Although we have focused a lot on the positives for the business of the alternative working method that many companies have been forced into, it is interesting to evaluate the positive to the negative points of remote working.
With remote working on the rise, today we will be focusing on the advantages as well as benefits you and your customers can experience by increasing your remote working capabilities as a business.
In most situations, you will find that companies that adopt more relaxed outlooks and have flexible working in place have higher productivity and customer satisfaction, a study from the Quarterly Journal of Economics said that - 'remote working allows staff to get through 13% more requests each day'
Remote Working Benefits
There are lots of benefits to remote working, it means you're able to hire people from all over the country or even abroad. Plus, it helps employees with a work-life balance, including less commute time and more time to spend with their family.
Ability to Hire the Best People
When you are confined to searching for talent within a certain area of an office, your talent pool is limited. This can lead to lower expertise within your company and may cause a negative effect on the customer experience.
Opening up your business to remote working can substantially increase the employee pool you have at your disposal, leading to a better service for your customers.
Faster Response Times
By enabling employees to work from home, organizations can be more agile and nimble in responding to specific events or seasons that will mandate extra attention be given to customers, e.g. hiring a few part-time workers on a short term contract to cover the higher demand at specific seasonal periods. This can be easily done as you have a much wider choice of prospective employees, and you can even tap into the groups that otherwise may not be able to come and work at an office.
Build Trust
Although this is mainly a bonus for the employee/business, it has such a positive impact on productivity and work ethic that it will greatly benefit the customer.
A lot of management is against remote working as it means they have to loosen the reigns, and they don't have 'control' over the goings-on of their employees. However, the majority of employees enjoy remote work because of the freedom and flexibility it brings. If workers start to feel micromanaged it will lead to several negative outcomes, including a negative work environment, that will only be passed along to the customer and potentially negatively affect business.
Therefore, remote working can combat this, making employees feel trusted and enjoy the flexibility of their new working environment. Hopefully, this will be reflected in their management of the customer experience.
As many people speculate, it is likely that a lot of companies won't rush to go 'back to normal' and in the future, we may be seeing a lot more companies adopt flexible working and 'work from home' methods, hopefully resulting in a positive impact for customers overall.
Minimise Commuting times
Allowing your employees to work from home also means that they are no longer troubled by the frustration of the daily commute. This can give your employees further flexibility with their lives, increasing productivity and improving their moods, which, in turn, can benefit your customer through friendlier customer service representatives and happier sales teams.
Employee Retention
According to HR News, almost 75% of remote employees are currently satisfied with their working environment, compared to 66% of office employees. In addition to this, 83% of remote employees feel more motivated by working from home.
These statistics show that employees that are working from home are currently happier and more motivated than their office counterparts. Adding the possibility of remote working into your business will help you retain staff and nurture their skill set to the businesses' needs.
Reduce Office Space
Allowing your staff to work from home can also mean that your need for office space is reduced, saving the business money on things such as rent, IT hardware, consumables and other office utilities.
Telecommunications Benefits
Virtual numbers can help your business take the next step into remote working, allowing your employees to receive phone calls from their work computers and tablet devices from home. From local numbers, national numbers and free numbers, Virtual Landline has the business number for you.
Call Forwarding
Call forwarding is a beneficial service that can help your business optimise your incoming calls. Call forwarding allows you to redirect incoming calls to a specific mobile number of your choosing.
A great example of this would be an office phone line being redirected to a remote worker's mobile phone, so they can still run reception phone calls from their home.
This can allow your business to streamline its incoming calls, improving response times and customer satisfaction.
Remote Working Offers
Virtual Landlines UK customer service team is here to help with any of your queries regarding remote working, please contact us today. From virtual numbers to our porting services, Virtual Landline is here to help.
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Great to speak to a UK based call centre on the phone, Dan couldn't have been more helpful and friendly! Everything was explained clearly, and the switch over to Virtual Landline from my old copper landline went really smoothly. It did exactly what it promised. Really happy with how easy it all was.