The Two Mantras of the New Future of Work
To protect businesses going forward, two key imperatives must be operationalized. Customers must be able to self-serve and connect with your services anywhere, through any channel at any time.
This requires business to provide a future workplace and working environment that allows employees to work anywhere, serve the customer at all times and deliver continuously good service.
The enormous challenges the world is facing today are presenting enormous opportunities. Organizations that embed new ways of working into day-to-day operations can solve for both resiliency and competitive advantage while they fundamentally improve the customer experience. This affects everything from customer engagement at the contact center to the support of operations and the supply of data. Managing these components with a digital focus should be thought of as one holistic, new ecosystem.
Organizations that have built digital elasticity and resiliency and that offer a seamless digital channel are surviving the crisis much better than those that haven’t. As new challenges arise, as they undoubtedly will, companies must be ahead of the curve to ensure continuity of core operations and revenue streams.
Here are six primary opportunities for building a new future of work:
- Adapting property use: With the specter of COVID-19, no longer will office space be packed with rows of desks. Studies show that operating from home with the right technology will be cheaper and more cost effective. Expensive office space will become much more adaptable and used for true collaboration. In the front office, one may see significant reduction in contact center size and shape with a broader shift to a more open and collaborative space that is adaptable to the business needs as they emerge.
- Work from anywhere: Employees will be “location flexible.” Organizations that embrace a digitally elastic operating model will be able to accept new behaviors and deliver more productively while providing an improved customer experience. The use of data and analytics will assist the hybrid workforce to flex at short notice and address peaks in demand.
- Embedding intelligent automation: Integrated autonomy through strategic robotic process automation (RPA) will assist the workforce. Embedding RPA, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms across the enterprise, including in the back office, will keep productivity up and ensure employees are effective. When embedded end to end, intelligent automation can provide further insight into customer behavior and enable “shift left” activity to drive customers to self-serve in new hybrid models.
- Always-On IT: Having capabilities in the cloud gives employees constant access to their customers and work, and having digital channels hosted on cloud-based platforms ensures revenue streams remain unhindered. In the back office, using just-in-time principles and new automation tools such as sentiment analysis, IT departments can offer a seamless service and proactively deliver problem-solving capabilities.
- Digital connectivity: Making work and interactions easier for employees and customers drives adoption of the new working processes and technologies and provides a more seamless customer experience. Offering new, innovative and simple interactions with customers in the form of video, message and chat support in more cost-effective environments – such as one’s home – ensures a win-win for the customer and the company.
- Collaboration and social interaction: Collaborative online tool environments produce higher productivity in shorter, sharper bursts. When based in employee-friendly locations, this also improves work-life balance. Delivering these tools to customers provides a better and a stickier customer experience resulting in higher net promoter score, more available innovation and other benefits.
Join us for a webinar The Future of Work – Redesigning Operations and Customer Experience to explore the ways you can achieve the benefits from these new ways of working. We’ll discuss practical approaches to implementing your new future immediately. Let’s get started!
About the author
Iain Fisher
Iain leads ISG’s Future of Work, Customer Experience and ESG solutioning redefining business models and operating models to drive out new ways of working with a CX and ESG focus. He joins up end to end value chains across a number of markets and advises clients on where digital and technology can be used to maximise benefit. A regular Keynote speaker and online presenter, Iain has also authored several eBooks on these subjects.
