After COVID-19, businesses are realizing that working from remote locations — once questioned —turned out to be far more effective than imagined. Globally, over a quarter, employees were working from remote locations and not in any of their offices. Even though most of the companies and employees were not trained or prepared for this shift, the inevitable situation forced all of us to quickly learn and adapt to the situation. According to this study by 2024, 60% of the workforce in the US will be working remotely.
Increase in the talent pool
Companies get access to a wider and deeper CX talent pool due to the fact that the talent is not tied to the vicinity or a location like it used to be with office establishments. If the companies move towards a gig-based model, they further expand the access to a gig workforce. Gig — a rising phenomenon — is a new wave of flexible staffing model. About 36% of US workers are now involved in the gig economy. And studies reflect that it is not adopted by one particular demographics, rather diversified. CX workers who enjoy greater flexibility signup with this model — be it a downsized employee in mid-40s to a gen-z starting the career.
Infrastructure and investments
CX Companies are not forcing themselves to adopt the remote work model anymore. CX leaders are not waiting for the crisis to get over to come back and resume work. Rather companies are shifting the CX working models to the alternate. Shifting to remote contact centres could be just the first step. Building the operations around it with people and processes will be critical and continuous. We can see a surge in spends towards the support tools like collaboration, customer tracking, remote CRM, data security, hardware and remote set up.
Leadership approach
Communication and collaboration is a critical component in the remote CX work model. The experience of handling the floor in physical offices, when shifts to voice calls, video screens or chat windows, can get grinding to CX managers. The CX leaders are investing time and efforts in building a remote CX work culture to increase levels of trust and commitments.
Performance-based programs
Incentives, rewards, variable work timing, SLAs and metrics,
Onsite or remote, the KPIs may not change much. However, incentivizing and rewards may change to newer parameters associated with remote working. One example can be the shift from attendance to performance. Whether the company is operating remote with a gig-based model or FTE, performance-based pay will kick in.