It’s time to give your staff a voice.

 

In the last week or so I have had need to talk to the planning department in my local council.

Can I? No.  send an email and wait.

My wife is trying to follow up with our insurance company about an operation for the cat.

Can she? No,  send an email and wait.

On the subject of the cat, apparently, we have been feeding her a batch of food that could do her harm,  to find out more you can…. wait for it, send an email.

As I lament these issues with my wife, she looks straight at me and says,

You’re in the phone business.  Why don’t you do something about it?

So here goes ……

For the last 18 months a lot of back office and administrative staff have been working from home for some, if not all of the time.  For a huge percentage of these user’s, being able to pick up a phone has been limited in the extreme, with most totally uncontactable.

Whilst understandable initially during a pandemic, without a voice, staff cannot do their jobs to the best of their ability, slowing down business and operational processes significantly.  It’s a two-edged sword.  Staff like the peace of being ‘able to get on with their work’ but get equally frustrated when they are unable to quickly contact people that they need to contact.  Let’s not forget,  communicating with people on the phone is part of the job.

Our experience is that frontline staff who do answer the phone, have been shouldering the burden and they think it’s time for a change.

The time has come to give all users a voice.

MS Teams has been widely implemented across businesses and public sector in the last year and for a cost of less than one hours’ minimum wage salary, per staff member per month, you could add on a phone licence with a fantastic low-cost concurrent calling package within just a few days.

To make it pay, all you have to do is improve the staff members performance by one hour per month.  Let me write that again,  one hour per month! And that’s at minimum wage.

Give your staff a voice.  They need to be able to do the job you pay them for.

To find out how we can help you to do this with consultancy, supply and support, give us a call (assuming you can!) 0118 940 9000 or email Caroline.crawford@beckett-tele.com

Now I can tell my wife I’ve done something.  Let’s hope it’ in time to find out if the cat’s malnourished.