When the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to close their offices, our client’s customer service teams at both retail and call centers had to quickly make the shift to work from home. This sudden and major operational disruption – at a time when mobile device use soared and all support traffic shifted at once to phone and digital channels – had the potential to jeopardize business and brand performance alike.
But as Hinnant explains, Filter leveraged its XD work on the client’s customer service tools and applications to enable retail employees to easily shift their role from in-person to online support, and for all service staff to effectively manage the skyrocketing support load.
“When everything went virtual and that spike happened at the call centers, [retail teams] were able to step in and, from home, get into those applications and start helping with that load to take the pressure off,” says Hinnant. “That’s been a huge benefit for the client in managing that shift to customer engagement.”
This work also provides vital agility against an uncertain future state. As Hinnant describes, “For an ongoing basis there’s going to be this need [for more robust online customer support], and we expect this may be the new normal. We’re working with our clients on how we can increase the ability for retail employees to continue to engage customers in virtual environments…and really help them to be a lot more flexible and agile as customers need to engage with them in a lot of different ways.”
Given that customer behaviors and retail operations will likely be in flux for quite some time to come – and may never return to what they were – Filter is also helping this client better predict the future landscape and plan for a myriad of possible outcomes.
“We’re working with the client on how we can continue our research in a fully virtualized way in order to track how [customer] needs are changing in this new environment,” says Hinnant. “We can take this information and work with product teams and client leadership to understand that changing landscape and reprioritize that work around how we’re supporting and providing the right tools and functionality for the [customer service teams].”
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Read more about how Filter is helping clients respond and recalibrate to our current climate, or check out this article on how we bring greater agility to CMOs and CXOs facing unprecedented uncertainty about the future of their business.
