Written by Jasper de Taeye, Sales Director for the Benelux market at Wire™. At the beginning of January 2020, the first people nudged me about the rise of a virus that could become a pandemic. We all know by now how it disrupted our world entirely. I was an ignorant Dutchman and I believed it would not become that dramatic. I truly believed, and mostly hoped, that this coronavirus will be nipped in the bud, like previous viruses, by the strictly regulated China.

In 2016, the financial institution used to have different communication channels to support its 100M+ customers: Skype for video calls, a mobile app, website, phone, to name a few. Having so many complex tools around is more of a hassle than a solution. Here’s why.

The one I’m talking about was a meeting with my boss in one of those conference rooms with clear walls, like a fishbowl, when she told me I didn’t get promoted. I’d had a fun, intense, wild ride working at a late-stage startup. But three years later, I felt like a shell of a person. I was commuting ninety minutes each way to work. I was feeling uninspired, dreading the relentless marketing campaign cycles that at one time were exciting.

The global pandemic has left newly remote workers swimming in confusion and struggling to keep up. To shift from today’s state of surviving to a future where teams are thriving, we need tools that make coordinating and collaborating on work effortless. When teams aren’t clear on who is doing what by when and why they are doing it, they move slowly, miss deadlines, and fall short of their goals.

As a business grows, so does the focus on building and maintaining strong customer relationships. Businesses that aim to make a mark globally, understand the need to interact with customers from all over the world, in their native language. Engaging with customers in their preferred language helps them feel heard. The message is highly personalized, and as a result, customer satisfaction increases. However, offering multilingual customer support is easier said than done. So, where do you begin?

The ultimate goal of writing tests should be improving the user’s in-app experience and increasing developers’ confidence in shipping new or improved apps. The Mattermost team has been continuously writing different types of tests to improve the product. Such extensive automated testing has enabled them to ship a new release—with new features and improvements—every single month for the last few years. Thousands of developers contribute to the codebase.

Moving is never fun. It’s bad enough when it’s your stuff, but ten years of stuff at an office you only spent two years in can be daunting! I’m Navid, and part of my job at Basecamp the last two years has been taking care of our office in Chicago. As folks outside of Basecamp learned of our impending office closure, I began to get some questions. The most common being “what did you do with the stuff?

Team collaboration serves customers holistically. So customers become loyal. Businesses that get it will enjoy loyal customers while others struggle. In one study, 86 percent of business executives said that lack of collaboration or poor communication causes workplace failure. Employees agree more. In that study, 97 percent of employees say that lack of team alignment impacts goals and projects negatively. It doesn’t matter if you aim to win more loyal customers or double your revenue.

Customer support reps have to be knowledgeable about the products and/or services their company sells so that they can accurately answer customer questions. They also need to be aware of company policy so that they always interact with customers in brand-approved ways. But teaching new team members these things when they work outside a central office can be difficult. To do so, you need a stellar onboarding plan.

Your customers need you now more than ever. And the sooner you are able to engage with them the better as brand loyalty is built around quality customer service. Besides, good customer service can also prove to be a good marketing tool — news about good service travels far and wide and can bring in additional sales through repeat and new customers.