In March 2020, we closed the doors of our Poly contact centers around the globe and sent staff home to ensure everyone’s safety as shelter in place orders went out worldwide. The atmosphere was surreal. Our personnel didn’t know how long they were going home or when they would be able to physically see their colleagues again. All we knew was that we would continue to strive for ‘business as usual’ in providing best-in-class service to our customers and partners, despite doing our jobs remotely.

Everyone was confident that we would be able to seamlessly make the transition to working from home (WFH), as we already had a flexible working model in place.  However, ‘flexible’ typically had meant only working from home a few days a week, and without a full house. Our previous experience didn’t account for partners or roommates all on video calls at once or children needing home schooling.

The additional impact and dynamics brought about by COVID-19 called for increased focus on three key areas in order to ensure the ongoing success of our contact centers. They boiled down to equipment, workspaces, and maintaining camaraderie.

THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT

Poly’s contact center agents were in a good position to make to make the shift to full time remote working as we had already supplied the baseline essentials such as a laptop, keyboard and mouse.  However, no WFH setup is complete without a high-quality headset and external camera.  So naturally, we sent each agent home equipped with an EncorePro HW525 headset and Poly EagleEye Mini USB camera.

Thankfully, many of the intelligent features designed to block out distracting noises in the open office also work great in the home as well.  Features such as our a noise-canceling technology which protects against background noise and SoundGuard which safeguards against hearing discomfort and listening fatigue have proven to be valuable to our agents while working remotely.  The supplement of quality video is a simple addition that users can easily get up and running in seconds and makes a profound difference in the quality of video interactions. The Poly EagleEye Mini provides robust, high definition 1080p video with electronic pan, tilt, and 4x zoom – allowing those on the video call to feel more connected.

THE RIGHT WORKSPACE

Working from home full-time with the whole family under one roof creates a very different dynamic and new constraints. Now, multiple people may be needing a quiet place to work and there are additional demands on the Internet.

Although we can’t change the physical environment for our staff, we have found the use of virtual backgrounds to block out the personal space invaluable.  As for how to divvy up bandwidth and gain access to the quiet part of the house, there’s not much we can do about that either.  Here, we recommend staying in communication about when the home will need to be quiet and try coordinating as much as possible around Internet usage.

ESTABLISHING & MAINTAINING VIRTUAL TEAM SPIRIT

People are used to seeing each other in the office and socializing, holding ad hoc meetings, and having brainstorming sessions.  We recognized that these needs had to be sustained at a minimum – if not increased while teams are 100% remote to keep people from feeling isolated or overwhelmed.  We have worked hard to ensure that the team stays connected virtually through the use of video calls on a regular basis and making time for social interactions. Additionally, we created channels on Microsoft Teams focused on social activities such as virtual coffee breaks and water cooler moments.

PLANNING FOR WHAT’S NEXT IN THE CONTACT CENTER

Now we are looking at the next phase and planning for people to return to the office.  This has given me the opportunity to consider what we’ve learned from this experience and what our business model should be moving forward.  It’s provided me the chance to stop, think, and talk to the team about how we can best operate and provide the best service to our customers.

My goal is to orientate our staff to the most efficient working configuration based on workforce needs.  For the business, introducing a hybrid working model provides the opportunity of expanding talent acquisition with a more dispersed workforce. This creates opportunities for people who hadn’t previously considered working in a contact center due to physical restrictions.  Additionally, we’re able to increase our number of agents with native language skills and improve our customer service.

So, what is next?  The way I see it, virtual training is key.  The on-boarding of new agents, readapting our existing agents to a hybrid working model, as well as creating and sustaining remote teams are all ongoing requirements.  To do this, managers will need to hone skills focused on objective outcomes. These will support the model and opportunities for existing personnel to virtually mentor and further develop both themselves and others.  The key thing to remember is that physical distance no longer matters, and as new HR and company policies are developed to support such a model, contact centers will flourish.  And at Poly, we have the proven technology and systems, people process, and technology in place for this to be a reality.

VIDEO’S ESSENTIAL ROLE IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

All of this is achievable with the use of video – and, not simply as means of sustaining the business, but as a medium for enhancing it. There is greater accessibility to people through video than physically.  I can meet with all of my teams in one day, everyday while the flow of business continues.

This is just the beginning of a new way of working, and not only in contact centers.  For now, video is our great enabler.  And, once we are back in the office, people will have become more comfortable with video calls and see the great convenience they afford.  I see this bleeding into all areas of interaction and video will be the key for our customer interactions in the future.  In Poly contact centers, we use video conferencing internally all the time ­– it’s second nature to us.  Over the last few months we’ve had more video interactions directly with customers helping them resolve technical issues and showing them how to set up their equipment. In fact, I’m proud to report that our Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) has improved during the lockdown period.

I believe that flexibility will be central to the success for contact centers moving forward with blended working being the working model of choice.  Companies that offer this will benefit from a more diverse and widespread workforce and agents will benefit from this positive working environment.  Furthermore, contact centers will be more resilient with this robust, flexible working model in times of emergency – reducing risk and exposure and being well positioned to provide uninterrupted support to customers.  A blended workforce in the contact center provides the flexibility to be successful.

At Poly, our products have enabled many employees with the benefits of flexible working and working from home for many years – whether it’s been the occasional day working from a remote location, a regular schedule of working from home one or two days a week, or permanently working from a home office. With seven very busy contact centers across the globe our Poly customer service representatives have always had the opportunity to embrace a flexible working policy, so they can focus on delivering smarter customer interactions wherever they happen to be.

As we’ve discussed in other recent blogs, a lot can change in a short time as is evident with the impact of COVID-19 on the global contact center industry. Similar to many of customers, in the last few weeks Poly had to quickly move to a fully remote model for our contact centers to provide a safe environment for our employees and maintain our customer support promise.

Fortunately, our previously tried and tested flexible policy put us in a strong position to swiftly change to a full working at home policy for all employees, knowing that they all have the skills and tools to work efficiently and effectively from their home offices. We were able to do this with the full confidence and peace of mind that we had everything in place to make this transition smoothly, all the while ensuring a positive experience and maintain business continuity and the excellent levels of service that we proudly provide to our partners and customers.

The methodology we have used to turn on our global virtual contact center follows the principle of: “People, Spaces and Technology”.

People

Remote management skills with mutual trust being the core value for all associates. Training best practices for video and voice collaboration and how to work remotely. Virtual team building and motivational skills.

Spaces

Ensuring that home working locations were set up to enable staff to work remotely. Replicating a work environment at home – with a dedicated workspace and Poly professional grade headset and camera.

Technology

Video and voice enabled, global cloud CRM and systems in place to drive metrics to manage performance. Ensuring that Unified Collaboration and Communications (UC&C) tools are in place to enable easy collaboration amongst the team.

Don’t get me wrong, the transition to permanently working from home for a contact center — and for any department, is a challenge that you can’t do alone. Buy-in and support from key business partners such as, IT to provide expert guidance around the right equipment and software to ensure productivity, as well as security protocols is crucial. HR policies may need to be adapted to support everyone—taking the lead on training staff on how to work from home. Additionally, management training to support team leads will ensure that newly remote teams will be managed effectively are also critical to success.

Here at Poly, we know that around-the-clock support is key to our customer’s experience and we are committed to continue offering our high-level of support and offer “business as usual” service. Our contact centers remain fully operational, available 24/7, offering support in 14 languages and leveraging our full range of tools that customers can use to contact us – phone, e-Support, chat and social – to support your business through these challenging times. We’re here to help you as you move to a remote environment, and our primary goal is to ensure you are able to collaborate and stay connected to your colleagues, partners and customers.

Visit Poly.com for more on remote working strategies and solutions.

Customer service has seen more change in the last five years than it has in the last 35 years combined. Given higher customer expectations, multiple points of engagement, and the growth of social media, your company’s brand reputation is now under more public scrutiny than ever.

People

Because of the points mentioned above, it’s your most valuable employees who answer the calls that come in every day. These are the people you can trust to speak directly with your customers because they have the skills to influence how your customers perceive your brand.

Plantronics recognizes that providing excellent customer service is key to converting customers into net promoters and loyal brand ambassadors. To achieve this, Plantronics uses ‘quality’ over speed or quantity as the key measurement of service success, providing a global, consistent and humanized customer service experience using a 24/6, “follow-the-sun” approach.

Our innovative approach means that every single one of our customer care representatives around the world receives exactly the same, high-quality training. This translates directly into all of our customers receiving the same exceptional customer experience. The governance behind how we deliver this experience is in our recent CCA Accreditation. In fact, we were the first company to receive this accreditation in Asia, and as a result, Plantronics is now entirely globally certified.

Places

Anne Marie Forsyth, the CEO of the CCA, recently visited our customer interaction center in Hoofddorp, Netherlands, to help us celebrate our success in achieving the CCA Global Standard©. Forsyth then wrote a blog about her experience in our offices there. We’re now rolling the CCA Global Standard out in our customer interaction centers around the globe, with our sites in India and China recently added to the program.

Technology

In the blog, Forsyth cites an example of how we improved our process using data we got from our headsets through our SaaS platform, Plantronics Manager Pro. From analysis of ‘silent’ or ‘quiet’ time on calls, it quickly became apparent that the reason for the silences was that agents were having to take a bit of time to search a number of knowledge bases for information in order to be able to respond to the customer. Realizing there was an opportunity to merge often-requested information, we designed a custom-built, in-house program which reduced talk time and customer frustration. Integrating this into our existing CRM system offered the ideal IT solution to better serve our customers.

We’ve also been investing in new technology that allows agents to have a single-screen case view, with all customer and technical information in one place. This “omni-channel” business model ensures that no matter which channels our customer use, the experience is as smooth as possible. Agents have access to the complete picture of the customer’s journey so when they move between channels, they aren’t asked the same questions over and over.

The difference companies can gain by listening to frontline agents and advisors is significant. Designing tech solutions purpose-built for the needs of the experts who use them is key. Looking for problems to solve at the customer interface rather than simply buying what’s in a supplier’s contract offers a much more efficient and customer-focused solution.