The impact of hybrid work on effective customer contact

Alternating between working from home and the office. Does this work for client contact departments? Yes, of course it does. Provided it is well-organized.

This blog expands on the question of the impact of hybrid work on client contact centers (CCC). As a manager, how do you go about this?

Why would you want to introduce hybrid work in the CCC?

Hybrid work has many advantages, even for the Client Contact team. In general, working from home may improve focus and well-being. In short, there are five major advantages of hybrid work:

Being productive thanks to less distractions

Less distractions, less chats here and there and less noise. All this results in more time for meetings with clients, following up on questions and better concentration. This is exactly what’s needed for the effectiveness of your agents.

Better work-life balance

In times of employee shortages, a hybrid work policy is appealing. Commutes decrease and employees have more time for themselves outside the hours of availability. That’s a plus for the organization.

Freedom of choice ensures more happiness at work

As an employer, you want to contribute to your team members’ happiness at work, right? By creating choices you can directly contribute to that.

Lower travel expenses and CO2 emissions

Not totally unimportant as it contributes to lowering the impact on the environment. Think of all those car trips that were eliminated during COVID-19. This is still a valuable consideration. Bonus: less traffic jams and happier employees!

Distance between home and work is less important

If you only need to be in the office some of the time, the distance between your home and your work will matter less. The pool of potential employees for the organization will therefore increase.

How easy is it to organize this?

Alternating between working from home and working at the office does require some organizational commitment. Of course, the hardware necessary for calls and communication with clients must be fully set up at the office and at home. Moreover, a good Wi-Fi connection and an ergonomic work station are important. But the most important part is the software, of course. Does your client contact software allow you to work from anywhere at any time? Then you’ve taken a step in the right direction. And if you set up your CCC via Teams it is also possible to set up Teams chat channels. That’s how colleagues can get together and catch up or video chat.

5 tips

Hybrid work can definitely work in the CCC. However, keep a few things in mind. Here are six tips to properly organize your accessibility as a hybrid working team:

1. Employee availability: In a hybrid work environment, the employees aren’t always physically present at work. This can influence the overview on employees’ availability to help clients via phone or chat. An easy overview through presence management can help retain the overall view.
2. Monitoring availability: In addition to acute employee availability, it is also nice to be able to track which employees are most available at what times. This information can help with rostering or sustainable team deployment. This can easily be achieved with insight into your data and your planning.
3. Flexibility in communication channels: Clients appreciate the flexibility from organizations that use different contact channels. This is also great for your employees working from home. Have them manage the chat or social media channels, for example. That way, clients can get in touch with customer service in different ways.
4. Integration of different channels: When using different contact channels, it is helpful if the different lines integrate effortlessly. That’s why it is important for organizations to invest in technologies that facilitate the integration of different channels, so that clients and employees have a seamless experience when using different communication channels. Having one platform for all your client contact certainly helps.
5. Employee training and support: In a hybrid work environment, employees must often learn new skills and adapt to new working methods. That’s why continued training and upskilling is a must.

We hope this will help you on your way to a hybrid CCC. It is certainly possible, and we’ll gladly help you create an effective plan. Unexus Connect allows you to flawlessly implement client contact and offer continued support.