Delivering Extraordinary Experiences for Employees and Customers
Understand the Value of EX
Great expectations:
Enter
Contents:
Why Quality Employee Experiences Matter
The Challenge
Digital and Real-World Factors
Defining Excellent EX
How to Get There
Building Trust and Loyalty
Matter
Why Quality Employee Experiences
Delivering Quality Experiences. Optimizing Employee Expectations.
The world of work is in the midst of a major transition. Many factors, including generational shifts, the expansion of social media influence, and (most notably) the pandemic, have changed expectations for customer experience (CX). Since the customer and employee relationship is reciprocal, their experiences feed into each other, linking the two. Managing these experiences well requires organizations to build a culture where everyone embraces the same values. Employees who feel valued and appreciated are more likely to enjoy their work, have a long-term career at your company, and perform better, which carries over to your customers.
If you own, manage or help set the direction for a growing business, this eBook will help you navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities in today’s unpredictable environment – so that you can get on course for sustained success.
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Understand the value of EX
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2
Personalized Digital
Next
Back
It’s Worth its Weight in Gold.
Your Choice
Happy Employees Do a Better Job of:
Representing your company
SMB Directions for the Future of Work
02
Steps to success
In each section, you’ll find helpful guidance on applying ideas and strategies inspired by the research in your own business.
Foreword: Find Your Sense of Direction
Introduction: The Three Characteristics of Future-Ready SMBs
1: Resilience
2: Putting People First
3: Agility
Time to Give your Communications a Technology Upgrade?
What can we do for you?
Troubleshooting customer issues
Cultivating new leads
Managing and maintaining relationships
But it Depends on:
Clear, consistent, and positive leadership
Good relationships with co-workers
Recognition and feeling valued
An inspiring and supportive work culture
Great digital and physical working environments
Experience is Everything.
It’s not just about the work people do – it’s about the way they feel while doing it. That’s why the right communication and collaboration technologies are crucial for a dispersed, hybrid workforce.
Introduction:
The Three Characteristics
One message comes across loud and clear from the survey results: SMB’s that made changes to their strategies to adapt to new market conditions during the pandemic feel optimistic about the future of their businesses.
Satisfied customers are more likely to become long-term customers. This same principle applies to your workforce. As the world and customer expectations continue to evolve, organizations that want to be successful will embrace a supportive culture and provide technology to facilitate exceptional experiences for both customers and employees (EX).
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What this means for you:
These businesses understand that coming out of the other side of the pandemic isn’t just about mitigating the risk of future disruption, but about creating ways to build momentum and progress their business while doing it. Looking ahead, and to make sure your business is successful and competitive on this side of the COVID-19 crisis, now’s the time to shift your focus beyond survival and recovery, and concentrate on building strategies for how your business works, today and in the future.
Look beyond tomorrow
How a Focus on Communications Pays off:
Employee engagement and retention
Customer satisfaction
Business growth
Attraction of new talent
Increased efficiency
Greater productivity
Faster ROI
Resilience
04
The business is ready to withstand whatever potential disruption comes next
Putting People First
The business understands that customers and employees are equally important, and gives equal weight to CX and EX
Agility
The business recognises the value of adopting new technology quickly and enthusiastically to maintain a competitive advantage over peers and larger businesses
Find out more
Creating Optimal EX
The Challenge to
Yes, the pandemic has driven HR and IT teams to collaborate on crafting a flexible and engaging employee experience. BUT – employees are still struggling to work across siloed departments, applications, and technologies.
EX is in an evolutionary phase:
Does any of this sound familiar?
Poor Integration
Technology fails to mesh with existing systems, necessitating inefficient work arounds.
App Overload
A different app for every task, forcing employees to constantly monitor multiple platforms and cross-reference non-aggregated data.
Insufficient Support
Rigid models that fail to deliver flexible work support for a geographically dispersed and/or hybrid workforce.
Lack of Streamlined Operations
Disconnected Transitions
Shifts from physical to virtual and back that feel disjointed and cause delays and confusion during work processes.
Conflicting Communications
Lack of consistent direction, leading to an overall disorganized approach and leaves employees chasing their tails to keep up with differing directives.
To keep pace with changing expectations, organizations need clearer ownership and stronger governance around their EX strategy.
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From home to office and everywhere in between, post-pandemic life is a mix of virtual and face-to-face experiences. With the demand for flexible schedules and hybrid work models, employers must provide the right tools.
That means streamlining your technology stack so your employees can maximize both the productivity of their own workflows and their engagement with customers. This is how you’ll achieve a reliable, seamless transition between face-to-face and digital interactions to facilitate consistent experiences that match your company’s promises, both to your customers and to your staff.
Despite the advantages SMBs have gained through their digital transformation activities, they face some strong headwinds that are largely out of their control.
Top SMB concerns
Roughly three-quarters of respondents say they are very or somewhat concerned that rising inflation, supply chain interruptions and continuing uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 will negatively impact their businesses.
More than half report feeling worried that extreme weather and climate change could harm their businesses.
Another Important Factor:
About two-thirds fear cybersecurity failures, government regulations, tax policies and talent shortages could adversely affect them.
Digital and Real-World Interfaces
How easy is it for your people to reach each other across different departments and time zones? When a customer has a particular inquiry, can any staff member quickly and easily route it to the right person to get an answer? Can your brick-and-mortar employees easily navigate your online resources to answer questions from face-to-face customers?
The ability to conveniently and confidently move between digital and real-world is vital to providing both your employees and your customers with a satisfying experience. And with new employment options becoming available every day, you need to offer EX that makes work processes intuitive and satisfying.
DOES YOUR TECHNOLOGY DO THAT?
Remember:
of customer interactions require staff collaboration across divisions
of customers expect consistency across all departments
20
%
76
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Weathering the storms
Many of these concerns have already come to fruition. The Omicron variant surge, record levels of inflation, prominent cybersecurity breaches, geopolitical instability and severe weather events have likely added to SMBs’ concerns about their business outcomes as they look ahead. The good news is that the changes many SMBs have already made to their business operations over the past couple of years should boost their resilience against these latest challenges. However, they will need to continue to hone their innovation, agility and resilience as they deal with ongoing uncertainty.
Building your resilience
External factors may be beyond your control, but keeping your business future-ready with the latest versions of your communication software is one easy step every business can take.
If your communications technology is several versions behind, you’re probably missing out on new agility and resilience capabilities that could make the difference for your business.
Depending on your situation, you can consider tailored and managed service plans that allow you to leave tech management to your service provider so you can focus on what you do best: your business.
Top 5 macro trends preoccupying SMBs
1. Rising inflation
2. Supply chain interruptions
3. Infectious diseases (e.g. COVID-19)
4. Government regulation and tax policy
5. Cybersecurity failures
Now...
What Does Exceptional EX and CX Look Like?
Successful organizations deliver digital consumer experiences that provide context, collaboration, and control . As a key part of the reciprocal employee-customer relationship, these fundamentals are now defining employee expectations for their own digital workplace experiences:
Context
Personalized experiences should take into account individual history, preferences, and goals while supporting employees’ duties and responsibilities.
Control
Interactions and processes must include the ability to set preferences reflecting each person’s sensibilities.
Collaboration
Everyone needs to be set up for success with tools to facilitate easy and intuitive collaboration, excellent service experiences, and positive relationships.
PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
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SMBs Flex to Boost Employee Recruitment and Retention
Modernising your technology gives you the best foundation to support the growing shift to hybrid work models, and to drive engagement and retention in employees. A suite of consistent and easy-to-use communication tools will make it effortless for people to be productive at any time and in any place, boosting their job satisfaction. Conversely, communications tech that makes remote and hybrid working a stressful experience will have the opposite effect.
Current and prospective employees’ expectations have changed post-pandemic. For businesses where hybrid working is realistic, shifting to a hybrid work model has the potential to bring huge advantages for both businesses and their staff – widening access to talent pools, reducing business overheads and boosting productivity and work/life balance for employees.
Adapt and evolve
Every EX strategy needs the agility to respond meaningfully to changing employee needs and behaviors.
AGILITY
GET THERE
How to
How do you make it happen?
Agility. Autonomy. Alignment.
When context, collaboration, and control are delivered with agility, autonomy, and alignment, you have the makings of seamless, unified operations and consistent experiences for both your employees and the customers they serve. Unified communications technology that utilizes these principles can adapt to your needs as both groups’ expectations change. A consistent experience of empowerment for every individual is the way forward. And most importantly, it’s all possible.
Giving employees the autonomy to undertake higher-order tasks – such as workflow creation, optimizing marketing lifecycles, and integrating data sources – through the right tools, practices, and processes is integral to enabling agility.
AUTONOMY
Close alignment across teams and strategic goals is vital to meaningful EX.
ALIGNMENT
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Optimize Hybrid Working
Top 5 changes to improve recruitment and retention
1. Offer more flexible hours*
2. Improve career opportunities
3. Raise salaries
4. Offer remote/home working*
5. Increase childcare senior care benefits
Customers and employees now engage in a radically different way. So, organizations must provide employees with the digital tools to deliver a smooth and satisfying customer experience from wherever they work. Subscription services make it happen! These changes have created an opportunity for companies to improve productivity and collaboration by accelerating the digitization of EX. A recent S&P Global Market Intelligence survey highlighted employee experiences with tools and technologies used to complete work during the pandemic lockdown period.
Job seekers value flexibility above all, with of applicants to one well-known job board saying they’d feel more loyal to their employers if their jobs were more flexible.
More easily storing, finding, and sharing information
Offering employees more choice regarding working locations is already becoming the norm.
But flexibility goes beyond physical location. For example, of SMBs have recently begun or plan to offer their employees more flexible working hours.
Here’s what employees identified as opportunities to improve productivity:
You can achieve these improvements by modernising or upgrading your communications technology.
*
3
How to make Hybrid Work… Work
Reevaluate communications
Embrace new capabilities
Focus on improving collaboration
Use analytics to understand productivity
35
33
Ways to reduce common, repetitive types of work
Ways to better organize, plan, and prioritize your work
Tools optimized for working at home or ’on the go’
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28
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Define your values and follow through via unified communications software
Your culture should reflect the value of your technology. To help everyone embrace it, you need training, workflows, processes, and governance to support your people so that they can do their best work. Here’s how technology can help you develop trust and loyalty in your organization:
Foster collaboration and productivity across your organisation by making sure your people have consistent communication tools wherever they work.
Flexible working thrives with flexible tools, so help your people stay productive wherever they are, by offering a choice of intuitive communication and collaboration solutions including voice, video and chat.
These tools are evolving and improving all the time, and are readily available as cloud services to save you the hassle of deploying and managing them yourself.
Create the foundations for successful flexible working
LET's get started.
Build Trust First to Secure Long-Term Loyalty
The right technology can help you establish awareness and keep everyone updated on your overarching business goals, including service promises and the role each employee plays in delivering excellent CX. It can also provide additional pathways for recognizing employee dedication and longevity with clearly stated incentives and messages that build a sense of community.
Provide excellent (and convenient) resources
Whether it’s rapid and efficient IT assistance with day-to-day systems processes or a dedicated HR team that supports long-term career planning, employees who have the right resources will perform better and generate happier customers. Make sure employees know where and how to access support and other resources as needed.
Ensure data privacy with thorough security measures
More data allows for more customized interactions. But for people to feel comfortable providing this information, they need to be confident it will be handled in keeping with the highest security protocols. Make sure your technology is able to keep your system secure.
To achieve longevity, ask: Do our systems make our employees feel secure and empowered?
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Scalability and reliability: These two factors are an integral part of building your workspace. You need technology that grows with you, along with integrated tools.
That way your teams can be more productive and collaborative, whether they’re in the office, at home, or on the go. Tap into modern communications systems that empower you to create the EX strategies that support effective CX, retain top talent, and reap the benefits.
MODERNIZING YOUR TECHNOLOGY
Continue Forward by
Scalability and reliability:
Do you know which will best support your company’s mission?
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Positive expansion plans
75% of organisations with high levels of intentional collaboration also report having high levels of team innovation.
Think and act positive
Create an authentic culture where people feel understood and supported.
Despite the backdrop of uncertainty, it’s encouraging to see that the majority of SMBs are expanding rather than shrinking in size.
Amidst a strengthening economy, of SMBs say they plan to hire internal employees in the next twelve months, and plan to hire external contractors.
Among those with plans to hire, about also say they have more job openings than usual.
Larger companies are and are also more likely to have more job openings than usual when compared with smaller businesses.
Somewhat surprisingly, given the current talent crunch, say they are confident they will meet their hiring goals.
Learn from progressive organisations that rely less on innovation by chance and more on innovation by design.
Cloud-based services
Selection
Plan options let you mix and match features to get the best fit for your business. With next-generation cloud solutions, you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want.
subscription-based services
When it comes to unifying your communications, Mitel takes care of everything with public, hybrid, and private cloud options.
When it comes to unifying your communications,
Growth
As your company evolves, your cloud package grows with you. That means no matter how big you become you don’t have to worry about managing a burdensome communications infrastructure.
Cost-efficiency
Spend your money your way thanks to our consolidated pricing and mix-and-match features. Get exactly what you need, for a workable price.
Flexibility
Unlock new capabilities with flexible solutions allow you to choose the perfect tailored package of communication, collaboration, and customer experience features in ways that scale with your business.
Choice
With Mitel, you can choose the commercial framework that works best for you and your financials: one-time licensing, subscription, or a mix of the two.
Opportunity
Mitel helps you evolve and progress your organization with technology that allows you to adapt to changes and new opportunities sooner and with less friction.
Keep the control you need – whether your communications are in the cloud or on-premise.
Keep the control you need
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Accelerated tech adoption correlates with better business outcomes
That’s why organizations have to prioritize investment in technology to support employee and customer engagement with intuitive platforms and convenient apps. Life today revolves around omnichannel experiences – people are looking for the ability to transition seamlessly from one application and device to another, for a unified experience.
The positive buzz around flexible and hybrid working has measurable business benefits.
SMBs that put modern, flexible technology solutions to work are better prepared to:
Adapt more quickly to shifting customer requirements, such as the demand for expanded ecommerce offerings, contactless payments and virtual services.
Meet employee expectations for ‘anytime, anywhere’ tools that streamline work instead of getting in the way.
Gain access to real-time information and intuitive analytics tools that provide the insights they need, when they need them, to make better business decisions.
Customer expectations are changing post-pandemic. Consider how your people will use technology to connect with customers as well as with each other.
Most modern cloud collaboration platforms include analytics tools that help your business understand usage patterns and trends, so you can build on what’s working well and correct anything that isn’t.
Customer Experience (CX) is tied directly to Employee Experience (EX). When your people are empowered to work in hybrid or remote settings and given the tools to make informed decisions and interactions with customers, they’ll feel more positive and engaged.
Consider your customers within your hybrid strategy
SUSTAIN
by Delivering Personalized Digital
The virtual space is continuously evolving, and personalization is at the forefront of today’s iteration. Both employees and customers expect ease of interaction, individualized attention, and a sense of care and concern from their online experiences.
We’re at the point where virtual can feel like real life.
With more work taking place in a digital-first space and an increasingly decentralized workforce, a reliable means of leaning in and reaching out is vital. Technology that enables easy conference calls and video chats helps everyone stay connected and get the support they need with just a click.
This trend extends: EX is tied directly to CX.
With human interactions now more limited, customers have placed a higher value on the interactions they do get. Customers are increasingly sensitive to the person on the other end of the line. Equipping your employees to work in hybrid or remote settings and giving them the tools to make informed decisions at any point in the customer journey makes everyone feel empowered and better equipped for more efficient and productive work.
This same principle applies to employees – do you have technology that adapts to individuality?
of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations
66
13
Whether you’re preparing for a move to the cloud or modernizing your on-premises technology through subscription, smart integrations, or software assurance, Mitel makes it simple and convenient.
DELIVER
With options from real-time instant messaging to team workspaces, video conferencing, and collaborative desktop sharing, Mitel will transform the way your people work.
How? Little things make a big difference. In today’s omnichannel environment we deliver easy set-up and seamless transitions from one modality to the next. Now you can empower customers to engage with you on their terms while optimizing your workforce.
of customers say a pleasant representative was key to their positive service experience
68
Mitel Equips Your Agents to
AN EXCELLENT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Get ready to elevate your EX with features like:
File sharing
To-do creating/tracking
Data storing/archiving by project, subject, or person
Mirroring of conversations across all devices in real-time
ARE YOU READY
to exceed expectations?
As the world and the ways we work continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever to make sure your employees have the tools they need to communicate and collaborate in ways that work best for them. Mitel and its Certified Partners can ensure you have the communications technology necessary to unlock enhanced experiences and loyalty for customers and employees alike.
You can depend on us to deliver communications experiences that empower your organisation to thrive in a changing world, by making communication and collaboration seamless across your entire organisation.
Contact us today
experience at
www.mitel.com/contact
or call 844.YES.MITEL.
Resources:
1. https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/customer-expectations/ 2. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/solutions/451-research 3. https://business.americanexpress.com/sg/business-trends-insights/thought-leadership/american-express-global-customer-barometer-2017
to find out how we can elevate your technology
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