The impact of hybrid working on contact centers
Hybrid working is here to stay, but what does this mean for contact center employees and customers?
Nicola Millar, principal partner for innovation at BT, shared her research into the changing face of customer centers, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic made hybrid working commonplace among multiple industry sectors. Her energetic presentation at CX Network Live: Contact Centers 2022 focused on call center employees whose daily experience of work has changed, especially when decentralization means that “call centers are maybe not centers” anymore.
She said that the pandemic accelerated many processes that had already started prior to 2020, including moving call centers to a hybrid model, with a focus on communication rather than commuting. Her own experiences with testing hybrid working for contact centers date back to 1992, when she was involved in a trial for BT directory inquiry advisors. The costs, however, were too high at the time for it to become a sustainable model.
In contrast, Millar said that thanks to innovations such as cloud, collaboration and connective technologies, the move to hybrid working for contact centers had been effective during the pandemic.
