For some time now, companies have been focusing more on the concept of “CX” (Customer Experience). They know that they need to provide a perfect balance of personalization, convenience, and innovation in every interaction if they want to succeed in a competitive market.

While it’s a good strategy for any company to prioritize CX, some brands have overlooked another critical experience concept in their quest to become more customer-obsessed: the employee experience.

If you want to keep your customers happy, you must first start with engaged, empowered employees. Happier team members make better agents, and better agents lead to better customer interactions. In essence, CX and EX (Employee Experience) aren’t separate initiatives – they’re two sides of the same coin.

 

What is Agent Experience?

To generate positive EX, organizations must first define what the agent experience actually is. Fortunately, this isn’t a difficult concept. The term “Agent experience” simply refers to all aspects of how your employees interact with your company.

Companies ensure a positive employee experience by prioritizing the well-being of their employees, enabling them to do their jobs effectively, and avoiding frustration as much as possible.

The factors that influence the employee experience vary from company to company.

For example, if you operate a contact center, you can ensure a positive experience by providing employees with access to quality technology, flexible work schedules, and supervisor support. In most cases, you can provide a better experience by simply listening to your employees.

 

Why is Agent Experience Important?

Happier, more satisfied, and more engaged employees ultimately lead to better results for organizations. Studies show that engaged team members are 21% more productive than their peers and also generate up to 20% more revenue than other team members. And why? Because people prefer to interact with other happy, knowledgeable people.

When we approach a customer service team and are connected to someone who is clearly exhausted, frustrated, and just itching to get their paycheck, we can tell. An employee who has had a good agent experience is more likely to be confident, well-informed, and cordial when interacting with customers.

Improving agent experience isn’t just important for CX. It directly impacts your company’s performance by determining how many employees stay with your brand. Talented employees don’t want to work at companies where they feel undervalued or burned out. In an age where people can work from anywhere, not prioritizing agent experience could mean you quickly lose your best employees to the competition.

 

The Challenge of Delivering Great Agent Experience

On the surface, creating happy agents doesn’t seem like an overly complicated concept. You simply pay attention to the needs of your employees and respond accordingly. In recent years, however, mastering the agent experience has become more difficult.

Changing work strategies such as hybrid and remote work offer new flexibility to today’s service agents, but they also bring other challenges, such as feelings of isolation and disengagement.

In addition, 70% of agents say they regularly feel overwhelmed and burned out due to the increasing demands of customer service. In today’s fast-paced service environment, only about 15% of agents are satisfied with their workload.

To make matters worse, many agents are also dissatisfied with the training and support they receive. Only 30% of agents say they feel they’re sufficiently empowered to do their jobs well. All of this shows that companies need to develop new strategies if they want to improve the agent experience and interactions with customers.

It’s not enough to simply offer employees flexible hours and good benefits. Business leaders must also pay attention to the frustrations their employees face daily.

 

How Bulb Technologies Can Help

Bulb Technologies is a leader in developing software solutions and platforms for businesses focused on digital transformation and customer experience. However, we don’t just focus on “CX”. We believe in the power of “Total Experience,” which means our platform addresses all parts of the customer experience ecosystem – including the agent experience.

We develop tools that support agents and customers at the same time, providing more assistance and guidance to both parties in the conversation. In this way, we enable companies to provide agents with a more valuable experience:

• All-in-one omnichannel tools: Switching between a variety of different apps and tools to serve today’s omnichannel customers is time-consuming and frustrating for agents. These disparate tools not only waste time but also make it difficult to retain contextual information throughout the customer journey. Our all-in-one omnichannel environments give agents access to all the information they need for personalized interactions in one convenient place, without the need for complicated interfaces or app changes.
• Implementing AI: Artificial intelligence can be an extremely powerful tool for agent experience. Our chatbots and virtual assistants act as partners to team members in your organization, helping them get more work done without having to worry about it. Virtual assistants can provide instant, useful access to information to streamline your employees’ workflow. At the same time, chatbots provide a useful way for teams to sort through potential customer service requests, so you can reduce the number of calls your employees handle each day.
• Workflow automation: Agent’s work delivers the best results when they can focus on serving and supporting customers. The last thing they want is to spend their days on boring repetitive tasks. Our workforce automation tools make it easy to eliminate the time-consuming chores that would otherwise take up your agent’s valuable time. We even have low-code and no-code solutions available which allow employees to build their own workflow from scratch. This means every employee has the power to improve their work experience.
• Simple, intuitive technology: The platforms offered by Bulb Technologies are simple, straightforward, and require minimal training to learn. They integrate with the tools your customer service representatives are already using, so they have access to all the resources they need in a single place. Users can customize their ecosystem to meet their specific needs, so every team member has all the tools they need at their fingertips.
• In-depth analytics: Informed employees are more productive and efficient. Integrated analytics and reporting tools in Bulb Technologies’ Cempresso DCS platform give your team members access to valuable insights on all metrics and KPIs relevant to their work. The comprehensive tools we offer can make it easier for employees to figure out what they need to do to continue delighting customers. At the same time, supervisors and managers can use their own analytical insights to track employee performance and engagement.

 

Build the Ultimate Agent Experience with Bulb Technologies

With our Total Experience platform, companies can create a powerful employee and customer experience in a convenient all-in-one environment. Our tools are easy to implement, deploy, and maintain, so business leaders spend less time worrying about technology and more time exploring new growth strategies.

An all-in-one environment gives any organization a unified suite to enhance their experience ecosystem with access to endless customization options and integrations. That means you’re not limited to a one-size-fits-all strategy. Find the Agent Experience solution that works best for your team and customers.

Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how we can help you improve your agent experience and engage your employees.

 

 

Customer service is undergoing a massive transformation, driven by the rising expectations and demands of the changing consumer landscape. According to Salesforce, 80% of customers believe that the experience provided by a brand is as important as its products and services. In addition, 66% of customers expect companies to automatically understand their needs and expectations.

Fortunately, companies are starting to respond to this changing landscape. We’ve seen the average “call center” evolve into a contact center designed to deliver a phenomenal customer experience across all channels.

With the aid of artificial intelligence, new technologies consolidate desktop applications, guide customer service agents through interactions, and provide insight into customer sentiment. Companies are even beginning to automate their CX strategies to help their employees and increase productivity. But even as companies struggle to keep up with the latest changes in the customer service landscape, the pace of evolution is rapid.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to know what’s coming.

What Does the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future will hold for customer service, we can use the trends uncovered in recent years to determine where CX is headed. Examining the evolving landscape and the many changes that have taken place within the service ecosystem over the past year offers us some important insights into what customers expect today.

Here are some of the trends you should prepare for as we head into 2023 and beyond.

1.    Frictionless, Omnichannel Experiences

In recent years, customers have begun to discover the benefits of communicating with companies across multiple channels and platforms. Long gone are the days when customers relied solely on phone calls to connect with brands. Today’s consumers expect you to know where they prefer to have their conversations and to be accessible on every channel.

Perhaps most importantly, as we develop omnichannel experiences for customer service of the future, every interaction should be “frictionless.” In other words: Not only do your customers want the ability to switch between channels when seeking information and support, but they also want to be able to move seamlessly from one platform to the next.

96% of consumers say they expect companies to make it as easy as possible for them to switch between channels. That means your backend environment should make it easy to move context from one channel to the next as the customer conversation evolves.

2.    Streamlined, Simple Interactions

Customer service in the new age must not only be omnichannel but also free of the usual hassles that today’s consumers are tired of. In today’s fast-paced world, customers are less willing to deal with long wait times, stressful self-service experiences, and understaffed customer service. They want you to solve these problems and provide a simple, flexible experience.

Companies need to upgrade their service strategies with tools that enable employees to get more done in less time. This means investing in solutions that automate repetitive tasks so employees can focus more on developing stronger customer relationships. It also means leveraging artificial intelligence for things like intelligent routing and virtual assistants that give employees quick access to relevant information about each customer’s needs.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, as customers look forward to an era of “predictive” and “proactive” service, it will become increasingly important to use intelligent tools that can detect and prevent problems before they occur. Eliminating potential problems before they occur can greatly improve the customer experience while freeing up the staff responsible for delivering excellent customer care.

3.    Augmented Customer Service Reps

As expectations rise and customer needs become more complex, customer service representatives are under greater pressure than ever before. In a world where most customers can find solutions to simple problems through a simple online search, many will only communicate with a customer service representative when they have a more complicated problem to solve.

Customer service representatives are facing increasingly complicated scenarios requiring further training and extended support. Fortunately, there are tools available to help these employees succeed. As mentioned earlier, automation solutions can help eliminate some of the repetitive tasks from an employee’s to-do list, allowing them to focus on the issues that really matter.

At the same time, smart solutions can provide team members with additional support when it comes to managing the increasing volume of support requests they receive each day. Smart chatbots can gather information about a customer before routing them to an agent, and even walk them through troubleshooting specific issues in advance.

4.    More Comprehensive Self-Service

According to Gartner, 70% of customers now use self-service channels at some point in their customer experience journey. However, only 9% of customers can fully complete their interaction with self-service applications alone. The main reason for this is that many old-fashioned bots and self-service tools simply don’t have the power to solve more complex customer problems.

As customers increasingly turn to self-service solutions to quickly resolve issues without human assistance, companies need to invest more time and effort into making these tools as intuitive and efficient as possible. This means they need to invest in solutions powered by AI, machine learning, and natural language processing and include automation.

The right tools should be able to intelligently respond to any customer question, using information from the company’s database and CRM solution. Modern self-service solutions should handle even complicated interactions without having to constantly refer customers to an agent, so customers can resolve issues faster and companies can make the best use of their human resources.

 

5.    Hyper-Personalization is a Must

As the future of customer service becomes increasingly digital, consumers are unwilling to trade personal, human experiences for convenience. They want every interaction tailored to their specific needs. This means companies need to do more to provide each customer with a unique interaction based on their specific needs.

Companies have already begun to focus more on hyper-personalized interactions by giving consumers more choices in how they interact with a brand. Today’s customers can request a video call if they want a representative to walk them through the steps of setting up a new system, or they can request a call back from a representative if a service representative is unavailable.

In the coming years, however, it’ll be critical to take this personalization strategy to the next level. Service workers, both human and digital, must be able to access up-to-date insights about a customer directly from embedded CRM systems and tools within their communications ecosystem. An all-in-one environment that gives employees instant access to relevant information will be critical to ensuring that the service offered is unique to each customer.

 

Transforming the Future of Customer Service

Perhaps one of the most important things that all the upcoming trends in the customer service landscape have in common is that they all point to a future where digital interactions are the norm. Companies clearly need to invest in a digital transformation strategy for their service initiatives if they want to keep pace with their customers’ demands for hyper-personalized, intelligent, and optimized service experiences.

However, simply adding new tools to your ecosystem isn’t enough to create a frictionless digital solution for customer service. Building a plan for true innovation requires a careful strategy and a platform capable of adapting to the ever-changing needs of your business.

Contact Bulb Technologies today to find out how our powerful Total Experience platform can help you empower your workforce, improve customer service, and drive self-service strategies – all at the same time, without breaking your budget.

 

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you probably already know that the customer experience is the key to success.

More than any other factor, the convenience, practicality, and speed of service you can provide your customers will determine whether they become loyal advocates or frustrated naysayers. In a world where consumers have more opportunities to share their negative thoughts about a company than ever before, one bad experience can destroy the reputation of your entire business.

Part of delivering a phenomenal customer experience is engaging your audience through the right channels. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of debate about which channels businesses should actually use. Most companies don’t have the budget or time to make sure their employees are accessible everywhere.

So, do you go for the traditional voice calls or do you invest in the new opportunities that chat offers? Let’s find out.

The Benefits of Calling over Chat

Since the 1960s, the telephone has been the primary service channel for most conversations between brands and consumers. However, that is beginning to change rapidly. Today, 75% of Millennials say they’d rather give up the ability to make a phone call than the ability to text.

Phone support has a number of weaknesses. Not only is it far from a preferred option for most consumers to call, but it’s also not particularly cost-effective. In a business environment, phone support staff can only answer one call at a time and support a single customer. That means you need more staff to handle a larger volume of contacts.

Not to mention that even with a reasonable number of employees, you may suffer from long queues and long wait times at peak times. Another problem is that phone calls aren’t always recorded and documented as well as they should be.

So why do companies still use telephones at all? It’s simple: they still have value. 95% of customers say they still want the opportunity to speak with an employee in person, even if they won’t use that option.

Phone calls also enable:

• Personal, human connections: Phone interactions capture the emotions, tone, and inflection of the speaker. This can help build a personal relationship between an agent and a customer. Also, it can pave the way for better relationships in the long run.
• Better management of complex issues: When faced with a complicated problem, most customers would prefer to call and speak directly with an agent.
• Instant responses: Although customers may have to wait on hold for a call to be answered, they can usually resolve their concerns the same day. On the other hand, it might take longer for agents to resolve chat messages completely.
• Data insights: Many phone systems allow companies to collect valuable data about customers, figuring sentiment from the tone of voice, and capturing other important details. It’s also possible to track information about call handling and quality.

The Benefits of Chat over Calling

Although the importance of making phone calls in the contact center hasn’t completely disappeared, phone calls are certainly less popular than they used to be. In fact, some studies show that businesses that use chat services are 2.8 times more likely to convert customers.

Chat comes in several varieties to suit virtually any business need. Businesses can offer asynchronous chat services during the day so employees can handle multiple questions at once, and then switch to chatbots when customers aren’t available. In particular, “asynchronous” chat has some serious advantages for brands.

Is asynchronous chat the hidden gem?

With asynchronous chat, employees don’t have to answer every question immediately. Instead, they can handle one question at a time, depending on its importance. This means that companies can ensure that the most pressing issues are addressed first. Also, with asynchronous chat, customers don’t have to wait at the end of the phone line for a call to be answered.

Customers can send a message to a team and simply get a response as soon as someone is available. This ensures that individuals can continue with other tasks while waiting for a resolution or response. Perhaps most importantly, asynchronous chat gives companies the ability to respond to the belief that businesses today should be available 24/7.

Even if an employee isn’t available to answer a message right now, a customer can still reach out, voice their concern, and put the issue in your hands. This takes some of the stress off your customer. In some cases, chatbots and AI assistants can help customers resolve their issues without waiting for an available agent.

The key benefits of chat in the contact center include:

• 24/7 Service: Companies can combine asynchronous chat with chatbots and virtual assistants to provide customers with constant answers to their questions. Customers can ask their questions immediately and then get on with their lives without having to wait for a response. They also often get answers a lot faster
• Improved employee experience: Great customer experience starts with a good employee experience. If your employees are overwhelmed and stressed by endless calls, they’re more likely to rush service, damaging the customer relationship. Asynchronous chat reduces stress levels and keeps teams happy.
• Better customer experience: With a normal phone call, a customer must wait on hold for their call to be answered, often without the opportunity to do anything else. With a chat system, they can continue their day with relative ease and simply receive a message when a representative is available. This makes life much more convenient for most customers.
• Reduced repetition: Chat is a great way to consistently log conversations between your customers and your employees. When someone picks up the chat, he doesn’t have to start from scratch and ask the customer about his problems. He can review previous messages and CRM data and gather more details before starting the conversation. This leads to faster resolutions and less repetition.
• Improved productivity: Even if a customer decides to start a customer service exchange with a chatbot, it provides useful information that your employees can pick up later. When an employee takes over the conversation, they have all the information they need to provide an appropriate response. Employees can run troubleshooting tests and find information about an issue before answering the question to get almost instant results.
• Fewer transfers: With a chat system, it’s easy to deliver customer questions and queries directly to the agent with the right skills for the task. An agent can work with another agent on the back end of the system to get answers to a question. This way customers don’t have to be passed from one agent to the next. This streamlines conversations and reduces customer frustration.
• Better rapport:  A chat system can easily store information about previous conversations with a customer in a CRM or database. Consequently, it’s easy to gain behind-the-scenes insight into each of your customers. This means that company employees can have a better experience by tailoring the conversation to the needs of the business.

 

Which is Better: Calling or Chat?

Overall, chat offers today’s customers and teams many more benefits than the average phone call system. It’s more streamlined and effective, helping to improve the customer and employee experience simultaneously. Asynchronous chat helps reduce agent frustration, strengthen customer relationships, and improve productivity.

However, that doesn’t mean calls should be ignored entirely. Rather, the best customer service is usually delivered on an omnichannel basis. While many companies start with chat as a core part of their strategy, they’ll likely still include the option of calling in case the conversation needs to be escalated. Fortunately, Cempresso Digital Customer Service makes it easy to create a workflow that works for any customer base.

Reach out to Bulb Technologies and leverage Cempresso. Cempresso makes it quick and easy to set up powerful asynchronous chat workflows, complete with access to data insights, custom integrations, and powerful AI chatbots. You can even include the option to escalate a chat into a call without losing previously collected data about customers.

 

Use our tips to get a game-changing CX Software

Let’s face it, CX is the most important factor every business should focus on today. If your customer experience isn’t perfect, it doesn’t matter how great your service is or how affordable your products may be – your customers won’t convert. Worse, they’ll choose your competitors.

Today, 73% of customers say CX is the most important criterion when deciding whether to interact with and buy from a brand. What’s more, the majority of customers are even willing to pay more for a good experience.

Fortunately, CX software solutions exist to help companies keep up with the ever-evolving expectations of their target audience. The only problem is that finding the right tool is easier said than done. If you’re planning to upgrade your CX software in 2023, here are some of the features you shouldn’t be without.

 

The 5 Must-Have Features for CX Software

When selecting a CX software platform, each company must consider a number of critical features. Which options are right for you will depend on the nature of your business and your specific goals. For example, some organizations have a higher need for security, privacy, and compliance features than most, while others place more emphasis on tools for hybrid and remote work. These are some of the features that will be critical for any business:

 

1.    Omnichannel Communications

Today’s customer journeys are complex, multi-layered, and span a number of different channels. A customer may want to start an interaction with your company through a self-service bot or app, and then move on to a conversation with an agent on the phone.

You need to make sure your CX solution allows you to communicate with your customers through the channels they use most often. But it’s also important that these channels are connected on the backend so you can track the context and details of a conversation from one environment to the next.

96% of consumers expect companies to make it as easy as possible for them to move between channels. So if you’re giving your customers the option to choose between text, video, and phone, make sure it’s all connected. Speaking of connected solutions: Try to make sure your CX platform makes it easy for your customers to move from a self-service environment to a conversation with an agent. The right tools should automatically pass contextual information to your agents when they pick up the phone or answer a chat message.

2.    Self-Service Solutions

Customers are becoming more and more self-sufficient. Increasingly, they prefer to search for an answer to a problem themselves rather than contacting an agent. In fact, 68% of customers say they prefer to use self-service channels for simple questions.

Finding a CX solution that allows you to support your customers throughout their self-service experience is critical to meeting the needs of today’s digital customers. However, it’s important to think beyond the simple FAQ-style bot. As customers’ problems become more complex, they’re relying on bots to help them address a wider range of issues.

Implementing AI tools with true conversational intelligence, natural language processing, and automated algorithms will help you deliver a next-generation self-service experience and outshine the competition. This can also reduce the volume of calls your agents are struggling with! The smarter your self-services are, the more they take the pressure off your staff. They can also gather important information about customer behavior and trends.

3.    Workflow Automation

Automation is quickly becoming a must-have in the CX landscape, especially as labor shortages and the Great Resignation make it increasingly difficult to find talented professionals for any team. Additionally, automation doesn’t replace your staff, it helps eliminate repetitive tasks that would take up too much of your staff’s time so they can focus on the things that really matter.

A CX solution with built-in workflow automation capabilities allows you to design fantastic workflows for any need, whether you’re submitting customer data to a CRM or organizing your team’s schedule. Automation can help you route your customers to the right person every time based on smart insights and triggers while empowering your employees to get more done.

You can even take your automation strategy to the next level by using a low-code platform that lets you create your own automation. This ensures that your employees can actively improve their workflows with simple, practical tools that don’t require developer skills.

 

4.    Flexible Integrations and Configuration

A CX platform is typically one component of an advanced customer experience and service strategy for any organization. If you want to ensure your team members can work seamlessly on a single pane of glass, you need to make sure your CX platform integrates with the tools they already use, such as collaboration apps, help desks, and CRM software.

A flexible platform that can adapt to your team’s technology needs gives you more room to add new functionality with connected apps as needed. While you’re looking for integration opportunities, you should also consider how easy your CX system is to configure and manage. You shouldn’t have to hire a developer every time you want to make a change.

Look for a convenient, easy-to-use environment that your administrators can access from anywhere with an Internet connection. You might even be able to connect your CX tools directly to your AI analytics, recording, and contact center software.

 

5.    Powerful Reports and Analytics

Finally, keep in mind that we live in a world where customer expectations are constantly changing and evolving. The only way to stay ahead of the curve and your competitors is to gather as much information as you can about your target audience, your people, and any other metrics that are relevant to you.

A good CX platform should give you valuable insights into each step of the customer journey, where there are friction points, and what you can do to improve satisfaction. At the same time, it should help you keep your finger on the pulse of your employees’ experiences, no matter where your team is located. If you’re able to monitor and address employee frustrations, you can ensure that your team members are able to perform at their best.

If possible, look for analytics and reporting tools that integrate with AI to give you insights into trends that you mightn’t be able to see on your own. These solutions can even send real-time information to agents in the form of dashboards to help them improve their performance at that moment. Customizable reports that let you drill down into key metrics are also useful.

 

Choose the Right CX Platform

Ultimately, finding the right CX platform for your team is likely to be a personal process for any organization. You need to think carefully about your CX goals, your digital transformation strategy, and how you plan to serve your customers in the future.

However, if you focus on finding the five features above for your CX solution, you can greatly improve your chances of future-proofing your customer experience strategy. The Cempresso DCS platform includes all of the features on this list – plus a few more – as a comprehensive platform for the end-to-end total experience.

Learn today how you can transform your CX strategy with Bulb Technologies.

 

 

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Intelligent workflows activate your intelligence, tap into data, and provide the best immediate response to a given situation.

In every company and industry, leaders are looking for new ways to increase efficiency, productivity, and performance. As the workplace becomes more complex and customer expectations evolve, this often means investing in innovative, intelligent tools.

Using artificial intelligence, automation, and analytics, companies can effectively transform their day-to-day processes into streamlined activities that take less time and resources. These tools for building “intelligent workflows” help companies bypass the stress of global labor shortages while improving team efficiency and employee engagement.

Today, we’ll look at how any organization can unlock new levels of transformation with the right intelligent workflows.

What is an Intelligent Workflow?

Before we look at some use cases for creating value with intelligent workflows, we first need to consider what an “intelligent workflow” is. Essentially, this concept refers to a method of workplace orchestration that integrates AI, machine learning, analytics, and automation.

Intelligent workflows allow organizations to go beyond the basics of automating simple, repetitive tasks and focus on improving unpredictable tasks. Intelligent workflows leverage the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the flexibility, visibility, and agility of everyday tasks and fundamentally transform workplace processes.

Properly deployed, low-code and no-code platforms for creating these workflows enable leaders and teams to streamline their activities visually and conveniently. Normally manual tasks can be automated to increase efficiency, while management uses the data collected by the systems to make intelligent decisions for the business.

Intelligent workflows enable companies to spend less time on repetitive tasks in an increasingly competitive environment and more time implementing rapid changes that enable long-term growth.

 

Use Cases for Intelligent Workflows

One of the most attractive things about intelligent workflows today is that they’re so flexible. The advent of low-code platforms like Cempresso ensures that companies can embed intelligent workflows into everything from customer service to onboarding relationships.

Some of the key use cases for this technology are:

1. Transforming onboarding relationships

Almost all companies use some form of onboarding. Whether it’s adding a customer to a database or a new employee, there are critical processes that must be considered. Intelligent workflows can speed up and simplify the process of capturing the information needed while reducing error-prone and time-consuming manual tasks.

For example, Cempresso’s intelligent onboarding solution can help you collect valuable data, improve business-customer collaboration, and gain clear insights into the stages of the customer journey. You can manage a range of onboarding use cases in a single environment and leverage your analytics to increase customer engagement and satisfaction.

2. Business Operations

There are countless critical processes involved in running any business. From managing assets to tracking networks in the telecommunications landscape. Each of these tasks often involves complex considerations, such as what to do if a data center fails and a business needs to relocate to another network. While in the past these processes required consistent guidance from a human operator, this no longer needs to be the case.

Intelligent workflow provides businesses with a convenient and streamlined way to complete tasks and quickly resolve issues in any environment. Intelligent workflow systems can eliminate most tasks that would otherwise take up important employee time. For example, you can develop an IVR system that identifies which customer is asking for assistance when someone contacts your team and immediately displays information about that customer, their products, and their current network environment. This means teams can work faster and more efficiently.

 

3. Delivering customer service

Perhaps the most valuable area for intelligent workflows in many competitive organizations is customer experience, a lucrative field for automation. While you can not automate every part of the customer journey, you can use workflows to improve a variety of experiences. For example, you could set up an automated diagnostics and troubleshooting system that automatically guides customers or employees in resolving common issues.

Intelligent workflows can help align teams across multiple service channels by routing calls to the right agent in each environment and automatically providing contextual information about the customer to each agent during the customer journey. You can even create intelligent workflows for virtual assistants and chatbots to help resolve issues when your agents are not available.

 

4. Analyzing and optimizing performance

Intelligent workflows not only give you the ability to solve problems faster but can also help you avoid problems in the first place. With automated systems to track key metrics and performance information across business environments, it’s easy to stay ahead of performance issues.

An intelligent workflow can use an AI system to constantly look for problems within a telecom network and immediately switch customers to a failover environment when a problem occurs or request more bandwidth resources from the cloud. With artificial intelligence, you can set up common policies and procedures and use robotic process automation to resolve issues as they arise. That means customers get faster support, even when your team members are unavailable or on call 24/7.

 

5. Empowering Business Development

Intelligent workflows are packed with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies designed to collect and act on valuable data. The information gathered through your automation strategies can also pave the way for better business decisions for the future of your organization. A low-code and collaborative platform can even come equipped with suggestions for improving team productivity and performance based on historical data and trends.

With intelligent workflows, you can even set up automatic upgrades and improvements based on specific policies. For example, if your service performance dashboard detects that a new product or service would be beneficial to a customer based on current usage, it can automatically send a sales email or marketing message.

The Key to Successful Intelligent Workflows

While there are numerous use cases and opportunities to explore in the world of intelligent workflows, it’s important to remember that, like any other technology, this innovation requires the right strategy. For most companies today, investing in a successful intelligent workflow means looking for a convenient low-code design tool that is tailored to their business.

The Cempresso customer care platform, for example, has a low-code environment where teams and executives can collaborate to create intelligent customer care workflows. The WYSIWYG environment makes it easy to transform complex processes into step-by-step instructions for an automated system. In addition, the low-code nature means you can turn your regular employees into citizen developers capable of making a real difference to your team.

Low-code platforms help eliminate some of the misconceptions that often overwhelm teams dealing with traditional IT methods. In the past, building an intelligent workflow IT required analysts to translate team requirements into IT designs and then hire programmers to turn those strategies into finished applications. This process often took far too long and often did not produce results that met user expectations.

With low-code offerings, companies can take a more agile and collaborative approach, where every team member can participate in automating complex and repetitive tasks.

Time to Explore Intelligent Workflows?

Intelligent workflows are not only the next step in the growing automation landscape but have what it takes to change the way we work forever. Used correctly, these tools can improve compliance, reduce the risk of errors, and increase team member efficiency. At the same time, your business will benefit from higher productivity, greater customer satisfaction, and more sales opportunities.

With intelligent workflows that support and complement teams, companies can make the entire workforce more efficient and streamlined. Contact Bulb Tech today to begin your journey.

 

 

 

In today’s business world, few things are more important than making sure your customer service strategy is up to snuff. Whether you’re in the telecom, insurance, or utility industries, your customers will make their decision on whether to work with you based on the experience you provide.

The statistics speak for themselves. According to Gartner, CX is responsible for more than two-thirds of customer loyalty, making it more important than brand image and price combined. In addition, according to Microsoft, 66% of 18- to 34-year-olds say they expect more from customer service today than in years past.

To stay ahead in a world where customers expect personalized, fast, and efficient service on every platform, companies need support. In particular, brands need tools that can optimize, improve and even automate the CX journey.

The Rising Demand for Customer Engagement Strategies

As customers become more demanding, the challenges for service teams are greater than ever. A single mistake can negatively impact your company’s performance for months. One study found that 17% of customers leave a company after just one bad experience with a brand. Another report shows that it takes an average of 12 positive experiences to make up for a single bad experience.

Unfortunately, it’s easier than ever for today’s growing businesses to stumble upon a negative customer experience. You don’t have to make a mistake or botch an order to affect your customers’ perception of you. It’s enough to fail to engage your customers in a contextually appropriate, timely, and relevant way to send them running to the competition.

In an environment where innovators like Amazon are constantly changing the game with fast and personalized service, anything short of the perfect customer service strategy will be enough to cost you a repeat purchase or the loyalty of a customer.

This means that companies need to take a more proactive approach to customer service and retention. Often, this means investing in the next level of disruptive technology tools. In almost every ecosystem, the following disruptive solutions are becoming mandatory:

• Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence is paving the way for a new generation of customer service based on insights from vast amounts of interaction and market data. AI innovations can range from simple chatbot solutions that help your employees serve themselves to virtual assistants and natural language processing. They can even help sort data and provide meaningful insights into patterns and trends.
• Automation: As one of the top trending technologies in customer service, automation is transforming your CX strategy by empowering your people. Automation tools can minimize repetitive tasks and ensure your team members have more time to focus on the most important challenges. The right solutions can also facilitate proactive customer support and increase business efficiency.
• Analytics: With the right analytics solutions, you can get a behind-the-scenes look at how your customers store, what their preferences are, and how you can provide them with great experiences. Combined with AI innovation, analytics tools help companies make the most lucrative decisions about how to grow and improve their service strategies.

The Rise of Platforms for Customer Support

Providing exceptional customer service has become a more complex process in recent years. Companies need more than just fast customer service and an intuitive contact center. A truly transformative CX approach requires investing in everything from cutting-edge self-service solutions to data analytics tools to workforce efficiency systems.

Separately accessing all the systems required for a comprehensive customer support strategy would be a time-consuming, expensive, and resource-intensive process. For this reason, customer support platforms are becoming increasingly popular. Tools like the Cempresso Customer Support platform provide an all-in-one environment for customer support automation and knowledge management.

Instead of buying workforce optimization and automation tools separately, you can access a complete end-to-end environment for sensational CX. The combined ecosystem includes AI-driven tools to help agents deliver customer service, knowledge management databases for intuitive support and even automation elements to simplify workflows.

Perhaps most importantly, tools like Cempresso wrap existing systems in your CX strategy. This means that companies don’t have to rip and replace the tools their teams already rely on to drive efficiency. By integrating with existing solutions, your customer support platform can create a more convenient, unified environment for team performance without requiring massive investments and changes ( IT ).

Creating Next Generation Customer Engagement with Cempresso

To deliver exceptional experiences to today’s customers, you need to rethink your entire CX approach from a digital transformation perspective. It’s no longer possible to provide the engaging interactions customers demand with traditional tools alone. Companies must be willing to upgrade and invest in new tools to address a range of challenges.

By combining exceptional technologies, such as all-in-one customer support platforms, with data streams and team training initiatives, you can stay ahead of the competition.

So where do you start?

 

Step 1: Empower your Agents

A great customer experience starts with a great employee experience. More and more companies around the world are discovering that the secret to success in delighting their customers is a new focus on “total experience.” This means considering all the experience concepts that can make a difference in your operations. Investing in better solutions for your teams means they are better equipped to meet increased customer demands.

Cempresso’s technology gives agents serving modern customers access to a complete, customer-centric, contextual dashboard. The solution provides a 360-degree view of the customer, designed specifically for customer service agents. In addition, automated actions and remediation provide support when your teams need help engaging their audience.

 

Step 2: Open the door for Self-care

In a world where customer service agent turnover is higher than ever, companies are increasingly struggling to fill the gaps in their teams. While outsourcing can help, it’s also worth giving your customers a way to solve their own problems. Cempresso’s technology includes self-care applications (web-based and mobile) that help customers find adequate answers or guides, troubleshoot, and solve problems thanks to easy-to-understand and simple-to-follow digital workflows.

Digital agents can triage service requests and help customers identify the root cause of problems. They can even access powerful chatbot applications that integrate with existing tools like WhatsApp and Messenger. These bots have machine-to-machine connections, flexible business logic, and fully integrated NLP engines.

 

Step 3: Analyze and Orchestrate Customer Journeys

To truly engage customers in today’s evolving landscape, companies need to understand the steps their customers take when interacting with their brand. That means gathering as much information as possible about the customer journey. Using AI solutions to capture data about your customers’ interactions is an important step in developing next-generation experiences.

Once you have the insights you need to understand your customers, you can use the Cempresso platform to develop tools that minimize friction. The Cempresso ecosystem has a low-code platform where you can build customer-centric process automation applications. The flexible web-based design studio enables rapid creation and deployment of process logic for rapid innovation and ideation.

Start Your Journey to Next Generation Customer Engagement

Old-fashioned approaches to customer engagement simply aren’t suitable for today’s constantly evolving consumer landscape. Your clients demand more than ever from every business, and they have endless opportunities to shop elsewhere if you’re not delivering the right results.

Embracing the age of digital transformation with an all-in-one platform for customer support can help simplify the road to next-generation engagement. With Cempresso, you can access all the tools you need to unlock the power of AI, analytics, and automation for more powerful customer experiences.

Contact Bulb Tech today to learn more about how Cempresso can take your customer engagement strategy to the next level.

 

 

Field service management is a complex task, even in today’s increasingly digital world. To effectively manage your field service operations, you need a powerful strategy to track all the people, processes, and tools in your ecosystem simultaneously.

Effective field service management balances complex logistics, on-site operations, employee management, and the constant pressure to meet customer expectations. As the marketplace continues to transform and customers demand more from their service providers, companies are facing increasing field service workloads.

Currently, 80% of decision makers say that field service is an important part of their overall strategy, and about 75% of decision-makers view field service as a revenue driver.

Fortunately, there are ways to improve your field service management with the right tools.

1.    Unlock the Power of Automation

Automated processes and workflows can never replace the skills, creativity, and expertise of your field workers, but they can give them a much-needed boost. Automation tools can complement and enhance your workforce in a variety of ways, from automated troubleshooting with background investigations to more convenient processes like reporting and administration.

Tools like Cempresso allow companies to unlock the benefits of automation for their field agents, automating everything from onboarding processes to finding valuable data. The agent console even has intelligent, guided workflows with AI extensions that help employees use their technology more effectively.

You can also use automated systems and AI to track changes to your devices and technologies, so you can more accurately determine when a customer needs help.

2. Make Crucial Tech Mobile

It almost goes without saying that in order to work optimally, field workers must have access to the same quality of tools and technology in the field as they do at their desks. Comprehensive tools for analytics, customer service, and data management need to be available to your field workers on the go.

The Cempresso ecosystem includes both web-based and mobile apps to help your staff complete tasks and effectively serve customers. The standalone mobile app is already integrated with the Cempresso platform and provides a library for integration with existing customer apps and end-user web portals. With an all-in-one mobile environment, field technicians can:

• Perform service checks in real-time
• Track customer perception instantly
• Perform full diagnostics
• Check the status of key tool parameters

For field service agents to be at their best, they need to know that the technology they access every day provides them with exceptional knowledge, access to collaboration tools, and helpful insights.

3.    Unlock Access to Valuable Data

To provide excellent customer support and ensure outstanding performance from every employee, companies increasingly rely on access to the right data. It’s worth remembering that the benefits of data aren’t limited to your back-end staff and customer service representatives.

Field service representatives can also benefit from data insights to do their jobs more effectively. For example, the analytics console in Cempresso can help field reps gain better insight into customer interactions and collect data about customer needs.

With the right data collection tools, technicians can also use their field service app to check service status before visiting a customer. This means they can double-check what needs to be managed before they arrive at the job site and make sure everything is working properly before they leave.

Remember, some 76% of the field and mobile workers in Salesforce’s 2021 study said they view their jobs as more strategic than ever. Having access to the right amount of data and insights can help your employees make smarter decisions about how to complete tasks.

 

 

4.    Reduce the Need for Repeat Visits

Speaking of analyzing the state of technology before deploying engineers and technicians on-site, using the right technology can also help you manage your resources more effectively. In today’s fast-paced environment, companies can’t afford to send engineers to places where their help isn’t needed.

Many telecom companies regularly experience issues with unnecessary technician deployments or repeated need for services after the technician has left the site. The Cempresso app allows telecom companies to remotely track any issues and fix the problem on the way to the customer.

Technicians can remotely assess the issues and determine if an onsite visit is required or if they can be resolved using self-service processes and guidance from a customer service representative. This improves the customer experience and reduces the risk of customers having to call a company multiple times about the same issue.

You can even use your analytics tools to gather information about frequently recurring issues so you know when to schedule field service call-backs for specific customers.

5.    Use Proactive Service to Boost Performance

If you want to get the most out of your field service management strategy, you don’t just need to make sure you’re getting the best results for your employees. The right strategy can also help you strengthen relationships with your customers and reduce churn. Proactive field service could help keep you ahead of the competition.

With an end-to-end view of business processes, data collection capabilities, and intelligent automation, the Cempresso platform can give companies a behind-the-scenes look at when certain tools and solutions need additional maintenance. Predicting trends and challenges before they impact customers means you can effectively schedule your field service technicians to perform maintenance before issues arise.

Not only does this process provide your customers with better quality, but it can also reduce employee stress. Since technicians are fixing problems before they even occur, they’re less likely to deal with stressed employees.

6.    Focus on Employee Experience

To truly improve your field service management strategy for the new age of work, you need to think about how to put your employees first. In the age of the “Great Resignation,” retaining your key technicians can be harder than it seems.

The field skills shortage is on the rise, and companies can’t afford to lose skilled workers to competitors or elsewhere. Unfortunately, about 33% of field service technicians currently say their jobs aren’t as satisfying as they should be. In addition, about 60% of agents say they aren’t willing to stay in the field.

To reduce the risk of dissatisfaction among your employees, you should first ensure they’ve access to the intuitive technology they need to do their jobs. Then, you should develop strategies to gather feedback from your employees. Based on their feedback, you can determine whether you need to invest more in things like AI bots to help with troubleshooting or self-service tools.

The more information you gather from your employees, the better you can make smart decisions about how to help them succeed.

Getting the Most out of Your Field Service Technicians

Field service management has never been a particularly straightforward process. However, as customer expectations continue to evolve and the technology, we rely on becomes more complex, managing your teams can feel more difficult than ever.

Right now, it’s important for companies with in-house field teams to look for comprehensive technology suites that can help them align their employees around the same goals and equip them with unified tools. An all-in-one environment for automation, access to vital statistics, and deep insights can transform your entire business.

Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how field technicians are already using our powerful Cempresso platform to increase productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

 

The holiday season is one of the most lucrative times for many brands. It provides an opportunity to increase sales, strengthen customer relationships and deliver a better customer experience at a time when community spirit is high. However, for some brands, the holiday season can also be a time of confusion and chaos.

At its best, the holidays lead to an increase in demand for customer service and support across a range of industries. In recent years, as customers have struggled with confusing new challenges, this increase is greater than ever. In 2020, 68% of companies reported that their customer service requests increase during the holidays.

Even as the world returns to balance in 2022, it’s quite possible that businesses will still need to take additional steps if they want to ensure they can continue to provide proactive, reliable, and better customer support during the holidays. Here are some quick tips to get you on the right track and deliver better customer support.

 

1.    Unlock the Power of the FAQ

In a world where countless companies use IVRs and chatbots to handle customer inquiries before they get to a human customer service representative, a FAQ may seem a bit outdated.

But in reality, this page is often the first place your audience visits when looking for answers to common questions. Before you start working on smarter self-service solutions, it might be worth creating a FAQ page.

Talk to your customer service team about the most common questions they hear this time of year. They may have questions about service outages, hours of operation, or even what kind of service they can expect on holidays.

Answering these questions quickly and effectively at FAQ takes the pressure off your customer service team and allows customers to conveniently help themselves without having to open a chat box or contact your customer service department.

2.    Invest in Automated Assistance

During the holiday season, not all employees are likely to be available at all times, which means you’ll likely have longer wait times and trouble meeting demand. One way to ensure that the relationship you’ve built with your audience isn’t damaged is to invest in automated support.

Building on FAQ, look for ways to help your customers serve themselves by using smarter technology. A chatbot is a good first step, as it allows you to answer your customers’ questions 24/7 with relatively high reliability.

However, for slightly more complex conversations, you may need to dig a little deeper. Smart assistants with natural language processing technology can answer calls in front of your agents, filter out common questions, and then intelligently route your customers to the human agent best suited to their needs based on what they’re asking.

3.    Empower Your Customers

While there will always be times when your customers need the help of human representatives and empathetic professionals, many consumers are becoming more comfortable with the idea of solving problems themselves. 73% of customers say they prefer to use a company’s website to seek assistance before doing anything else.

So look for ways to proactively help your customers solve more problems themselves. For example, you could embed a chatbot on the checkout page of your website that can answer common questions about payments and billing cycles.

If your customers need to be able to find the root cause of their problem as quickly as possible, consider setting up customer portals for your tools that allow your customers to access automated diagnostics and troubleshooting features. These tools can help your customers find the root cause of the problem so they can resolve it themselves.

Even if your customer does not find an immediate solution with an automated diagnostic tool, they will have more valuable and contextual information to share with their customer service representative when they reach out to a member of your support team. This can lead to faster problem resolution.

 

 

4.    Invest in BPO Solutions

Business process outsourcing solutions that focus on customer service and customer experience are becoming increasingly popular. Especially in recent years, as contact center revenues continued to grow and CX tasks became more complex, companies sought assistance from external providers.

With the right BPO company, you can access more of the expertise you need to provide consistent service, even during the holiday season. By having access to additional staff during the holiday season, you can ensure that your customer service strategy doesn’t falter just because some of your team members aren’t available.

A BPO solution can support your internal team and provide additional help when demand skyrockets. Plus, with these services, you can expand or reduce your service and support as needed at any time. You can even use your BPO services to provide additional support to a wider range of channels.

Outsourcing could be the ultimate way to preserve your company’s reputation and avoid losing important customer relationships during the holidays.

5.    Be Proactive and Transparent

More than ever, customers expect transparency and honesty from the companies they do business with. Your customers want to know that you’ll be honest with them when they buy from you, so a proactive and transparent approach to service is always best.

Make sure your customers are notified well in advance of any changes to customer service hours during the holiday season. You should also make sure they know what to do if they’re faced with an emergency that can’t wait until business hours resume.

In your live chat app, messenger, and IVR system, you can also update your message to let your users know how long they’ll have to wait for a response from a team member. A dynamic system that automatically tracks the average wait time for each customer gives them a better idea of what to expect.

If you really want to increase customer satisfaction, you can also give your customers the option to get a call back instead of waiting.

6.    Get Routing Right

When things need to move quickly during the holiday season, the last thing your customers want is to be passed from one employee of your company to another. In today’s age of intelligent auto-routing, there’s no excuse for teams to route calls to countless different employees.

Your customer doesn’t want to have to keep repeating themselves. So use an AI system to instantly figure out what the call or message is about, and then route the call to the employee with the best skills for the job. When you route a call or conversation to an agent, make sure you also have an automated workflow in place to provide the agent with contextual information about the call.

The more information your agent has about each caller as soon as they pick up the phone, the easier it’ll be for them to provide a personalized and relevant experience.

Master Your Holiday Customer Support Strategy

It doesn’t have to be a nightmare to keep track of your funding strategy during the holidays. Rather, this time of year is a great opportunity for any business to attract customers, make new sales, and build stronger brand relationships. However, with additional opportunities come additional requirements.

Follow the steps above to ensure you’re prepared for whatever comes your way this holiday season, and contact Bulb Tech for the perfect strategy to automate and improve customer support.

 

Telecommunications is one of the industries that has seen the greatest changes since the pandemic

According to Deloitte analysis, demand for high-value mobile connectivity has increased dramatically in recent years. This increase in demand has been seen among both consumers and businesses.

As we head into a post-pandemic future, expectations for telecom companies will be no less. One of the most important factors for companies to consider is how they invest in mobile innovation. The rapid increase in the number of consumers using their mobile connection as their primary link to the Internet will put additional pressure on providers.

Add to this the fact that consumers are becoming more demanding when it comes to the brands and companies they deal with, and poor service can easily lead to massive customer losses. The only way for telcos to stay ahead of the curve is to be aware of the key mobile trends that are shaping the future of the industry.

Here are just a few of the mobile trends driving innovation for telcos.

1.    5G Expansion

Mobile networks now carry nearly 300 times more mobile data than they did in 2011, and with new smartphones, subscribers constantly entering the market, and more businesses demanding fast connections in the age of “mobile working,” 5G is becoming increasingly important.

Deloitte’s recent telecom report showed that many younger generations are beginning to use their mobile connection as their only solution for Internet access. If this continues in the future, a 5G connection will allow users to bypass access to broadband even when accessing things like video conferencing or sending files in the hybrid work world.

As users in the business world increasingly rely on their cell phones as a connection point for their daily activities, 5G will be especially valuable in the enterprise environment. If you are not yet investing in the technology to bring 5G into your ecosystem, you could be missing out on phenomenal growth opportunities.

2.    IoT (The Internet of Things)

Similar to 5G, IoT is another disruptive technology that has begun to gain more attention in the enterprise over the last couple of years. With travel reduced and fewer people in the office, we’re increasingly looking into solutions that might allow us to manage machines and initiate tasks from a distance, perhaps through an ultra-fast 5G connection.

With the help of IoT, telecom companies are already accessing benefits like more stable connectivity and improved tracking of telecom data at the edge. As we move forward into the future of telecommunications, it’s likely that a larger number of telecom brands will be investing in IoT to make managing their communication ecosystem more effective.

3.    Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and ML offer a variety of benefits to the telecommunications landscape, from enhanced capabilities through automation to live chat assistants and self-service systems. Through artificial intelligence, companies can enable their customers to do everything from troubleshooting their own connectivity issues to automatically diagnosing problems.

As we move into 2022 and beyond, the improvements in 5G are likely to act as a catalyst for increased use of AI and ML integration in telecommunications. 5G will enable better data sharing between telecom systems, ranging from predicting traffic spikes to improving connectivity and end-to-end service.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have another significant benefit for the telecommunications industry, namely the ability to combat security and fraud issues. AI systems are already being developed to help immediately identify potential fraud in the telecom landscape, making the communications space safer for everyone.

 

 

4.    Increased Analytics and Edge Computing

Linked in many ways to the rise of AI and machine learning, analytics, and edge computing capabilities will also be important trends for the telecommunications industry in the coming years. With the help of AI, which can collect, manage and interpret vast amounts of data in a very short time, telecom companies will be able to become more customer-obsessed. Stronger analytics will even make it possible to predict potential problems with the network so that problems and outages can be fixed before they even occur.

The future of analytics will also be impacted by the use of edge computing. Companies such as ABI predict that synchronizing edge servers with telecommunications infrastructure will represent an opportunity worth about $54 billion within 3 years.

Access to real-time data that allows robots and automated systems to make rapid changes to the telecom environment could help eliminate latency and minimize problems in the communications landscape. Edge computing tools can be deployed in everything from enterprise buildings to vehicles to improve overall performance for individual users.

5.    Greater Focus on Security

Security has always been an important aspect of telecommunications. However, as businesses and individuals become more reliant on their devices and applications, the demand for greater data protection and compliance is greater than ever.

Experts predict that by 2022, approximately $133.7 billion will be spent on cybersecurity alone. Many telecommunications companies will be looking for new ways to secure and protect their networks in the future. This is especially important as more companies connect their employees via mobile connections between offices around the world.

Some of the work to improve the security of data in the telecommunications landscape will come from the field of AI. Biometric tracking, natural language processing, and other important artificial intelligence tools are already changing the way companies secure their data.

At the same time, security will continue to improve in the data centers, software, and devices that enterprises monitor and use every day.

6.    Automation Increases

The demand for automation in the telecommunications landscape has been on the rise for some time, especially as customer expectations reach new heights. Many telecom brands found it increasingly difficult to manage the growing demand from their audiences during the pandemic, prompting them to look for new tools to automate and empower their employees.

To close the gaps in customer experience, many telecom brands will begin using automation for everything from tracking potential demand spikes and changes to guiding customers through self-service troubleshooting sessions.

Automation will also make it easier to gather critical information within the communications landscape and turn raw data into meaningful insights for business growth. On a day-to-day basis, access to higher levels of process automation in the telecom industry could help replace some of the repetitive tasks that otherwise take up critical time and focus from key employees such as technicians and engineers.

 

Other Potential Opportunities for Growth

As the digital landscape evolves at an incredible pace, the opportunities for telecommunications companies are growing with it. At the heart of many mobile trends facing brands in the sector today are a rapid transition to the cloud landscape and a reduced focus on legacy technology. At the same time, we are seeing a growing interest in concepts such as:

• Blockchain: Distributed ledger technology and smart contracts could help manage security and improve trust in the telecommunications landscape. A decentralized database also allows more flexibility for those who want to participate in a Web 3.0 future and its associated benefits.
• Open RAN architecture: This technology is designed to enable the next generation of RAN infrastructure. It provides the foundation for building virtualized RAN on open hardware and helps network operators build and deploy more 4G and 5G networks.
• Predictive maintenance: With AI and data analytics more readily available than ever before, organizations will increasingly be able to anticipate potential issues and get ahead of outages or problems. Predictive maintenance, combined with things like IoT and automation, could be the key to more effective telecom operations.

While it’s impossible to know with certainty what the future holds for an environment as fast-paced as telecommunications, there are endless growth opportunities in the marketplace for companies willing to take advantage of these mobile trends. Contact Bulb Tech today to learn how we can help you take advantage of the biggest changes in communications.

 

Automation –  the best way to fill the work gaps

The global labor shortage is becoming an increasingly important issue for leaders in today’s economy. While lack of access to skilled labor has been a problem for some time, in the post-pandemic era, it’s grown into a new problem.

In 2021, 4 million people quit their jobs in the United States, and the “Great Resignation” seems to be an ongoing trend in various parts of the world. Fortunately, companies may have a solution: Automation tools.

For years, workers have feared that access to automation capabilities in areas such as customer service and data processing would lead to a shortage of jobs for human workers. However, studies suggest automation could actually be the best way to fill the labor gaps that human beings simply aren’t leveraging.

Here’s how automation could help us overcome the global labor shortage.

What the Studies Say: The Power of Automation

To assess the potential of automation to address the current skills shortage, the UiPath team recently surveyed 500 U.S. senior and C-level executives at companies with more than 1,000 employees. The responses revealed some interesting results.

Some 62% of executives surveyed said the current labor shortage is a major problem for them, and 69% have recently lost key employees to major layoffs. In addition, some 78% of executives said they plan to invest more in automation and artificial intelligence to address some of the negative effects of rapid turnover.

Already, 83% of executives surveyed said their company is already using various forms of AI automation. Not surprisingly, these companies are now looking for new ways to address workforce issues with the same technology.

Executives also already believe in the benefits of automation: 71% said they believe these tools save their company’s users time, and 63% see improved productivity. The question is how companies will ensure they’re getting the most out of the benefits of automation.

Step 1: Align Automation with Long-Term Goals

Automation holds significant potential for the modern workplace if used correctly. The right agile technology can increase team efficiency and speed, reduce errors, and improve the customer experience. The key to unlocking all of these benefits is to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve with automation from the start.

For example, one of the best ways to use automation to improve your workforce is to use tools that give skilled employees more time to focus on critical and creative tasks. Automating repetitive tasks that would otherwise take up important time for human workers means they can take on more meaningful, satisfying tasks.

By reducing the number of less attractive tasks in the standard job description through automation, companies can even make their roles more attractive to employees who might not otherwise be interested in positions that require a lot of data entry or repetitive information processing.

Step 2: Use Automation to Appeal to Younger Generations

For many companies, the youngest generation represents a great opportunity to tap into new talent. The pandemic and the “Great Resignation” aren’t the only factors contributing to the labor shortage. Millions of people around the world have retired and chosen to leave the workforce for good during the pandemic period. In most sectors, there aren’t enough new employees to replace these lost skilled workers.

If companies want to adapt and transform at a competitive pace, they need to ensure that their work environment is attractive to Generation Z and younger employees. Using automation tools can help identify a company as a forward-thinking, technology-savvy brand that’s more likely to appeal to professionals who’ve grown up in a digital environment.

You can also use automation to increase the focus on “meaningful work” for new employees. Studies show that contributing to society and doing meaningful work is among the top priorities of today’s employees. You can use automation to identify processes that are ripe for automation and help make the world a better place, reduce energy consumption, and even minimize waste in your organization.

Step 3: Use Automation in the Hiring Process

Managers can even use automation technologies to assist in the hiring process. In the UI study mentioned above, 58% of executives said that higher rates of onboarding and offboarding have become a major challenge in a market with a scarce workforce. The consequences of these challenges are often disrupted workflows and unhappy employees.

However, automation tools can help support HR workflows and keep such processes as streamlined as possible. Automation can speed up processes such as hiring new team members and sorting through applicants to find the best possible people for each job.

When hiring new team members, automation can help ensure that team members are properly prepared for their roles. Teaching employees how to use certain automation tools in their daily tasks can even reduce risks for employees in otherwise hazardous environments. Team members can use automated robotics and other tools to complete tasks remotely and expose themselves to less hazardous environments.

Step 4: Leverage Automation for Employee Attraction and Retention

As mentioned earlier, automation can help companies target younger generations, but it can also be a great tool for attracting all types of employees of different ages. About 85% of today’s team leaders believe automation will help them retain employees and hire new talent faster when the big resignation hits.

The aforementioned study by UI Path found that employers can set themselves apart by offering training on how to use automation tools, as well as the unique support that automation systems can provide. Currently, 1 in 3 executives says that lack of access to skills training is one of the most common reasons employees leave their jobs. In addition, most executives (60%) believe that job performance and retention can be improved if employees are offered the opportunity to learn new skills on the job.

These findings also confirm the results of a previous study, in which 91% of respondents said they believe their employers should invest more in digital and technology training opportunities to ensure their employees can succeed in their future work.

Currently, only 51% of companies offer automation training, and only 63% offer on-the-job training that takes place during work hours. The companies that offer the best training opportunities for automation and similar technology tools could have an advantage as workers look for ways to improve their digital skills.

Step 5: Use Automation for Business Insights

Finally, it is worth mentioning that automation can also help improve the work situation in today’s world by giving teams access to more useful information. Automated technology and artificial intelligence can make it possible to gather all kinds of useful information about the hiring process, employee satisfaction, and retention.

For example, an automated system can automatically collect information about employee engagement with a company. If an individual’s engagement falls below a certain benchmark, a message can be sent to the company manager or supervisor requesting further action.

Similarly, automated systems can track things like the reasons employees give for taking time off or the types of issues employees report when they decide to leave the company permanently in search of a new job.

Reducing Labor Shortages with Automation

There is no simple one-size-fits-all solution to overcoming labor shortages around the world today. People are dropping out of the workforce for a wide variety of reasons, and automation can only solve part of the problems facing businesses today.

However, studies increasingly show that automation could be an important first step for companies trying to overcome labor shortages once and for all. To learn how automation can help you combat the labor shortage, contact Bulb Tech today.