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Organizational Pitfalls of Private Employee-Customer Chat

Thanks to the proliferation of communication channels, employees and customers have more ways to interact than ever before.  While convenience and efficiency have been improved, there are several risks that must be managed to avoid jeopardizing business operations.

The consequences of these pitfalls can range from business continuity, to organizational theft to regulatory fines.

  • Losing valuable customer records

Private applications on employee devices are stuck with employees. When employees change/leave, customer communication records disappear too.

While customer interactions that are on official corporate channels like the website and call center are easily mapped to the CRM, personal employee-customer conversations are not. As such, any interactions, promises or offers that are delivered through the employee’s own personal channels remain with the employee. Not only are those not visible to the organization in real time, they also disappear when employees turnover, or even change their devices and applications.

  • Lack of organizational visibility

Organizations use their information to create new products, design new communication flows and improve efficiency. With a portion of those high-value customer communications not visible, decisions regarding customers are based on poor and partial information.

The scale of these omissions are difficult to measure as employees typically have ‘off grid’ conversations because official channels are cumbersome. Even more important, is to note that the customer-facing interactions often provide the most valuable insights as to how customers perceive the solution, the service, the pricing and more. With these data points outside of corporate records, companies make decisions based on only ‘self-selected’ data.

  • No compliance oversight

Businesses have a duty of care to their customers. This duty becomes more severe when there are extra governmental ordinances that regulate how they interact with customers. Having company representatives communicate through unofficial channels creates a lack of regulatory oversight and exposes companies to the regulatory penalties without their knowledge.

For example, financial institutions like JP Morgan have been penalized $200 million dollars for their Whatsapp conversations that were not monitored and available to regulators.  While not capturing these conversations is not necessarily intentional, it is not a justifiable excuse in the eyes of regulatory bodies.

  • Jeopardizing company assets

Customer records are the property of the company. But when conversations happen directly with employees on their own channels, employees have unique access and control over the company’s most important asset – their customers!

By enabling employees to communicate seamlessly from their personal chat apps, companies can create a solid customer rapport. And, by using a compliant customer conversational platform, they can maintain full record of the customers and create a degree of security and anonymity that safe-guards their corporate assets.

  • Duplicating low-value, costly tasks

 

When companies adopt new technologies, they account for efficiencies, automation, categorization and more. These drive higher value across the organization. However, when each employee creates their own workflows and processes, chaos ensues and administrative energies are wasted.

When employees can leverage the power of corporate technologies, they can avoid needless efforts cataloging, note-taking, reminder setting and more. Efficient routing can ensure the next step is followed. Instant syncing can ensure that personal chats are reflected in customer records. Automatic reminders can be implemented to avoid ‘dropping the ball’ on important sales processes. These are just a sample of the many repetitive tasks that can burden employees using their own personal devices, instead of corporate systems

Thankfully, new solutions enable employees to harness the power of seamless communication channels but remain compliant and effective.

With Membit’s Compliant Conversation Platform, businesses can provide both the agility to their employees and customers, while maintaining full control, visibility and compliance. Learn more about Membit’s Compliant Conversation Platform.