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Work from anywhere: the future of customer service

Remote working has increased significantly in the past years. Also in customer service departments. More and more agents are working from home, which benefits both companies and employees. What are these benefits and which challenges do companies need to overcome?

Working with remote teams

Working from anywhere was already increasing before the pandemic. Cloud companies, especially, already worked with remote teams. Even across different time zones. They don’t need office space and simply meet online. During the lockdowns, many companies were forced to implement that same strategy. People set up their offices at home and business continued as usual.

 

Benefits for employees

Employees quickly discovered that working from home came with several benefits. It enabled them to be more flexible with their work hours, spend more time with their family (even though this was less evident during the pandemic when families were forced to be at home together) and spend less time commuting. And companies discovered it wasn’t half as bad as expected.

 

Benefits for companies

After the pandemic, many companies adopted a more hybrid strategy with employees combining working from home and from the office depending on their role and type of work. Other companies have embraced the work from home strategy, at least for some departments. Customer service is one of those departments that don’t necessarily need to work from the office because of the benefits it provides, like:

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The benefits

Cost savings

Remote teams allow companies to save on costs related to office space, utilities, and equipment

Increased productivity

With remote work, customer service agents experience less distractions and can focus on their work, leading to increased productivity and better performance

Access to a larger pool of talent

By allowing customer support teams to work remotely, companies can access a larger pool of potential employees. New employees don’t necessarily have to live in the same area

Improved customer experience

Having a larger pool of customer service representatives to handle support inquiries, improves response times and reduces customer wait times

Increased agility

Remote work can make it easier for companies to scale their customer support operations up or down as needed. For example, if a company experiences a sudden influx of customer inquiries, it can quickly bring on additional remote customer support team members to handle the increased volume.

Decreased employee turnover

Working from home significantly increases the work-life balance, which leads to improved job satisfaction and reduced turnover rates

Remote working customer service challenges

Is it all fun and games? That depends. To implement a successful work from anywhere strategy in a customer service environment, you need to identify potential challenges such as ensuring a consistent customer experience, maintaining security and compliance, and overcoming technical difficulties.

 

The role of customer service software

These technical difficulties are often linked to the customer service software that is used. Working with on-premise customer service software makes it hard to work from a different location. This has caused many companies to switch to the cloud. Cloud platforms provide remote access to customer data and resources and automate manual tasks to improve efficiency and productivity. This enables customer service representatives to work any time, anywhere in the same way.

 

Are you ready?

Once you get your tech stack sorted out and up and running smoothly, everyone benefits. Your company, people and customers. Your company saves costs and increases productivity, your team works more efficiently and enjoys a better work-life balance and your customers benefit from an improved customer experience. Is your company ready for this future?

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