Quiz: is your service delivery team ready to work from anywhere?

Your service delivery team is essential; they send out time-critical documents. Communications that bring in revenue, inform and engage customers and provide important company information to staff and key stakeholders.

With so many business-critical processes under one roof, it’s crucial your team are happy and have the tools to do their job no matter what.

When an unexpected event arises, and your team need to work remotely, if they’re not set up to work from anywhere, important activities can cease. Printing and mailing customer welcome packs or sending out company information to staff might stop or be delayed. It’s therefore vital that employees can work from anywhere and maintain the high standards of service people expect.

See if your team is ready to work from anywhere with our quick quiz below.

0%

How often do your employees usually work from home?

Occasionally

Frequently

They are not currently able to work from home

Aside from a computer or laptop, what equipment do your employees require access to?

None

Printer and / or fax machine

Paper folders, envelope stuffers and franking machines

How do your employees currently access essential software?

It's installed on some / all desktop computers

It's installed on some / all laptops

It's cloud-based

Where is your data stored?

Internal company servers

Locally on individual computers

In the cloud

Is your data encrypted?

Yes

No

I don't know

How often do you send communications to customers or employees in the post?

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Do you currently send digital communications such as email or SMS?

If requested by the customer

Yes, as standard

No

What would happen if you lost access to your service delivery staff or facilities?

There would be no impact

All service delivery functions would cease

Some delivery functions would be disrupted

Quiz: Work from Anywhere

Low

Oh dear! It doesn’t look like your team is able to work from anywhere at all. Perhaps you don’t send out many paper documents, or your communications are relatively infrequent. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make improvements to allow for flexible working in the future. From employee absences and unexpected events such as a power cut or flood, there are many reasons why your business may be suddenly thrust into the unexpected. The earlier you prepare a Plan B for such an instance, the better prepared your employees will be to continue business as usual if and when the time comes. It’s also worth bearing in mind that your business scope may change and expand in the future. Early implementation of a more responsive approach allows you to better weather any changes both good and bad that your business may face. It will also help to attract and retain employees, as flexible working is the number one priority for workers—even ahead of salary!

Medium

Not bad! It looks like your team is currently able to perform some of their essential duties from anywhere. However, there’s still some work to be done to create a truly resilient team. It might be that you need to rely less on physically posting documents to customers, or perhaps you should take a look at improving the digital security of your current systems. Take the time to analyse each step in your current workflow to see where you can save time and resources by automating processes or outsourcing processes. While retaining 100% of the work in-house feels like the best way to control your daily operations, it does mean that all your eggs are in one basket should something unexpected happen. A great way to reduce the strain on your internal staff is outsourcing the distribution of your digital and print communications. This frees up more time and resources in your service delivery team, giving you the peace of mind that your essential customer-facing documents are being taken care of no matter what.

High

Great work! It looks like your team is already well set up for working from anywhere. Remember that continuous tracking of KPIs and workflows is essential to make sure that your current setup is working efficiently. As your operations grow and develop, you need to keep auditing and reassessing your service delivery team, implementing new strategies and procedures whenever gaps are identified. No matter how smoothly your day-to-day operations run under normal circumstances, there’s no substitute for a robust Plan B. In the event of an unexpected staffing change, increase in workload or even a disaster like a fire or flood, a business continuity plan is invaluable. The better your team’s ability to work from anywhere, the more resilient your business will be. One area that can greatly improve working options is outsourcing the distribution of your digital and print communications. This frees up more time and resources in your team, and allows your staff to focus their energy on providing an excellent customer service that improves brand loyalty.

If you’d like to help your workforce succeed in distributing customer and employee communications from anywhere, you need Aceni.

Aceni makes essential service delivery easy and you benefit from greater efficiency, lower overheads and increasing customer satisfaction.

Aceni is a secure document automation platform for the production and distribution of communications that go out in print, as web pages/forms, email and text notifications. There’s no software to install, no licence fees to pay, and no need to worry about what will happen if your physical premises aren’t available.

Find out more about Aceni, or contact Datagraphic to find out how we can support your operations team.