The Future of Work: Augmented staff

Humans have evolved to solve problems that need solving now rather than waiting for natural selection to ‘breed in’ the solution. Certainly customers are less willing than ever to wait several generations until their needs are met.

The first step in your staff augmentation programme is to release the shackles that constrain them from acting instinctively when it comes to helping others. Locking staff into a set of cast iron service processes does more harm than good.

Next step is to provide the staff with decision making tools in the form of customer information. Not just the standard historical CRM data but the real-time social data as well. And to present that data in a manner that enables your staff to make real-time decisions that will return the customer to a positive disposition or to for example move the customer from loyalty to advocacy status.

Staff augmented with decision support tools can take service to the next level. In the digital economy, service is the new sales, so this is worth considering.