Gone are the days when focusing on customer experience was enough. In this cut-throat competitive scenario of the industry, curating a skilled workforce focusing on both customer experience and inclusion is the need of the hour.
To clear your fog doubts, let’s classify ‘diversity into types. Roughly there are about three kinds of diversity namely experience, skills, and cultural backgrounds or ethnicities.
Being a part of an industry that largely operates within and with a humongous range of individuals, from all walks of life, it is important to keep a close on diversities and be sensitive to them at all costs. After all, diversity plays a major role in delivering incredible customer service.
Diversity
It can be described as ‘who’s at work’. It is a cumulative reflection of a host of peculiarities and experiences in a business’s workforce. These traits comprise caste, creed, gender, age, race, religion, and socio-economic status.
Inclusion
It refers to how employees ‘feel at their workplace’. A company’s workforce may seem diverse, but if workers don’t feel valued, or at ease, then the organisation isn’t inclusive. Technically inclusion is the magnitude to which workers feel ‘accepted’ at their workplace.
Offering innovative customer solutions
As we all know how ‘with age, time and experience come knowledge and wisdom’ and diverse employees from numerous backgrounds and walks of life tend to render perfect customer service solutions, purely based on their personal beliefs and experiences. Interesting isn’t it? This not only makes the process of problem-solving an interesting feat but also helps with a fresher approach for the next time
Boosting employee retention and financial results
If the employees feel valued and trusted then they are going to stick around. The fundamental science behind ‘employee retention’ is engagement. Based on ‘engagement’ and belonging, there can be a huge employee turnover which can eventually help with promising worker retention rates.
This will in turn add to the financial value of the business.
Diversity ensures that the team of customer service is always working for its goals while keeping their individuality intact!
Inclusive procedures tend to involve the strategies that cement client loyalty and retention by mapping their journey and showcasing empathy. This, in turn, further aids the retention of the best talent and hence contributes to better financial results. After all, it certainly costs more to replace than retain.
Enhanced adaptability and creativity
With diverse employees in the organisation, the degree of adaptability is going to rise exponentially. Workers will be more open to new ideas, strategies, concepts, and even changes.
Diversity gives an opening for international marketing, and due to the advantage of different languages, the company can reach many platforms globally. This will turn the business relatable over time!
Though working with diverse individuals may lead to inevitable conflict, it will help the employees under the same roof to learn the significance of mutual compromise for a bigger cause while working through the trap of conflicts.
When it comes to discussing creativity, we would like to point out that individuals are not stuck in a loop of ‘norm’. With individuals with different lifestyles, cultures, and beliefs, this helps in coming up with creative brainstorming and problem-solving methodologies, because after all there’s no wrong answer.
As per a study, 84% of corporate businesses with a turnover of over $500 million confirmed that innovation and creativity are the secret sauce, which significantly stems from having a diverse workforce. 35% of companies were easily able to outperform their competitors simply because of the presence of diverse employees. Fascinating isn’t it?
Fostering innovation and professional experience
According to a survey by Deloitte, cognitive diversity can power the innovation of teams in companies by about 20%! Shocking right?
Cognitive diversity that stands for differences in ethnic backgrounds, personalities, experiences, and beliefs, is known to power up the decision-making and problem-solving skills of the employees, giving rise to better-performing business in the long run.
The customer experience management teams may inculcate cognitive diversity simply by hiring diverse talents, and building teams that have diverse individuals, with different areas of expertise. In the long run, these will drive productivity, revenue generation, a healthy work environment, innovation, and even retention of the workforce!
Enhancing the client experience
In a B2B business, the customer service teams have to always work with one eye open. Mutual respect, empathy, and valuing a client’s perspective are factors that foster client experience and engagement. Having a team of diverse employees, who are patient, understanding, sensitive, along with being productive, helps in providing the best of customer service.
A diverse business gives clients the time, space, and non-judgemental agents, who help in mapping their client journey while keeping their priorities at the forefront. This also helps well with the process of customer management
Hurdles in the way
Though there are many advantages of diversity in a customer experience industry, it certainly is not spared from its bunch of challenges. Because the concepts of diversity and inclusion on paper are perfect and too good to be true, but its direct implementation in the practical world, is not a smooth ride, especially in business process outsourcing scenario.
Some of the fundamental issues can be-
- Conflicted beliefs
- Interpersonal clashes
- Conducting training programs
- Hiring different QA agents for assessing performance
- Chances of discrimination at the workplace
- Internal communication issues
- Stereotyping and prejudice
- Resistance in implementation in business process management
Conclusion
Diversity and inclusion should not just be for jumping on the bandwagon but shall become a norm. It influences the whole company holistically in many ways. Like how it helps in bringing novel ideas, insights, and perspectives to the table, and helps in curating innovative strategies, for the betterment of client service, hence reaping the benefits and revenue.
The internal teams also feel more engaged and valued when they feel belonged by embracing their individuality, and not just trying to fit in for the sake of gelling.
Diversifying your talent pool will overcome language limitations and aid in learning the essence of your bond. Many a time the clients may prefer a particular sort of professional and comprehending the cause behind may help in cementing better bonds. After all, satisfied clients equal to a thriving business.
