The pandemic has served up yet one more new challenge for businesses that must house and secure customer information. Identity theft is on the rise—and the bad guys aren’t necessarily relying on hacking to breach valuable data. Instead, they’re using social engineering—or the psychological manipulation of people, and in this case, contact center workers—to gain access to accounts or to divulge confidential information and take over the account. Pre-pandemic, fraudsters made up an estimated 30% of all incoming calls to businesses.2 Today, they make up 60% of those calls. Part of the problem is that everyone—both contact center agents and criminals—are working from home.
When COVID-19 shut down much of the world’s economy in March, it didn’t shut down the influx of customer service needs. Whether at home or unemployed, many suddenly had more questions and more time to wait on hold while using other means of connection outside of the phone, including websites, apps, text, social media, and email. Meanwhile, companies struggled to transfer complex in-office operations to remote locations, oftentimes at home. Now that the U.S. is reopening, everything is changing once again, driving new customer questions.
Malicious hacking is on the rise, whether it’s ransomware attacks on target municipalities, data breaches that divulge details on millions of people, or supply chain hacks that kneecap global trade. The threats—and vulnerabilities—will continue to grow in the post-COVID workplace.
For large organizations, the shift to a remote workforce isn’t as simple as opening a laptop and Slack. Here’s what CIOs need to do now to support the post-COVID workplace. When the pandemic forced thousands of workers to work home last spring, obstacles loomed everywhere for CIOs. Today, months later, the challenges continue as many companies were forced to rethink how—and where—we work.
Last spring, when COVID-19 first raged around the globe, contact tracing became standard vocabulary in the world, as containment of the virus became a top priority for every major enterprise, government and institution. Contact tracing, along with widespread testing, became a powerful tool in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
Workers are largely remaining at home. What does all of this mean to the contact center business, and how can we morph this into something more workable than what we have today?
It’s been six months since we’ve:
• Moved our college students home
• Started homeschooling our children
• Relocated our work to a remote/home work setup
• Migrated our business life to a blend of personal and professional
• Endured hours of video calls while juggling all of the above (and more)
And for most, there is no end in sight.
As businesses around the world manage an uncertain future, it’s crucial that companies create a new framework for how people work and embrace new technology and plan to boost security, collaboration and productivity. The ConvergeOne leadership team recently hosted a virtual Executive Exchange with over 50 key customer leaders to share ideas, best practices and perspectives to support growth strategies and drive future success, summarized here.
