Although we have focused a lot on the positives for the business of the alternative working method that many companies have been forced into, it is interesting to evaluate the positive to the negative points of remote working.
In most situations you will find that companies that adopt more relaxed outlooks and have flexible working in place have higher productivity and customer satisfaction, a study from Quarterly Journal of Economics said that - ‘ remote working allows staff to get through 13% more requests each day’
So what are the main benefits of remote working for customers?…
When you are confined to searching for talent that is within a certain area of an office, your talent pool immediately shrinks. This can lead to sub-par expertise in your company and could have a negative effect on the customer experience.
Remote working opens up the search area substantially and means your customers are benefiting from the best service with no restrictions.
By enabling employees to work from home, organizations can be more agile and nimble in responding to specific events or seasons that will mandate extra attention be given to customers e.g. hiring a few part-time workers on a short term contract to cover the higher demand at specific seasonal periods. This can be easily done as you have a much wider choice of prospective employees (as stated previously), you can even tap in on the groups that otherwise may not be able to come and work for your office e.g. stay at home mums.
Although this is mainly a bonus for the employee/business it has such a positive impact on the productivity and work ethic that it will greatly benefit the customer.
A lot of management is against remote working as it means they have to loosen the reigns and they don’t have ‘control’ over the goings-on of their employees. However, the majority of employees enjoy remote work because of the freedom and flexibility it brings. If workers start to feel micromanaged it will lead to several negative outcomes, including a negative work environment, that will only be passed along to the customer and potentially negatively affect business. Therefore remote working can combat this, making employees feel trusted and enjoy the flexibility of their new working environment. Hopefully, this will be reflected in their management of the customer experience.
As many people speculate, it is likely that a lot of companies won’t rush to go ‘back to normal’ and in the future, we may be seeing a lot more companies adopt the flexible working and ‘work from home’ methods hopefully resulting in a positive impact for customers overall.
No matter what, Virtual Landlines UK customer service team is here to help for any of your queries from virtual number choice to how to set up voicemail to email recording.
+44 (0) 203 488 0088 vlteam@buzznetworks.co.uk
Virtual Landline
Unit 6, Glenmore Business Park
Blackhill Road
Poole
Dorset BH16 6NL