Every organisation has its own unique pandemic transformation story. Yet, from overnight shifts to remote work to building parent-friendly policies, one thing every business had in common was the need to rapidly adapt their working practices.
For many customer-centric industries, from travel to hospitality, finance, and more, this need for adaptation was twofold. Beyond the immediate impact on internal teams, these sectors also had to manage a simultaneous increase in customer support requests, as even the best-laid plans had to quickly change. This meant that for many organisations, customer support—and the call centres that enable it—became a critical pillar of their pandemic response.
Jeff Reekers, Chief Marketing Officer of cloud-based voice platform Aircall, joined UC Today to reflect on how the initial pandemic shock has revealed the fundamentals of creating resilient, hybrid-ready customer support practices that prioritise both team and customer experience.
Reimagining the call centre
Reekers’ vision of call centres marks a striking contrast to the outdated idea many of us might have of old office blocks, long rows of desks, and thousands of analogue phones. Likewise, he swiftly rejects the similarly dated notion that call centres are only relevant to the world’s largest organisations.
“Call centres are often associated with only large companies, but Aircall has been designed for businesses with any number of customer service representatives. Our goal is to remove the barriers to setting up an efficient, effective enterprise-grade call centre,” he explains.
In the wake of the pandemic, it’s clearer than ever to Reekers that flexible, agile and remote-ready call centres are a powerful tool for businesses of any shape or size. Yet, as the pandemic revealed, there’s no crystal ball that will highlight exactly when demand for customer support might increase. That’s why Aircall has focused on ensuring its solution can roll out and scale rapidly. “Aircall lets you easily set up a call centre anywhere in the world in minutes, without any IT infrastructure needed. Our solution was born in the cloud, so it was already remote by default—before the world was forced to go remote by default,” Reekers says.
“In practice, that means our partners can onboard teammates seamlessly, gain visibility of real-time analytics and insights into how agents are performing and scale their users independently without contacting Aircall,” he adds.
But for Reekers, the pandemic revealed more than just the importance of speed and scale. It also highlighted the value of the experience for customers and workers and, underpinning that experience, the vital need for empathy.
Building an engaging and satisfying support environment
“Before we had to work remotely, many believed that productivity would go down, but in most companies, we’ve actually seen it increase,” Reekers notes. And it’s this positive upending of expectations that he thinks can provide the key to better remote-friendly work environments.
“We have to move away a little bit from the mindset that we have to be on the floor, keeping an eye on individuals. Remote work companies need to build trust and reassure their teams that they are acting with their best interests in mind,” Reekers goes on.
Reekers’ comments are particularly pertinent at a time in which businesses are experiencing the ‘Great Resignation’, with many countries reporting record job vacancies as millions of people change roles and seek new opportunities.
According to Reekers, giving teams the right tools and technology is key to not only tapping into that remote-work productivity bump but also building satisfying and engaging workplaces that will attract and retain the best talent.