How to Create More Meaningful Connections in a Remote World

In this episode of the webcast, I’m joined by Shameem Smillie, the Director of Global Contact Center Solutions at Mitel for a conversation around connection, personalized customer experiences, and what ‘meaningful connections’ mean in a digital world, what the future of work looks like in post-pandemic times — and some practical ways businesses can think about strengthening their communication skills. Let’s face it, the last year has been a slog. Almost a year ago to the day, for many of us the world shut down, our companies shifted almost overnight to remove work, kids shifted to remote learning, and we hunkered down. And in case you’ve not noticed, it’s largely been cloud solutions and collaboration applications/platforms that have made this shift possible.  We kicked off our conversation talking about the rapid shift involved globally as organizations and their workers shifted to work from home and how navigating work, family, obligations regarding children and beyond have played a role. Shameem shared with some of her thoughts on a change in the demographics that has embraced technology, how the BandAid solutions that were initially put in place by many organizations in the early WFH days are now being evaluated (and often replaced), and how her expertise in customer experience helps her be especially attuned to meaningful moments of conversation and the things organizations can do to empower and facilitate them. Our conversation touched on: Remote work is here to stay Consumer appetite is for faster, more personal interaction and the businesses rising to the top are those that understand that and put good communications first What businesses seem to have struggled with the most as they adapted to a WFH, distributed workforce What kind of adjustments companies are going to need to make as we gradually ease back into a more normal of doing things The tangible ways that businesses can strengthen communication skills What the foundational technology is, the must-haves, in order to get communication technology and communications skills where they need to be so as to deliver not only the optimum in customer experience (think contact centers) as well as the optimum in employee experience. Shameem also shared some great customer use cases, including touching on some verticals who have experienced hyper accelerated growth over the course of the last year, and how they’ve navigated a sudden pivot in their work, collaboration, and communication style, and their experiences and success stories that we can all learn from. If you’re looking to up your communication game and focused on how to create more meaningful digital communications in a remote (or hybrid) world, this is a conversation that I think you’ll enjoy — and benefit from. If you’d like a deeper dive into this topic, download an ebook developed by Mitel that I was thrilled to participate in, Mitel’s Now of Work. The ebook features insights from a group of well-known industry experts and focuses on the integrated solutions for remote, hybrid, and in-office workforces that are the future of work, and how using streamlined communication for better collaboration, understanding best-in-class practices around security and compliance for tech solutions is the path to a future of work that is personified by meaningful communications that are both collaborative and hassle free.