What's a good way to improve customer experience (CX), satisfaction, and loyalty? Start by increasing employee engagement. Organizations with highly engaged employees can typically expect higher productivity, quality, and employee retention. And when those employees are customer service agents, it can positively impact a business's relationship with their customers.

When speaking with a contact center agent that is in the sales hospitality industry to learn about how call center work from home has been, they expressed two things. First, their appreciation for their continued employment. Then, a growing concern about going back to the office.

Now’s the time to step back and look at how you involve agents in your contact center quality management. Ensuring that they have a stake in the process—and engaging them in your quality process from the ground up—is a huge motivating factor that will help your agents (and your contact center) excel.

Has the pandemic permanently changed the way people work? Specifically, are all the employees currently working from home really going back to the office? It's hard to see how. In fact, some employers have already announced permanent changes.

Not much can be done with topline, so the focus is now shifting to bottom line and many companies across industries are looking to improve efficiencies, increase productivity and outright eliminate jobs. And, customer service and contact center functions among others are definitely starting to look at cutting costs. Infact, a recent IDG CIO Covid-19 research said that the #1 priority for leaders in the COVID-19 crisis, is process efficiency to drive costs down.

Last week, I noticed headlines announcing yet another business that’s decided it “won’t reopen half its offices after pandemic, amid restructuring and work-from-home success”. Maybe that’s not so shocking, though, considering that work-from-home contact center agents have an 80% better retention rate than those working out of a physical call center (according to a recent ICMI benchmark study on agent experience).

As the world shrinks and is more connected, technology enables companies of all sizes to scale globally. Whether a European organization is looking to expand into other European countries, or a U.S.-based company is expanding across the pond, adapting products and brand awareness to multiple new markets and cultures is not only doable but is often necessary for growth and survival.