Preparing for the future of work at a time where everything seems so uncertain can resemble that of a daunting task, ensuring a safe return to the office, and that the quality of customer service never gets sacrificed should receive equal attention. What about IT? Do they have everything they need to manage a distributed workforce? These variables all show the gravity of why now is the time for companies to 'get it right.'
Cisco's already done a lot to ease along with certain kinds of experiences in blended workplaces. According to Javed Khan, SVP & GM, Cisco Webex, this is Cisco's goal, to make coming back to an office, to the new normal, a smoother and safer experience. "The blended workplace needs to support equal collaboration experiences - being remote shouldn’t be a barrier to being more effective," Khan added.
The global workforce already has many new complexities, way more than it did pre-pandemic. And as companies across the globe return to the office, a part of employees continue to work from home. Others, choose to or have to go back into an office setting. To enable business continuity, Khan told me, Cisco's Webex platform for workplace collaboration is making several features GA. The first of two features attempts to solve a real-world WFO-related issue, poor bandwidth, which can lead to inadequate video as well as audio quality.
"Too many remote workers suffer from low bandwidth experiences at home, so we’ve further refined our application allowing employees to maintain a great experience with 50 percent packet loss"
The other feature - virtual, customized, and blurred backgrounds, which makes the collaboration giant the first in the industry to have virtual and blurred backgrounds across all platforms operating on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. Cisco announced the extension of other handy features including screen share preview and hand raising.
And then there was the Webex Desk Pro - an AI-powered collaboration device for the desk. Cisco said the tool's built with collaboration in mind, and the new offering, now available, features a 4K touch display, an HD camera, a solid sound system, as well as several noise-canceling microphones. There are even advanced collaboration tools like digital whiteboards, virtual backgrounds, facial recognition, and access to the Cisco Webex Assistant. Webex Calling and new calling features available via Webex Teams such as visual voicemail and local contact search make it more manageable to make and handle business calls from desktops and mobile devices.
Beefing up its contact center portfolio, Cisco introduced a multitude of new features for more straightforward deployment and operation of work-from-home contact center solutions. Cisco Webex Workforce Optimization (WFO) is here to stay for both cloud and on-prem Cisco Contact Centers. Webex WFO offers management tools, workforce management capabilities for scheduling, and workforce analytics to heighten productivity. Users can stay on top of reporting from anywhere, thanks to Cisco making several enhancements to 'Analyzer,' a tool used to manage and optimize contact centers, all delivered from the cloud. Enhanced search, usage, and threshold reporting - also fresh to the popular Webex platform. And there's an even faster way to get up-and-running with Cisco Webex using the company's PSTN add-on option for Webex Contact Center.
Tackling the matter of scale, the Webex Control Hub today extends a wholistic approach to provisioning and managing calls, meetings, messages, users, contact centers, workspaces, and user devices. Admins can automate as well as enable remote onboarding through the Webex Control Hub. With a fresh feature out for senior-level management, IT professionals can support executives no matter where they're located. "If a CIO reports issues in a meeting, IT can join the call to experience the problems first-hand so they can resolve anything that occurs," Khan wrote in a blog post. Cisco's expanded workplace insights for the office, something it calls a key component of any back-to-the-office plan.
Webex Desk Pro[/caption]
