In yet another week of enthralling mergers, partnerships and acquisitions, one of the most prominent stories the dedicated CX Today team has covered is the announcement that high street fashion giant Very will move to a hybrid working model.
The company gave us a sneak peek at their lavish and luxurious Liverpool HQ, with plush sofas, clinically clean workspaces and luscious lighting that made the offices for their incredibly talented staff enviously inviting.
Sarah Willett, chief people officer at The Very Group, said: “Remote working during Covid-19 has seen our people operate with even greater ingenuity at a time when we’re attracting record numbers of new customers. ‘
“Our colleagues have told us they like the greater flexibility that comes with working from home and when the UK starts re-opening, we’ll make some permanent changes to the way we work.”
Her words ring true now more than ever. The space, as beautiful as it is, isn’t the point. It’s the fact they’re one of the first major retailers that have announced their workforce management intentions, and that they themselves are moving ahead with the times.
I spoke to Richard Gregory, senior account executive at top CX solutions provider Odigo in an exclusive interview this week about whether businesses should be promoting channels that are an alternative to voice, and whether the phone is likely to be knocked off the top spot as the preferred method of contact for customers. During our virtual chat over Zoom, he told me he believed workplaces would opt for the more popular hybrid working model. But will he be right?
Hybrid workplaces offer the best of both worlds when it comes to both business and their agents. They allow a stagnated approach to welcoming teams back to offices aiding social distancing, agents can enjoy an improved work-life balance while enjoying face-to-face relationships with their colleagues and the local economy gets a much-needed reboot from lunches and breaks spent outside. Businesses can enjoy a bustling office once again and manage their agents through physical engagement. Everyone’s a winner, it seems.
And on the trending theme of working from home, this week also saw Avaya introduce remote working Alexa devices. Avaya announced two new video devices designed to significantly improve workstream collaboration, including a redesigned Avaya Vantage K155 with Amazon Alexa built-in, as well as a new Avaya Huddle Camera HC010. Why is this significant? Well it’s all about aiding the home working agent with better camera functions, sound qualities and better screen sharing technology for the many conference calls to either present or take part in.
This, to me, signals a shift to the permanent working from home option for many organisations. What will be of interest in the coming weeks and months is which markets will opt for what model. Will the finance sector choose hybrid so account holders can engage face-to-face with their branches or have banks and building societies done enough in the past 12 months to convince customer they have the right technologies to keep their money safe? Will patients book their GP appointments predominately online now rather than make the effort to call a surgery? And will telephone appointments become a triage system for the healthcare sector?
So, whether organisations, businesses and brands opt for hybrid or working from home models this year, we just don’t know. But one thing is certain – the old way of life is most definitely a thing of the past.
