The world is changing at an incredible speed, forced to adapt to the demands of a landscape that can no longer abide face-to-face meetings and global travel. With a pandemic rocking the world, companies everywhere are evolving faster than ever before, taking advantage of the collaboration and communication tools that they may not have considered in the past.
Although this global health scare is a terrible thing, it also presents opportunities to service providers and resellers who want to support their customers in making the right kind of change. According to Support to Win, the key to success in this new landscape isn’t just providing the right technology, but the right kind of support too.
I spoke to the CEO of Support to Win, Julie Mills, to find out more.
How Has the Industry Evolved Recently?
According to Mills, the entire world has a more compelling reason to start working from home now. Although many industries have been experimenting with remote working for some time, they all now face the unavoidable reality of needed to depend upon the technologies that underpin it.
“There’s a good chance that when all of this is over, these remote working strategies will remain in place. However, people taken outside of their normal office environment are going to need a different level of support"
"We have experiences supporting service providers with their UC technology and supporting businesses that enable working from home.”
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Julie Mills[/caption]
According to Julie, one of the biggest things that is changing right now is the way that onboarding is delivered by service providers for new UC solutions. In general, onboarding and provisioning often include a lot of human contact, with engineers travelling to sites to get equipment set up or provide training. However, now, company policies are preventing access to visitors from outside of the business. People want to avoid face-to-face contact as much as possible, even for important tech installs.
“At Support to Win, we’ve had a virtualised version of the onboarding process for a while now. In normal circumstances, this solution is cost-effective and efficient for most businesses, but has become absolutely crucial at a time when people are banning visitors coming to site.”
What Have You Noticed in the Last Few Weeks?
Julie told me that there’s a growing demand in the industry for a different kind of support that is more alive to the realities of the ‘coronavirus curfew’. To help their new and existing customers get the most out of their UC services, and safeguard their revenues, all kinds of providers must embrace support and pro services provision that is far more flexible and virtual.
“We’re starting to see big decisions being made as a nation right now. Most companies are progressing toward greater adoption of UC and homeworking for at least the short term, and that extra demand must be met without compromising service levels or delaying activations. At the same time, on the other side of our business, Train to Win, we’re seeing people shying away from attending training sessions in person because they’re simply not allowed to travel anymore – the shift from physical to virtual is everywhere you look.”
