As a Customer Success Manager, travel is a huge part of my job. I spend a lot of time on planes, in airports, in hotels in new cities – I’m actually writing this from a plane somewhere over the Midwestern United States. This travel has given me ample time and instances to reflect on the convenience of the cloud. Thanks to most airlines adopting Wi-Fi hotspots as an addition to their service, I now have the ability as a customer to check my email, the news, even Facebook on my flight. Thanks to NICE CXone’s platform, I can also drill down into my client’s business, see their real time data, and help with any issues that they may be having – even at 30,000 feet. That’s the beauty of the cloud, and no one does it better than we do.
What does this mean for you? It means that you, as a contact center manager, do not have to physically be at your center to manage every little thing. Problem came up? It’s a Saturday morning and you’re still home in your pajamas? No problem – you can log into the system and have the same exact experience navigating the platform that you would from the office. None of your access is limited because you’re at home. Worried about your late night agent’s productivity? You can have a real time reporting dashboard pulled up on your iPad as you watch the evening news. Need to reset that late night agent’s password because they forgot it AGAIN and locked themselves out? Something else you can do from the comfort of your own home. (Or plane, or hotel room, or airport lobby…) I’m sure you can see that the list goes on.
While the convenience factor is great, allowing you visibility to check in or keep up with the pulse of your center no matter your location, we need to also consider the other implications of my ability to stare at my agents’ productivity mid-flight: disaster recovery. While I as a supervisor/manager have the ability to login and check my center’s stats from wherever my internet connection might be, my agents also have this same ability to access the contact management software. All they need is a computer with a good internet connection and a phone. I have seen this come into play when large centers have been involved in weather emergencies and have not missed a beat with their traffic. The agents did not have to brave the dangerous weather to make it into the office, but did not miss a shift. The center did not have to turn away business or calls, because their agents were dutifully fielding them from home due to the disaster. This could apply in so many situations – what if the construction team for the new Starbucks across the street accidentally cut the fiber running to your building? Thanks to NICE CXone's platform, you don’t have to miss any business - your agents can take calls from an alternate location while you wait for the repairs to be made. On a smaller scale, it also allows you to offer your agents the ability to work from home if they are ill, or as a perk of tenure.
There are so many benefits of the cloud, and the ability to work from anywhere with a phone and a good internet connection is definitely among them. Sometimes it takes solving a problem mid-air when your hands would have otherwise been tied to drive this home for you and remind you why you love it so much.
