Digital tools, customer experience and well-being in the workplace

When employees feel good at work and have effective digital tools at their disposal, they work better together and offer customers a unique experience. This also has an impact on customers' purchasing behavior: a Cisco study states that 70% of purchasing decisions are based on customer experience. In other words, digital tools in the workplace are crucial to enhancing both employee collaboration and well-being, and the customer experience.

4 themes, 2 roundtables, 1 vision

Proximus Enterprise recently became Proximus NXTNew window. Beyond the new name, the aim is to advise companies in the jungle of technologies, transforming their challenges into opportunities and managing these solutions end-to-end, from co-creation to maintenance. How about a roundtable discussion with Proximus customers and workspace solution providers to identify these challenges? This was the aim of the meeting held in June 2023. The first roundtable was held at Golf Château de la Tournette in Nivelles, and the second at De Kluizen golf club in Aalst.

Four topics for a complete overview:

• The best solutions for hybrid meetings
• Transforming every customer contact into a unique experience
• From traditional telephony to a smarter collaboration tool
• Boost internal and external remote communication

Supporting the digital transformation of the workspace

When we think of the right work environment, we naturally think of innovation and technology. We spontaneously think of keywords such as cloud, (cyber)security, hybrid working and meetings, artificial intelligence (AI), and sustainability. Not to mention regulatory aspects such as GDPR. "That's a lot to manage when you're already responsible for an SME or the IT infrastructure of a larger organization," stresses Antoine Van Brussel, Head of Communicate & Collaborate at Proximus.

"That's why Proximus NXT offers consultancy programs to identify challenges and support customers in a sustainable way. We need to rethink the working environment for employees in an 'as-a-service' mode".

Antoine Van Brussel, Head of Communicate & Collaborate at Proximus

Hybrid work and meetings

Encouraging employees to return to the office while reducing the cost of floor space, ensuring constant productivity thanks to new technologies while maintaining maximum security. For a customer like AG Insurance, we're talking about 300 rooms, 4,000 employees, and a rule of 3 days telecommuting for 2 days in the office. "The challenge is to anticipate the availability of meeting rooms and to integrate the various technologies in these rooms to suit remote and on-site participants," says the AG Insurance manager.

Arnaud Thomas of Logitech is no stranger to these challenges: "We offer, among others, Grid View, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool that intelligently frames participants in a room. Each face appears in its own frame. And when it comes to maintenance and additional services for hybrid meetings, Proximus also plays an essential role. Together, we automate the management of meeting rooms at all company sites."

Creating a unique customer experience with every interaction

The goal is to transform every customer contact into a unique experience. But to achieve this, contact center agents face many challenges: calls in several languages, high-quality standards, management of fluctuating call volumes, multiplication of communication channels, ... The cloud contact center is the ideal digital teammate for agents: it integrates business applications and adapts to any situation. As in the case of the Federal Pensions Service, which reveals some impressive figures: "We handle no less than 1,300,000 calls a year."

Bart Eyer from Genesys provides an immediate solution: "Our new generation of contact center in the cloud (Genesys Cloud) integrates the most common tools, such as Microsoft and Google. And the APIs (application programming interfaces) for other solutions are numerous and powerful. Today, it's no longer a question of development, but of integration."

From telephony to collaboration

Of all communication channels, telephony is the one that creates the most intense interaction. Communication is immediate and often more reliable. But how do we move away from this classic telephony to an intelligent collaboration tool? The STIB-MIVB is planning to migrate all its in-house technologies according to business lines. "A huge puzzle of telephone exchanges, IP, and analog telephony."

At the Home Affairs FPS, the challenge is also considerable. "We still remember the 2016 attacks in Brussels. Our internal telephony was intact, but the IP network was less available. We also manage hundreds of analog telephones located in tunnels, outside the ecosystem." So, could the solution lie in the cloud?

The benefits of cloud platforms

For Proximus and Cisco, cloud solutions offer many advantages. They evolve at the pace of innovation, their management is simplified, and the range of devices is extensive. "As for deployment, you can count on a fast, flexible process and end-to-end security. Not to mention automatic updates. Webex Calling provides your employees with a cloud telephony service that enables them to make and receive calls on any device, anywhere, without the expense and complexity inherent in managing it," emphasizes Fabian Giordano from Cisco. In short, cloud telephony combines the advantages of on-premise IP telephony and the cloud.

Real-time communication across multiple sites

So how do you ensure effective collaboration when you have a multi-site operation in Belgium and abroad, or a decentralized presence of teleworkers? An additional challenge for IT managers. The solution may lie in digital signage.

A must for the Flemish Region: "Our network of dynamic screens enables us to direct and inform citizens and employees in real time in our more than 200 buildings. We even have a team dedicated to content management."

A similar situation at bpost, according to Jan Bussels of Digitopia. "We're not talking about buying a screen. We're talking about a whole coupled business model and optimizing sales by boosting the customer and employee experience thanks to dynamic screens."

At P&V, internal communication on company sites via dynamic screens stimulates work in the office. "We optimize the flow of information with dynamic screens in elevators or other strategic locations. The art lies in varying the messages, during the day, during the week, ...."