As workers continue working from home and others return to offices, commonly used collaboration platforms impact worker productivity.
According to aggregated data from the Ascend Technologies support desk, collaboration service desk calls spiked by over 157% in March as shelter-in-place orders went into effect.
This data demonstrates that while these tools are commonly used, many organizations don't have corporate best practices in place. Many don't validate the entire user base has the tools installed correctly, security protocols are in place and important permissions and administrative processes are followed.
“The spike in support calls for these tools, particularly Microsoft Teams and Zoom wasn’t unexpected,” says Corey Dean, VP, Operations. “What this illustrates is that these tools need to be more fully included in business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Regular testing, version management, permissions and administration are important. Plus, planning for work from home scenarios is crucial to seamless business operations. Being able to efficiently move operations from offices to remote is now part of our business reality,” continues Dean.
“On average, issues presented during the spike took 50 minutes to resolve. This means days or even weeks of lost productivity. This certainly resulted in lost revenue as well,” shares Dean.
“For companies without a support desk and the engineering team to perform administration of these tools, the shift to remote working had a significant impact on productivity and efficiency for at least a few weeks and probably more,” concludes Dean.