How Hybrid Working Changes Business Communication through Tech Innovation
With the office-less workplace on the rise, a workforce comprised of millennials who value flexible working, and the global pandemic, the workplace is seeing a historic shift to a hybrid system of remote and office working.
As the trend away from in-office working continues, the workplace is seeing a historic shift. Eric Schurke, CEO of Moneypenny Group, North America, discusses how new communications technology and proven outsourced services can make this the time for financial businesses to take a step forward.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen clients in the financial services industry reassessing the way they work and communicate, both internally and with their clients, as the concept of 9 to 5 has become a thing of the past. With the office-less workplace on the rise, a workforce comprised of millennials who value flexible working, and the global pandemic, the workplace is seeing a historic shift to a hybrid system of remote and office working.
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COVID Changed How We Communicate
Companies had no choice but to find new technologies to help them adapt to hybrid working during COVID-19 lockdowns. In fact, a study by LEK Consulting showed that 38% of businesses invested in extra software or technology to enable remote working. In addition, before COVID, 43% of Americans worked from home at least occasionally. Around the world, the number of people who work from home has increased by 159% since 2005, and 52% of workers work from home at least once a week today, trends that were no doubt fueled by the pandemic. Managing 20 million calls and chats for over 21,000 companies, we’ve seen technology-enabled services not just fill the urgent needs of the last three years but also drive new and unique shifts in work patterns..
Communication technology helped thousands of businesses during the lockdown as they were forced to outsource functions such as receptions and phone operations. In fact, studies show that 7 in 10 businesses now outsource support functions even though many hadn’t considered outsourcing things like phones or live chat before. Much of this was driven by prospects and clients beginning to contact companies around the clock. One of our clients, a global insolvency specialist, experienced high call volumes overnight, which was unimaginable for an in-house team. Using an outsourced call answering service helped to both manage overflow and support staff working from home.
New Technology Drove the Trend Towards Outsourcing
Those who did outsource found it also translated to more than just ensuring the phone was answered. It also provided valuable data based on the calls and live chats handled that then created valuable insight into consumer perspectives – what products or services they were interested in, common issues or questions, or even tracking responses to marketing campaigns. Additionally, with many financial services support staff falling in the under 30 range, a generation that was not raised with traditionally good phone skills, putting the responsibility of handling calls with professional call handlers created peace of mind. These outsourced businesses could pivot and remain competitive even as the field has continued shifting.
The integration of Microsoft Teams with telephone systems also helped streamline communications for companies, enabling incoming telephone calls to be directly transferred to employees via Microsoft Teams, wherever they are working. We have seen that combining such useful tools helps companies manage the disruptions of hybrid working to ensure each call is routed to the right employee the first time, which means calls will only be transferred when the person is free, with messages taken if they are in another Teams meeting.
Just Scratching the Surface
Digital collaboration has proved vital to the remote workforce, enabling teams to be connected wherever they are while ensuring employees are empowered and accountable. From unified communication and collaboration platforms that combine workplace chat, file storage, and video conferencing; to custom workflow apps in code-free
environments that allow users to run projects and visually manage workloads in real-time, there’s a collaboration tool to suit teams of every size and sector. These apps have experienced a surge in usage during the pandemic, with platforms such as Workplace by Meta experiencing an increase of two million paid users, taking their total subscribership to five million just four years after its launch.
Another compelling area is low-code and no-code platforms that allow people with no formal programming background to write computer programs. If a professional can work with an Excel spreadsheet, an especially common skill in the financial services industry, they can likely use low-code or no-code to build complex solutions that can address specific business needs and automate processes. The speed these tools allow helps drive further digital transformation and has seen mass adoption in recent years. As its own form of outsourcing, low-code or no-code can help users analyze and understand data with an app, they design either on its own or in conjunction with other tools.
Richer, Smarter, Engaging Experiences
Video-conferencing has also boomed, with reports showing that 87% more people are using it now compared with two years ago. Zoom has experienced record-breaking growth, for example, seeing its user base increase by 354% as of April 2020, with an impressive 300 million meeting participants worldwide. In fact, a study by Wainhouse Research showed that 94% of businesses say video-conferencing actually improves productivity.
But, no discussion of technology innovation would be complete without a look at Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has the power to free up time-consuming administration and support processes or to help your people become even better at what they do. With the power to deliver better data insights to support planning and forecasting, AI has the power to provide actionable intelligence to drive the customer experience.
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As AI models evolve, they can gather more information about how we structure language with natural language processing, which examines the relationship and meaning of words and the intent of sentences. These can be mined from outsourced phone and live chat conversations that can help put computers on the frontlines of inbound communications. With a better understanding of callers, AI systems can propose best actions, ultimately augmenting humans and not replacing them, allowing us to have better conversations, wherever they are, that are more efficient and productive.
In conclusion, the pandemic has taught us that hybrid working can work and that we should focus on what we do best and be open to bringing in experts when we need specific solutions. Businesses that adopt this model can grow, innovate and pivot faster, becoming more competitive in the constantly changing and evolving business environment we are all operating and hopefully thriving in.
How has the pandemic affected business communication at your organization? Tell us about tools that help on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to know!
MORE ON HYBRID WORK
- Harvard Business School Smooths Over the Friction of the Hybrid Experience With an All-hands-on-deck Effort
- Achieving a Human-centric Workplace With Collaboration Analytics
- Designing a Productive Knowledge-centric Workplace for the Modern Age
- 3 Ways To Improve Hybrid Team Performance Through Advanced Collaboration
