The working environment has changed. Companies have had to adapt throughout COVID-related lockdowns, with members of staff working from home through sheer necessity.
Like many businesses, yours may well be growing familiar with this way of working, but you might also be encountering certain challenges, not least with employee communication.
Here’s how using Zendesk can help your company support and accommodate your staff in transitioning to remote work.
Using content to aid self management
One of your first tasks should be to create clear content for your colleagues that answers their most common questions. All of your employees need to work from the same page – literally. Publishing content in a knowledge base, such as Zendesk Guide, so that information is available to every employee is the key to this.
Solutions to common questions like “how do I make a payroll inquiry?” or “how does COVID affect our office return?” should be at your employees’ fingertips. You want to make everything as frictionless as possible so employees can self-manage and to ensure that nobody has to repeat themselves or waste time explaining things that already have clear answers.
Another way to streamline employee communication is through AI-powered chatbots. Using Bot Flow Builder in Zendesk Messaging you can side-step any unnecessary emails or phone calls by providing intelligent workflows and offering suggestions to help answer common queries.
Bringing together all internal departments, or a selection of internal departments, into one application and one tool unifies all of the inbound messages from employees, making it easy for them to have one place to go to make an inquiry.
Creating these configurations or workflows will not only standardise things for remote employees, it will make it easier for the people that are dealing with the requests and inquiries too.
Information for your team regardless of location
Lots of companies have been remote for 18 months and are staying that way, and some have been remote but are now changing to a flexible or hybrid format. Even companies that are largely going back to the office full time may be considering new remote hires so they can dip into a larger talent pool. As such, professionals across the country now expect to be able to work from home, but the correct processes and tools must be in place to accommodate them.
The right forms of communication and support can keep remote workers from feeling out of the office clique, and will give them the confidence and knowledge required to be a real part of things. All of your staff, regardless of location, should have access to exactly the same processes and communication channels.
By giving exposure and priority to somebody who works remotely, Zendesk channels can improve upon the procedure of being able to knock on somebody’s door in the office.
This also works the other way round. If your staff are back in the office but your payroll team or your HR team is outsourced, you can still manage those departments efficiently through standardised processes.
Once you’ve got these basic remote communication tools in place it could be worth using third-party software to facilitate extra functionalities.
Custom integrations that are specific to your company or industry may not be directly built into the basic Zendesk service, but they can certainly be implemented.
Integrate for maximum efficiency
Anything that needs information from multiple internal sources, like approvals processes or things that need to be trackable or traceable, can benefit hugely from having a system in place within Zendesk for remote and on-site workers alike.
Standardising things like purchase requests can empower employees by putting what they need within easy reach and letting them know that who to contact is predetermined. This is particularly useful if you are bringing in remote workers that haven't met the rest of your team and therefore don't intrinsically know who to talk to about requisition requests or about an IT problem or a HR issue, for example.
It might be the case that you require more than just the core Zendesk functionalities. If so, we can help select, requisition or develop the best third-party tool for your needs and then integrate them into the Zendesk platform.
We’ve already helped companies like Yeo Valley and Nando's take advantage in this way. Both of these businesses have a variety of departments, which we were able to bring together internally using a combination of different Zendesk features.
By configuring a variety of workflows using different business rules in Zendesk, we've also implemented Zendesk for various different companies and across numerous departments, such as accounts, purchasing, payroll, customer service, IT, and more. So we are well-prepared to help you as well, no matter what your industry and requirements.
Transitioning to remote or hybrid working? Take the next step
What this all boils down to is communicating on the right channel, at the right time, at the right priority. Making sure that all of your employees have as much information as possible before starting an interaction will stop them having to repeat themselves over and over or from going through multiple gates and checkpoints for an answer.
Taking tasks and requests that can be process-driven and automating them through Zendesk is not only time and labour saving, it will make sure that your company is well set up to thrive and expand with this way of working.
To find out more about how Appamondo can help your company transition to a hybrid or remote working model, get in touch today.
