Improving Customer Experience Means Improving Employee Experience: Start by Investing in a UCaaS Solution

Eighty-five percent of executives surveyed by IDC agree that employee experience (EX) directly affects customer experience (CX), customer satisfaction, and revenue. Employee expectations for their workplace experience, though, are now higher than ever. What are you doing to ensure the best experience for your employees?

Strong leadership, vision & opportunity, and workplace culture are table stakes. Most employees’ top priority is to be able to work more easily and flexibly. Your communications solution capabilities are a key element in supporting seamless flexibility, from wherever your employees may be working. Enter the flexible capabilities of a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solution.

UCaaS has become essential for many organizations worldwide, from small companies with a handful of workers to large enterprises with thousands of people working across multiple locations. Here’s how UCaaS targets the three biggest culprits of poor employee (and subsequently, customer) experience and churn: lack of work-life balance, poor management, and lack of learning opportunities.

Work Flexibility Leads to Employee Productivity

The pandemic created massive burnout while reminding us how important our home life is. Now, nearly 60% of job seekers view poor work-life balance as a deal breaker.  

Who says someone can’t work from home if their child’s daycare closes due to illness or at a coffee shop while visiting family out-of-state? The best UCaaS solutions make this flexibility not just feasible but ideal. You can use UCaaS as part of a softphone on your laptop, as a mobile app on your smartphone or tablet, or as cloud software on your desktop. There are no limitations or barriers to how work gets done.   

Avaya’s UCaaS solution, Avaya Cloud Office® by RingCentral, takes this one step further with built-in AI capabilities like real-time closed captioning and noise cancellation that quiets distracting sounds like barking dogs, background chatter, and even the sound of keystrokes. These features are especially great for remote contact center agents, and there are just as many tools for managers to ensure Quality Assurance and Quality of Service as if they were walking the contact center floor.

Customers won’t know any of this is happening behind the scenes, only that they’re getting better service than they do at most other companies. Better employee experience equals better customer experience equals higher customer lifetime value.

Behind Productive Employees is Strong Management

Strong management is defined by providing empowerment and outstanding leadership. When your employees are equipped with the right tools, feel they can trust their management, and have defined goals, a greater customer experience is sure to follow. A UCaaS solution contributes to strong management by hitting those three points.

First, UCaaS provides communication tools that make conversations and information-sharing fast and easy, regardless of role or location. Employees will have the data they need at their fingertips from any device at any time. They’ll feel empowered by the ability to act quickly, and your customers will get what they want faster.

Trust between a team and their manager is built through open communication and transparency. UCaaS puts several communication channels into one which allows you and your team to connect in elevated ways. For example, a phone call can escalate into a working feedback session by seamlessly transitioning to screen sharing on a video call. Additionally, it’s easy to connect with your remote employees through virtual “watercooler” meetups to improve team relationships. The flexibility of a UCaaS solution enables you to improve employee trust in ways that fit your unique communication style.

Lastly, it’s difficult for employees to feel like they are being productive if they don’t have well-defined goals to work against. Avaya Cloud Office can contribute to defining goals through capabilities like task management and live reporting. Managers can assign tasks to teams or individuals to keep projects on track and use data like call metrics to set KPIs for employees that spend a lot of time communicating with customers.

Work Should Be an Opportunity to Continually Learn and Improve

Do your employees feel like they’re learning and growing with your company? In one study, 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in helping them learn. This is the simplest thing you can do to keep your people happy and create a stellar workplace culture.

At its base level, UCaaS is great for giving employees the opportunity to learn, grow, and improve through information sharing and integrated applications. From file sharing to video conferencing, UCaaS solutions have capabilities that facilitate knowledge sharing between teams and employees. The seamless integration between capabilities helps break down information silos, empowering employees to collaborate effectively and grow their knowledge base. Some solutions take this one step further by integrating communications into your larger business ecosystem. For example, imagine customer calls being connected to your CRM system — your employees would be more quickly equipped with customer information and more able to provide a positive customer experience.

If You Take Care of Your Employees, They’ll Take Care of Your Customers

From soon-to-retire Baby Boomers to entrepreneurial Gen Z’ers, the biggest culprits of poor employee (and subsequently, customer) experience are the same:. lack of work-life balance, poor management, and lack of learning opportunities. UCaaS is an easy way to start immediately improving both EX and CX.

If you’re ready to take your company’s next step, check out Avaya’s award-winning UCaaS solution – Avaya Cloud Office. See the solution in action.