January 28, 2020

Failure to put employees at heart of data strategy costs UK firms £10bn in lost productivity

A new report from Qlik and Accenture, titled “The Human Impact of Data Literacy” and conducted on behalf of The Data Literacy Project, claims that while most organisations understand the incredible opportunity of data, a gap has emerged between organisations’ aspirations to be data-driven and their employees’ ability to create business value with data. The report argues that data is a ‘gold mine’ that can fuel a culture of innovation and growth as part of a data strategy. However, when employees struggle to make sense of data, productivity and business value can be affected.

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January 28, 2020

Equal pay: women too polite to ask for more money

by Jackie Le Poidevin • News, Workplace

Millions of women could be missing out on higher salaries as 82 percent never negotiate their pay when applying for jobs, new research has claimed. The fear of being “rude” or “ungrateful”, compounded by concerns from 21 percent that asking for equal pay could jeopardise benefits such as maternity leave or flexible working, is silencing women when it comes to money, the survey of 1,000 working women suggests. (more…)

January 24, 2020

AI to do two-thirds of managers’ routine work by 2024

by Jackie Le Poidevin • News, Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies such as virtual personal assistants and chatbots will replace 69 percent of managers’ workload by 2024, Gartner, Inc. has predicted. As well as taking over routine tasks, AI will also make work more accessible for employees with disabilities, a new report from the research and advisory company claims (registration required). (more…)

January 17, 2020

HR struggles to develop high-quality leadership talent

by Jackie Le Poidevin • Business, News

More than one-third of HR chiefs are struggling to develop effective senior leaders and only half of 2,800 surveyed leaders believe they are well-equipped to provide the leadership to guide their company in the future, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Efforts to tackle the emerging issues of the 2020s and beyond – including public pressure for business transparency, the rise of automation and the creation of never-before-seen jobs – will be fruitless unless HR managers find ways to nurture and retain capable future leaders, the research and advisory company concludes. (more…)

January 17, 2020

Structure of teams could be source of competitive advantage

by Neil Franklin • News

Cass Business School and Slack have published new research into the nature future of teamwork which identifies the relationships between team alignment and execution, drivers for competitive advantage, and the role of new workplace technologies. It suggests that teams are the fundamental building blocks of modern organisations but their role in delivering better outcomes for an organisation is still undervalued. (more…)

January 16, 2020

Employers shift focus to wellbeing and employee benefits

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing

New research from Aon claims that employers have increased their strategic focus on both emotional and financial wellbeing programmes, while physical wellbeing programmes have remained largely static. Aon’s UK Benefits & Trends 2020 Survey (registration) shows that 51 percent of employers now have financial wellbeing strategies in place, up from 21 percent three years ago, while 68 percent have emotional wellbeing strategies, up from 41 percent. These were the least developed pillars of employee wellbeing when Aon asked organisations in its 2017 UK Health Survey. (more…)

January 13, 2020

The changing expectations of call and contact centres

by Freddie Steele • Company news

Ever since call centres were introduced as a business function in the mid-20th century, they have been subject to plenty of change and transformation. Customer expectations have been on a gradual rise, and CX strategists and leaders have had to adapt to meet these increased demands. Previously, call and contact centres were viewed as a cost centre – whereby the primary goal was to run them as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, whilst still being able to respond to customers competently. Nowadays, customer experience is being ramped up on the priorities list, with call and contact centre success shown to be a key driver for customer retention, enrichment and advocacy.

Most importantly, customer expectations have evolved which has put a great strain on how call and contact centres adapt. Customers now expect customer service to quick, convenient and available 24/7.

What do customers want from contact centres?

Quicker responses

Living in a social media world has not only brought plenty of benefits for businesses, but also presented its fair share of challenges. With consumers now having the ability to communicate and get instant information online, contact centres have had the same expectations placed on them to provide quick response times whilst still maintaining high service levels.

A study conducted by Lithium Technologies found that when asking about a product or service, 66 percent of consumers expect a response to their query on the same day, and over 40 percent expect a reply within the hour. This has put a large strain on contact centres to improve efficiency and be able to respond so quickly to customer queries.

Convenience

In addition to wanting a quicker service, customers today also want convenience. ‘Gen Z’, having grown up with social media and digital technologies are used to shopping, browsing and completing tasks online through research and self-informing. What does that mean for contact centres?

Customers don’t want to call contact centres and wait to be put through to the right advisor – It isn’t the most convenient option anymore. What customers want instead is the ability to solve the issue themselves using self-serve/ FAQ sheets, or at least to see if they can solve the problem before having to get in touch with an advisor.

A study carried out by Zendesk found that 67 percent of consumers preferred using a self-serve portal when looking to help themselves online, with 40 percent of customers calling a contact centre only after they have at least attempted to find their solution on the internet first.

More availability

On top of wanting a quicker service and convenience, customers are also expecting help to be readily available whenever and wherever they need it.

Today’s customers want to be able to get in touch with a company across multiple channels and be able to hop in between channels to continue their interaction. For example, a customer wants to be able to message a chatbot online, then follow up with a phone call, and expect the company know their name, information and query. These conversations should be able to take place across a whole host of channels including social media, websites, mobile, text, chatbots, telephone, email, self-serve and more.

By having interactions across multiple channels, customers also expect help in one form or another to be available 24/7. Banks, for example, outsource call centre functions to countries abroad to ensure customers calling in the later hours have a representative that they can speak to.

This piece has been published in partnership with Call & Contact Centre Expo

Image by Stefan Kuhn

January 13, 2020

Other things being equal, this year will see the end of open plan and start of a four day week

by Mark Eltringham • Features

You’ll only get one prediction from me this year and that’s about how all of the other workplace predictions will be cut and paste jobs from the past three decades and more. If you want to take a cynical approach to the whole thing, you’ll find one from your humble servant here. Apart from that, if you only read one set of actual predictions for 2020 or even the Twenties (that’ll take some getting used to), then make it this from an author also jaded and burdened by too many glib pronouncements about work and workplaces in general and the annual parade of predictable predictions in particular. (more…)

January 10, 2020

Outdated technology continues to ruin people`s days

by Freddie Steele • Company news, Technology

New research by Currys PC World in collaboration with technology expert Theo Priestley claims that outdated technology and delays in finding fixes are eating into around 46 minutes of the average employee’s working day, which could cost a business approximately £2,752 a year. Time and money are not the only things lost to outdated technology, however, as half of Brits admit that it has a negative impact on their productivity in their jobs. What’s more, morale can be impacted when employees feel they have to work overtime to make up the time they have lost due to tech issues. (more…)

January 8, 2020

Majority of organisations remain unprepared for executive pay gap reporting

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Three-fifths of UK organisations are still not ready to report their executive pay gap almost twelve months after the legislation came into force, claims a new poll by HR services provider MHR. This year UK listed companies with more than 250 employees are, for the first time, obliged to publish the pay ratio between their CEO and “average” employees in early 2020 and explain the reason for their executive pay ratios. (more…)

January 3, 2020

Burnout remains a risk for workers of all generations

by Brendan Street • Comment, Wellbeing

Flexible working has become an important part of the modern UK economy, with over half of employees taking up a flexible working arrangement. However, Nuffield Health’s latest whitepaper The effects of remote working on stress, wellbeing and productivity has found while remote working is associated with higher workplace wellbeing, it can also present many business challenges including the risk of burnout for an increasingly diverse workforce. (more…)

December 19, 2019

The truth about all those workplace trends lists

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

You would not believe the number of firms that ask us to publish a list of workplace trends each week. Or maybe you would, given the number that have appeared elsewhere. Each firm perhaps convinced they are saying something original, unique or interesting, or maybe simply convinced they stand out in some way, while pushing the same timid, stale narratives about the workplace. It goes without saying that the commercialised messages often do little to shine a light on complex realities. In the words of the Scottish poet and anthropologist Andrew Lang, they use information ‘like a drunk uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination’.