Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

These days, I keep encountering inquiries from various customers on the topic of call handling. Due to the current transformation, triggered by the increased use of home offices, it is becoming more and more important to make on-call staff more accessible. Often the already overloaded service desk is used for this purpose. Of course, this leads to a) a deterioration in the quality of the service desk and b) delays between the receipt of the problem and the start of problem resolution.

Communications service providers (CSPs) have been at the forefront of the pandemic, helping customers and entire industries make critical transformations almost overnight. When education, healthcare delivery methods, and supply chains were interrupted, CSPs stepped up and provided digital work environments and automations that became lifelines. Now, CSPs are laying the foundation for even more.

Banking institutions are risk engines. Customers know this. Bankers know this. Financial regulators know this. Although no one likes to be turned down for a loan, risk due diligence is actually a good thing. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 proved that risky practices of the past were not good for the economy, for society, or for confidence in the sector as a whole. The challenge is finding the balance to meet responsible lending criteria while ensuring consistent customer satisfaction.

If there’s one thing 2020 taught us, it’s that it’s worth taking time to adapt technology to suit users, not the other way around. Most of us engage with technology every day. We browse, share, and connect. We enjoy a slick user experience as consumers. But we’re often plagued by inefficient technology in the workplace. At telecom provider Telia Company, we pride ourselves on giving customers next-generation services.

Like much of the workforce, IT help desk teams have spent the past year implementing new tools and processes to adapt to the new world of hybrid work. Many, for example, have turned to virtual agents, AI-powered enterprise chatbot tools that allow employees to quickly resolve common IT issues. Yet, despite the promise of virtual agents, many IT teams still find themselves manually handling everyday incidents. Some of the most common are virtual application and desktop session “resets.”

Since the early 2000s, when I was introduced to the Agile Manifesto at a small software company in Ann Arbor, I’ve appreciated how great things can be accomplished through iterative and incremental improvements. A vision of excellence is important, but the path to realization is a disciplined approach: recognizing areas of improvement, making adjustments, measuring, and repeating the process until you’ve reached a stable and acceptable result.

Work changed in 2020, but not just for the lockdown period—it changed forever. It’s become increasingly clear that we won’t return to the old working model. Workers have become accustomed to the autonomy of a remote environment. The 2021 Employee Experience Imperative found that six in 10 employees prefer some amount of remote work. As vaccine rollouts make office work possible again, employers are realizing hybrid is the future.