It’s August, and for many parents, that signals the official presence of the back-to-school season. But this year looks a bit different. Working from home isn’t going away and self-service is becoming more and more important.
The increase in COVID-19 cases has caused uncertainty regarding how long the WFH lifestyle will last, particularly with schools unsure of whether they will re-open on campus or via e-learning and what challenges it poses for businesses.
In a recent back-to-school survey by Deloitte, researchers found that 79 percent of studies have received digital learning content provided by their school. For some parents, this shift to e-learning will mean continuing to work at home to supervise their children. For others, that will mean leaving the office to go back to the WFH lifestyle in order to support this change.
More at-home workers means the case for Unified Communications is stronger than ever.
This continued dependency on UC tools for collaboration makes the need for users to be able to get the help they need, when they need it, that much more critical to ensuring businesses can maintain productivity and decrease employee stress. Parents trying to WFH while also assisting their children with virtual learning leaves little time for technology challenges that require phone calls to the IT department or to the service provider’s customer support line. Providing end users with the tools they need to be productive and efficient — including the self-service resources to learn how to use those tools is critical in these times.
Self-service training and support empowers UC end users to get the timely answers and support they need, increases adoption, and improves user satisfaction. Read on to learn how a self-service training & support platform can make this school year a smooth one for WFH parents and the businesses they support.
Self-Service Training & Support Platform: What Is It?
The main goal of a self-service training & support platform is to provide users with a solution platform that will drive faster adoption of collaboration technologies. It uses customized processes, tools, and techniques to influence the following:
- Increased rate of return on your technology investment
- Enhanced, consistent end-user experience
- Faster cultural shift
- Improved employee engagement
Making it easy for your end-users to understand all the functions of their UC technology is critical to keeping them engaged and business outcomes high even while working from home.
What It Can Do vs. What It Can’t
A self-service support platform empowers users to learn how to manage their UC services and communications devices from anywhere in real time, without having to contact their IT department or ultimately the service provider for support.
Self-service support platform can also include chat integration and robust search options. This allows end customers and administrators the ability to ask questions via chat real time and search for specific types of content to support the task they are trying to complete, or feature they wish to configure.
Also, it’s simple to share links to help guides and videos making it easy for customer administrators and IT departments to distribute instructions to their end users. If a business needs to update their greetings, or reroute their main phone number to a virtual hunt group or temporary mailbox that can all be done using a self-service support site that has quality content and detailed instructions.
Improve UC Adoption and End-User Satisfaction with Self-Service Solutions
When UC technology is not easy to navigate and use, there are several challenges a business might face. These include:
- Resistance to change by employees
- Lack of project management
- Excess costs
- Gaps in skills
- Weakened case for change
These symptoms of poor employee usage are a result of an ineffective training and support model. By integrating a self-service support and training platform, you can eliminate these symptoms, enhance your end-user’s satisfaction with the technology, and improve overall product adoption.
Rather than relying solely on IT and support staff, a self-service portal allows your users to find the answers and solutions they need in a timely manner on their own. It simplifies the help desk’s workload, decreases demand for administrator involvement, and streamlines your business processes.
In a time when users are working from home, juggling school supervision, and trying to meet business deadlines, this enhances workflows and boosts overall productivity.
The All-In-One Self-Service Solution: Smart-Lynk
You can nail your office-to-home transition or maintain a positive WFH experience for your end users with the help of Smart-Lynk, a fully customizable self-service and training platform for medium to enterprise level businesses.
Smart-Lynk is packed with the training, support, and education features that will empower your team to understand their UC technology from the inside out and troubleshoot any snags they hit along the way – all on their own.
This reduces training cost, speeds up product adoption, leads to a faster return on your UC investment, and makes for happier, more confident users.
Make working from home more manageable for your users and reap the benefits in your business outcomes. Get started with B-Lynk’s Smart-Lynk today.