To say that these are exceptionally busy, highly unpredictable times is putting it mildly. No doubt you have faced challenges in the last eight weeks that you could not have even dreamed of just a few months ago.

This pandemic has likely turned your employees’ and customers’ worlds upside down. They have suddenly been forced into a work-from-home environment, trying to balance personal and professional responsibilities that are now blending more than ever.

Given these turbulent times and the unpredictability of what’s coming next, it’s fair to say that many organizations are taking it day by day.

Businesses and organizations around the world have had to quickly adjust to a world they could not have seen coming or properly prepared for. A global—and almost overnight—shift to working from home has taken place. Combined with the relentless speed of the modern world, today’s distinct demands have tested even the strongest, most agile organizations.

As we’ve all seen, no industry or geography has been immune from these events. However, despite these difficulties to overcome, it’s fair to say that how you respond to your customers now and going forward will likely have a huge impact on the future of your brand.

So much is still unknown—but one thing is already known. Your customers will remember which companies treated them right in these tough times and helped them navigate the crisis. The perhaps slightly unsettling corollary to this is they will also remember which brands made things needlessly difficult and did not adapt to the times.

So we can agree that long-term customer loyalty is at stake. It’s essential that your organization leverages the right tools and best practices to not only survive this crisis, but to thrive on the other side.

One thing we’re not lacking in today’s times: information. It’s constant and seemingly endless—coming from all directions. However, have you noticed that not all of it is helpful? What you need right now is not an endless source of what-if-this-happens in six months. Chances are what you need right now is an information source that demonstrates an understanding of what you’re going through. Insights from people who are walking through the same challenges you are and can offer real, tactical advice.

Where do you start?

Adapt and Respond to a New World

In the midst of a pandemic, you need to effectively adapt and respond to the rapidly changing circumstances facing your customers. To do that, you first have to listen to your customers. What are they telling you—what are their pain points right now?

If you aren’t hearing from them, have you reached out to them?

During this crisis, when Verint realized how fast the world had to change, we stepped in to help. Our first priority has been to help organizations better leverage their current investments to adapt and respond to this new world—while offering critical work-from-home insights. When we spoke to our customers, the most urgent challenges were wild swings in interaction volumes combined with employee schedules, productivity and communication patterns that have been upended.

To succeed in the face of these challenges, it is essential that organizations leverage the right tools and best practices. Verint has defined best practices and special programs around how to:

• Manage remote workers
• Maintain employee engagement
• Understand productivity
• Listen to your customers and employees

In a world where adapting and responding well can make an immediate and long-term impact, we’re taking this responsibility very seriously. As we all know, a top challenge facing companies today is working from home. Millions of workers, likely including your own contact center agents and back office workers, have been asked to work at home. This transition can be difficult for employees and managers alike.

As your employees adapt to a new work-from-home environment, they of course face new challenges. Many employees and managers are facing difficulties staying connected. You need to navigate:

• Employees’ feelings of isolation and need for connection to cope well—while dealing with new distractions
• Effective communication of critical information from leadership
• Employees needing to communicate scheduling issues to you quickly
• Listening to employees and capturing their experiences as they adapt to working from home
• Unpredictable staffing levels and new flexibility requirements
• Remote worker communication and productivity issues
• Circumstances such as childcare and managing healthcare for loved ones
• Identifying changes in trends for training and staffing purposes.

Flexibility and communication are more important than ever.  Workforce management (WFM) capabilities such as shift-swapping, shift request changes, PTO requests, and mobile can make life for agents and managers easier when taking the work from home journey.

Verint customer (and longtime WFM user) U-Haul addressed such challenges on a webinar as part of our Adapt and Respond Educational Series. Are you interested in hearing what this long-time customer had to say about weathering today’s work-from-home storms today? Keep reading—we’ll tell you how you can learn more.

Sudden surges in remote workers and new types of customer questions require a coordinated and consistent response. Winging it is not an option. You need immediate insights to support your employees and customers through this crisis—insights upon which people are depending.

Consider Changing the Balance of Customer Interaction Types

We all know that normal, predictable, and regular do not describe today’s reality. Employees must learn to answer customer inquiries in a more distraction-filled environment, while customers are asking entirely new types of questions. In some cases, interaction volumes have more than tripled, and the types of questions being asked are entirely different from those during normal circumstances. This interaction spike, paired with unpredictable staffing levels, leads to hold times that are unacceptable for your customer experience.

Organizations must quickly find a way to determine what questions are most critical to be handled on the phone, and deflect the others to self-service channels. Verint has provided best practices and programs to help organizations:

• Provide accurate information to customers and employees
• Recognize the needs of your employees and address them rapidly
• Make it easy for customers and employees to be heard
• Provide lower-cost channels that still offer top-notch customer experience
• Uncover trends quickly
• Share data across your organization
• Act promptly to improve experiences.

In times like these, it is important to share customer issues, resolution strategies, timelines, or changes to external messages or priorities. In a world changing as fast as ours is, the importance of acting on insights cannot be overstated.

We are all adapting to this constantly evolving, unpredictable world. Verint realized early on that we wanted to create a series of webinars addressing how customers can adapt faster—and respond smarter—to COVID-19 related business challenges. Over the past several weeks, Verint has produced the Adapt and Respond Educational Series—these educational webinars include experts from within our customer base and industry-leading analysts that have a close eye on what’s going on—and have for many years.

Webinar series participants have heard from well-known industry experts such as Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting, Ian Jacobs, Principal Analyst from Forrester Research, and Faith Adams, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research. Others offering first-hand advice for navigating this crisis include leading organizaitons such as U-Haul, Navy Federal Credit Union, Virginia Lottery, and Everise. These organizations offer real-world, practical information that can be applied quickly—no matter your industry or where you do business.

These webinars provide actionable tips and tricks to best use your contact center solutions to help employees work from home and continue to meet your customers’ needs. Long-time Verint customer whose name we all recognize, U-Haul, recently shared their experiences of working from home for ten years. Even with all that experience, this company had to pivot as well. Joel White, Forecasting Manager at U-Haul, shared some tips and best practices to help organizations that may not be experienced with work-at-home issues. His insights can help speed up the adjustment.   

And there’s plenty of more where that came from! Check out what Joel shared—and explore the extensive collection of insights we’ve gathered as part of this series.

The Adapt and Respond Educational Series is your chance to find what you need now to face and overcome today’s challenges. Learn more about this series here. For more about Verint products and services, please visit www.verint.com.

The Adapt and Respond Educational Series is your chance to find what you need now to face and overcome today’s challenges. Learn more at https://content.verint.com/LP=4998.
For more about Verint products and services, please visit
www.verint.com.