Last night I dreamt I was back in the office for the first time. Our long communal tables in the kitchen were gone. My desk was surrounded on all sides by plexiglass – including overhead, which, for a guy my height, means stooped shoulders and a future riddled with chiropractic appointments. Nobody talked to each other except over Slack. The smell of disinfectant was inescapable. I couldn’t wait to go back home. Or at least, wake up.

Customers live in an omnichannel world. From phone and email, to social media platforms, live chat, and messaging apps, customers expect to engage with a brand on their own terms, and in the same communication channels they use to connect with their friends and family. And once they engage with a company, customers want fast, personalized service, meaningful marketing, and smart, thoughtful recommendations.

How much data does the world generate in a single day? The answer through a simple Google search is a mind-boggling 2.5 quintillion bytes! This data is valuable to organizations because it helps to answer questions on how customers make buying decisions. So customer data is collected, stored, and analyzed in an organized manner by companies and this process is called customer data management.

It’s odd – we’re always talking about the healthy work-life balance and know that working long hours can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression. Yet, we continue to dedicate more and more time to our jobs. In fact, research shows that 80% of workers answer emails and return phone calls after hours. For one, people believe long hours on the job to be proof of their work ethic.

Thanks to our amazing team and community, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of Rocket.Chat 3.3.0! This post summarizes the main features brought by this new release, with a special focus on new Omnichannel features.

Baseball legend Babe Ruth knew a lot about collaboration. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success,” Ruth explained. “You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” While the Great Bambino was referring to the sport that made him famous, this is also true for teams in the workplace. Collaboration is critical to success.

If there was one thing you could improve on your team, what would it be? Most common answers to this question aren’t around ability or leadership. Instead, they tend to focus on a lack of alignment and information. These were difficult areas to get right before the shift to remote work and have only gotten more challenging since. We have experimented with all sorts of approaches for keeping our team aligned and informed at Hugo.