More than three-fourths of companies (82% in the US and 76% in the UK) are now anticipating a hybrid work model, according to a new 8x8 survey of 400 IT decision makers. From company culture to customer engagement, everything related to work is now being reimagined to create a consistent experience, no matter where people are or what device they’re using.

While we used to talk a lot about customers becoming more demanding, employees are now becoming more demanding, too. A recent survey of 1,000 US adults on behalf of Bloomberg News shows that 39% will consider quitting their current job if their employers aren’t flexible about remote work. For millennials and Gen Z, this percentage jumps to 49%.

In a related survey, Adobe’s 2021 State of Work reports that nearly half of workers (49%) say that they’re likely to leave their current employer if they’re unhappy or frustrated with workplace tech. This means that for the new hybrid workplace, employees will be now looking for more consistent, efficient, and effective ways to collaborate and get work done.

Creating happy employees and customers

So, what can we do today to make both employees and customers happy in an era where everyone expects to be quickly and consistently informed, and stay engaged, no matter where they are?

Metrigy research founder Robin Gareiss says that the key is your company communications and contact center technology—more specifically, the integration of the two. As you can see in this infographic, there’s a competitive advantage for companies that are already breaking down the communication and collaboration silos for both employees and customers. Here’s a snippet:

Metrigy_Integrated_Unified_Communications_Contact_Center_benefits.jpg

So, what’s driving the differences above? From this recent Solve for X webinar, here are just four defined ways that organizations are optimizing both EX and CX by bringing together their employee communications (unified communications) and contact center technologies:

  1. By integrating cloud-native contact center, voice, team chat, meetings, and even Communications Platform as a Service capabilities (such as in 8x8’s Platform offering), organizations significantly reduce app switching, which is a huge productivity drain according to workplace efficiency studies.
  2. By providing contact center agents with the same communications tools used by the rest of the office, agents can quickly and easily reach out to organizational subject matter experts to answer customers’ questions and solve issues—a huge EX and CX win.
  3. Shared analytics across the organization not only show how employees are doing, but what customers are talking about. This gives companies the ability to make adjustments to improve the experience of both, either in real time or over time.
  4. Contact center capabilities, such as speech analytics, can be used by other teams within the organization (e.g. sales), to find out which conversations convert and which don’t. (Hear how the Kansas City Royals do this.)

Want to learn more? Join us for a live demo, watch an on-demand webinar, or dig a little deeper into the Metrigy research above. Customer experience has been a key investment for the past decade or more. Now, leaders and fast followers are putting just as much emphasis on employee experience. Those organizations that succeed in doing both well will win in the new hybrid workplace.