Blog

The year of COVID has passed, the dust has settled, and we find ourselves in the “new normal” where more workplaces have become either permanently remote or blended. Remote work has plenty of benefits, but given the physical distance, many new challenges have risen, making performance management more dynamic than ever before.

This blog is the second in a series on digital channel management. In the first installment, we talked about how the proliferation of digital channels is changing the customer journey – and how businesses are adapting.

Not long ago, consumers looking to contact the companies they did business with had to contain their outreach to the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., between Monday and Friday. If they had an option other than the phone, such as email or chat, they likely had to provide their information anew on each channel. Companies tightly controlled where interactions between its agents and customers happened, and they frequently made it too difficult for consumers to get the level of help and service they needed, CX futurist Blake Morgan asserted in Forbes.

When it comes to employee engagement, the research and survey data consistently find that engaged employees perform better, churn less, and are happier at work. That’s not surprising. The tricky part is knowing how to foster engagement such that employees are motivated, personally invested in their work, and committed to their own success and the success of the business.

When a customer reaches out to an organization, they care about one thing – getting the right information, answer, or successful and rapid completion of a transaction. Customers are not concerned about which department they are supposed to contact, only that their issue is addressed and resolved

Many contact center directors and managers are already familiar with sophisticated workforce management solutions, like NICE Workforce Management (WFM), that automate forecasting and scheduling. But leaders often haven’t considered other workforce management functions that are ripe for innovation in enterprise technology.

Organizations can train and incentivize employees until the cows come home and still not achieve the performance goals they desire. Furthermore, employees may be trying their best to meet KPI goals and receive the promised rewards, yet they still fall short and are not sure how or what to change. In situations like these, performance coaching can make all the difference.