10 Ways to Support a Hybrid Workforce and Make Your Job Easier 

When the effects of COVID-19 hit hard in March 2020, businesses had to make a lot of decisions very quickly. Many of those decisions were related to IT — how businesses could enable communications and collaboration across an entirely, or almost entirely, remote workforce almost overnight.

Those fast IT decisions allowed businesses to remain operational while peoples’ movements were restricted. However, in most cases, the communications and collaboration solutions implemented were quick fixes designed to address an immediate problem. They were never intended to be long-term solutions, and they most likely were not the solutions businesses would have chosen if they had more time to prepare and evaluate other options.

Now that it looks like most businesses will be supporting a mixed on-site and off-site workforce for the foreseeable future, it’s time to put those long-term strategies and solutions in place.

Cloud-based communications and collaboration technologies are ideal long-term solutions that increase employee efficiency and productivity. They give you new ways to serve customers. And you have the flexibility to add new features in a cost-effective way as your requirements evolve.

Mitel MiCloud Connect is an easy-to-use communications, collaboration, and contact center service that’s built on Google Cloud. It’s a great example of how an all-in-one, cloud-based solution makes your life easier as you shift to permanently support a hybrid workforce.

Here are 10 ways Mitel MiCloud Connect lets you simplify communications, collaboration, and customer service across your organization:

1. Unify All Your Communications and Collaboration Tools

Mitel MiCloud Connect gives your teams access to voice, video, chat, customer engagement capabilities, and more from a single, consistent user interface. With a unified approach to communications, collaboration, and customer service, there’s far less risk team members will lose track of conversations or important project details.

2. Collaborate from Anywhere

The days when all your team members sat near each other and shared project documents locally are long gone. However, with MiCloud Connect, your teams remain seamlessly connected as if they were in the same location. They can quickly and easily chat, collaborate on documents, and share information no matter where they are — all within a single, virtual workspace.

3. Elevate Your Conversations

Sometimes, conversations that start as text need to transition to voice so people can clarify points of view, ask follow-up questions, and accelerate information exchanges. Seamlessly transitioning the conversation from text to voice is no problem when your teams can start an ad-hoc meeting with one click, then follow through on the conversation by assigning tasks.

4. Handle Urgent Voice Messages Faster

Everyone who has been trapped in lengthy meetings knows that sense of dread, anticipating the backlog of urgent voicemails awaiting them. Visual Voicemail eliminates this stress and allows your team members to respond to their most urgent messages faster. Voice messages are transcribed and sent to email so they can be quickly scanned for urgency and replied to as needed — even during meetings.

5. Instantly See Who’s Available to Help

When your team members are engaged in an important conversation with a customer, partner, or supplier, they might need additional information. Ensure that information is available right away. They don’t have time to try contacting a list of people who may or may not be available.

With MiCloud Connect, they will have access to each employees’ presence information. So, every team member can see who’s open and available to respond and who is not, and they can reach out to the right person at the right time.

6. Stay on Track with Timed Meeting Agendas

Meetings without agendas are typically drawn out, disorganized, and often miss important points that should have been covered. When your team members can set the agenda before the meeting, assign times to agenda items, and share the agenda with all meeting participants in advance, meetings stay on track and are far more productive.

7. Increase Productivity On-Site and Off-Site

It used to be that working off-site was frustrating because staff didn’t have access to the same communication tools they had in the office. Now, with more of your team members working remotely, giving everyone the same communications experience no matter where they are is more important than ever.

MiCloud Connect's mobile apps let your team members take their office experience with them. Everyone, in every location, can join meetings with a single click and no need to enter participant codes.

8. Integrate Your Phone System with Your CRM

Your sales team relies heavily on both their phones and your customer relationship management (CRM) system, so why not integrate these two? Now, your team members can make and take phone calls from directly within your CRM—no need to follow up with dreaded data entry tasks. With MiCloud Connect, when sales staff answer their phones, to-do items are automatically added to their lists in the CRM system.

9. Connect with Microsoft Outlook and Google Workspace

Integrating your phone system with your Microsoft Outlook or Google Workspace lets you bring the same seamless experience to your entire workforce. Now there’s no need for people to think in conversational “silos.” They’re simply communicating in the most efficient and effective way for the conversation underway, with no need to switch applications.

10. Align Your Costs with Your Evolving Requirements

With MiCloud Connect, you can choose the communications and collaboration features and functions that are the best fit for your business now, then add capabilities as your needs evolve. MiCloud Connect features and functions are available in multiple tiers with flexible pricing structures, so you’re never paying for features you don’t need. Plus, there are minimal changes to your communications infrastructure costs.

Discover MiCloud Connect

With Mitel MiCloud Connect, your teams have access to the ultimate in communications and collaboration reliability, flexibility, and simplicity — today and tomorrow. Plus, you have peace of mind knowing the solution your teams rely on is backed by the Mitel Customer Satisfaction Guarantee.

By the Experts at Mitel