Did you know that 86% of employees and managers consider the lack of effective collaboration to be a key factor in workplace failure? A recent study by Fierce, Inc., a business coaching company, highlights the importance of having a solid collaboration strategy.

86% of employees and managers consider the lack of effective collaboration to be a key factor in workplace failure.

– Fierce, Inc.

In fact, many organisations report that their growth is based on fostering collaboration and implementing agile methodologies.

If we list all the projects currently underway within an organisation, we will find that the vast majority involve the efforts of multiple people, departments and even GTMs.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT USING EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION TOOLS

Since collaboration is the backbone of an organisation’s success, when it fails, the impact is felt at all levels:

1. INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

It affects the productivity of everyone involved. How many times have departments been left waiting for a response from another department, effectively bringing them to a standstill?

2. ORGANISATIONAL LEVEL

The lack of effective collaboration can lead to a dysfunctional work culture: higher levels of frustration, high staff turnover and, externally, difficulty in attracting talent.

3. BRAND LEVEL

Depending on the severity of the problem, it can affect one or thousands of customers, impacting our NPS, customer churn and therefore all growth KPIs such as ROI.

HOW DO YOU ENSURE EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION?

Don’t panic! As we always say, technology is on our side, and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) providers have already developed platforms to ensure collaboration and much more.

1. HAVING A SINGLE COMMUNICATIONS AND COLLABORATION SYSTEM

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses today is technological complexity. Having too many tools not only increases the toggle tax, but also becomes highly inefficient when paying for multiple licences when everything could be consolidated into a single programme.

This is where workspaces come in, such as the Enreach Contact virtual PBX, which combines telephony with the chat and video calling found in all collaboration programmes.

This setup allows us, for example, to call an external supplier while coordinating an emergency meeting with the team via video call and sharing important documents via chat, all without switching applications.

2. BREAK DOWN INFORMATION SILOS

Another major problem in organisations is that information is scattered across different tools.

For example, if a customer calls their account manager’s personal mobile phone to complain about an error on their last bill and the manager is unaware of the problem, integrations with other programmes such as CRMs allow them to instantly check the customer’s previous interactions with customer service or accounting.

While it’s usually the case that these departments will inform the account manager of such issues, there can be a breakdown in communication.

Therefore, the ability to integrate the communication history into the customer’s profile allows almost anyone in the company to quickly address an issue, preventing the customer from having to deal with multiple reps.

3. USE ANY DEVICE

In the past, work was associated with an office, a landline phone and a desktop computer. Today, work can be done in a coworking space with a laptop and a smartphone.

The rise of remote working, hybrid setups and business travel means we need to maintain the same level of productivity we had in traditional offices, but from anywhere.

By and large, this means having the same functionality and security levels across all devices. Imagine you’ve finished your day’s work and receive an emergency call from a supplier. Instead of losing or interrupting the call, you can seamlessly transfer it to your mobile device without any interruption or loss of quality.

ENREACH CONTACT: THE WORKSPACE THAT GOES WITH YOU

We want to show you how much your business could gain by unifying all your communication tools.

Enreach Contact is much more than a virtual PBX; we like to call it a workspace because it combines chat, video conferencing, telephony, integrations with Teams, Google and over 100 CRMs. It also lets you work from any device with native mobile integration, a mobile app, a desktop app and a desk phone.

Take your work with you wherever you go without sacrificing productivity.

La entrada 3 essential virtual PBX features to keep you productive at all times se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

Smartphones go far beyond making calls; we use them for entertainment applications, managing our bank accounts and even for work.

According to the latest data from Statista, Spain is the second country with the highest number of people working from their mobile phones, with almost 60% of adults using these devices for work-related purposes. That’s why it’s important to consider which features in business mobile phones offer an advantage to the professionals who use them.

WHAT FEATURES ADD VALUE IN THE PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENT?

1. MAKE AND RECEIVE CALLS FROM THE SWITCHBOARD

Even on a mobile device, we can use all the advanced calling features we would have on a fixed line: create welcome messages and IVR menus, put a call on hold, mute the microphone, etc.

With the switchboard application, we can access all these features very intuitively. If we use a business SIM card that is integrated with the switchboard, we can also use shortcuts for functions that are not natively available on the device.

2. TRANSFERRING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CALLS

Another remarkable voice feature is the ability to transfer any call. It doesn’t matter if it’s a customer or a colleague calling us, we can put them through to the right person by checking their availability or transferring the call directly.

Mobile phones that aren’t really business-orientated, because they’re not connected to the company switchboard, prevent us from making these types of transfers.

3. CHATTING AND VIDEO CALLING

Even on the move, we can communicate internally and externally from a single device to make calls, video calls, chat (individually or in groups) and share photos or files.

We can also easily import the contact list from our device, search for colleagues and add clients, suppliers, etc.

BOTTOM LINE

This device ensures that even when we’re not in the office, we stay in touch with the rest of the company, don’t miss customer calls and maintain our brand image.

By staying connected to the switchboard, we can enjoy all the benefits of advanced telephony, keep a call and conversation history, exchange messages with our team and ultimately work without limitations.

Are you considering mobile telephony for your business? The direct line to our experts is always open.

La entrada 3 key features of mobile phones for business se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

Call centers looking to meet the new requirements of an increasingly flexible blended digital office are taking a new approach to workforce management.

5 Key Principles Of WFM In Today’s Digital World

1) Everything Has Changed For Omnichannel Environments

The workplace today bears little resemblance to that of a few years ago. The pandemic changed employee and consumer behaviours across generations, making tech-savvy New Generation X and Boomers just as likely as their younger counterparts to use asynchronous channels like chat or messaging of text.

This affects more than just the way people communicate at work (nearly half of customer service leaders recently surveyed by Salesforce indicated that the number of support channels agents use has increased in the past two years), but also the way they communicate in their spare time. At the same time, an increase in remote work has transformed the way contact centers manage workforce and customer contacts alike.

2) Bots Are Becoming More Popular

Companies are increasingly using bots to handle simple customer inquiries, which means more complex inquiries fall to agents. This often translates into longer call times, and consequently new complexities in WFM processes: this presents a challenge for teams using traditional workforce management solutions, which work best when the Average Handle Time (AHT) is shorter than the planning interval.

3) Agents Must Report The Activity Before Ending The Interaction With The Customer

Planning and anticipating in an environment where interactions are increasingly digital requires that WFM teams stop waiting for contact to end and start reporting when activity occurs (for example, when an agent responds to a social media post) and also when a contact becomes active again (for example, when the customer follows up their social post with a direct message to the business). This will allow WFM teams to plan and forecast based on interval-specific activity patterns, not just the number of contacts and the interval in which a contact ends.

4) Planning And Scheduling Of Work

There is a growing recognition that if you really want to combine different work elements, whether it is from the digital office in the call center or the back office in the customer service center, planning is necessary to understand what work needs to be done regardless of where it takes place. While planning and forecasting can often be done on a daily basis, call centers are more sensitive to the 15 or 30-minute window because they need to deliver consistently good service every window of every day.

5) Schedules Must Cover Staffing Requirements Based On Work Items And Activities

Workforce management is in the midst of a transition from being call or work item based to being activity based. By looking at not only how many work items are received, but also how many are activated at each interval, each item can be turned into the activity required to complete it. This gives companies the ability to generate activity-based staffing requirements.

La entrada What New Paradigms Are Changing Workforce Management? se publicó primero en Enreach ES.