If there’s one thing COVID-19 has taught businesses, it’s that businesses need to be agile to succeed – particularly in their use of unified communications.
With so many companies shifting to a work-from-home model, there has been an increased dependency on UC solutions that allow a team to work effectively and collaboratively while dispersed.
Even after a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, increased UC dependency is likely to stay. A Gartner survey even found that 41% of employees will continue working remotely at least some of the time post-pandemic.
As we’ve already seen in recent months, the businesses that have been the most successful during this unique and challenging time are those who have been the most agile and adaptive.
In order to maintain that level of success in the coming months, UC training and support solutions need to be created in a way that allows for quick updates to address the ever-changing needs of the business landscape as we navigate this “new normal.”
A Need For Training and Support
With increased UC dependence comes increased need to train users and provide ongoing support that is agile. New users will be learning their way around their UC tools for the first time while existing users will need training in order to maximize their efficiency and understand how to use the tools at their disposal.
The features an employee uses in the office are likely different than the ones that can help them the most while working remotely. Getting to know these features on their own time can waste time, lead to confusion, and even cause some workers to get frustrated and decide not to use their suite of tools.
High-quality UC training is necessary right off the bat. To maintain the ideal level of productivity, companies will also need ongoing support content relevant to updated technology, system changes, new features, or common challenges.
This kind of training and support content needs to be agile. As technology evolves over time, so must the content that supports it. As we’ve seen, user needs can also change drastically and quickly. In order to continually improve WFH productivity and decrease stress levels, training and support content should be updated frequently to reflect the current landscape.
Creating Agile Training and Support Solutions
As UC providers approach this challenge, they should aim to create training and support solutions that allow for a few key functions:
- 24/7 Accessibility – With remote work, homeschooling, and all of the other current challenges of life, you want to ensure that your training and support content is available to your users whenever they need it. If they need to troubleshoot an issue after the kids have been put to bed or before office hours when they’re feeling productive, they should be able to. This flexible work arrangement needs flexibility from the training content to match it.
- Quick Updates – If there’s an error in the system or you’ve just released a new feature to your users, you want to be able to quickly communicate the news to them so there’s no lag and no questions left unanswered. If updating your learning management system or knowledge base requires a long process or is cumbersome and clunky, it becomes harder to alert your users with up-to-date information.
- Self-Service Support – IT teams everywhere are being stretched thin as they’re faced with a whole host of new tech challenges in the WFH environment. This means that support tickets submitted to IT teams from users might not be answered for a while – or they could be distracting IT personnel from larger issues. By providing the option for self-service, you can empower users to troubleshoot issues, solve their own problems, and find the relevant information they need to continue without disrupting IT.
A Hands-Off Approach to Agile Training and Support
If you read the above content and thought to yourself, “That sounds like a lot of work. I don’t have time for that!” you’re not alone. In-house training and support management can require a lot of time and resources that many companies right now don’t have the capacity for. With budgets shrinking and companies everywhere looking to get creative to boost their bottom line, handling all of this in-house on top of the current workload just isn’t realistic.
Luckily, B-Lynk offers a solution that marries the best parts of in-house training experts and outsourced UC support.
B-Lynk has a range of training and support solutions that allow businesses to offload the burden of keeping UC training and support agile while still getting access to and the expertise of UC training experts. From your own custom-branded and fully managed training portal Smart-Lynk to virtual or on-site end-user training, B-Lynk is equipped to handle any of your UC training needs and support your business during this ever-evolving time.
Get to know our suite of solutions and services to see how we may be able to help your end-users, then contact us to get started.