience. According to HubSpot, hybrid support teams are not much different from in-office teams. They follow the same guidelines, goals and provide the best possible support. Varun Bhandarkar, Manager on HubSpot’s Customer Success team, said: “The key is to find ways to foster an environment that can successfully replicate in-person collaboration.” Ninety-four per cent of executives stated that customer service has been as good as before or better with hybrid work models.
In the last-mile industry, convenient and super fast delivery isn’t just a bonus in today’s digitally competitive world but a customer demand. While several large platforms such as Amazon and Target offer same-day delivery and an Indian grocery platform Blinkit offers 10 minutes delivery, there are still certain inefficiencies that require better and more innovative strategies.
One of the most common problems is that while existing delivery fleets with crowd-sourced delivery can allow brands to scale and manage demand surges, there remains an uncertainty – will the driver accept the delivery request? A plausible answer is hybrid fleets are treated as a holistic system. An Ohio State University study revealed that hybrid fleets could be cost-efficient and provide effective service and responsiveness if a company can determine how best to offer driver compensation.
Finally, monitoring and anticipating demand rates are critical in various geographic and last-mile markets. Hybridising the fleet allows crowd-sourced delivery only during peak hours, making it imperative to right-size the hybrid fleet for maximum efficiency and maintain agility
The Big Picture
While some companies preferred to be 100 per cent remote, and some wanted a hybrid, employees were losing the customer-centric approach.
Being isolated from direct conversations with customers, employees began to forget that customers were the core of the business and growth model. According to the Harvard Business Review study, “an organisation without a clear sightline to customers is at risk of being out-innovated and eventually becoming irrelevant.”
Yet, all is not lost. Life can be brought back into meetings and employee conversations even if teams don’t have direct interaction. It not only depends on technology but lies in the hands of leaders. They need to talk to customers and ask them about how the purchased product’s channel impacts their lives and share the learning with non-customer-facing employees. It can prove to be more valuable than a generic value proposition.
Companies can no longer neglect hybrid systems. It will only cause a decline in employee strength and reduce employee experience, which would reduce customer experience. For instance, when an Indian company WhiteHat Jr announced the return to office date, over 800 employees quit, and it doesn’t help the business.
Most companies are embracing the change, leaning on hybrid tools and solutions to make successful asynchronous work possible, please the customer’s flexible and digital demands, and create a sustainable future that works for everybody – employers, employees, and customers.
