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As leaders and implementers of edge pushing technology, we often do small tests of how that works, like submitting a few chatbot cases, or making mystery shopping calls, even taking new hire training and answering a few cases ourselves. However, with all the other pressures we have in our day to day jobs, I assume most of us rarely get the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time testing out our programs from the “agent end”. Or maybe it has just been me. 
When we first launched out Gig economy platform with our partner I was a key part of testing, and every now and then have looked at the questions to make sure new pushes were running well, but not for more than a couple hours around a launch.

I just completed a two week vacation in Europe and decided to take the opportunity of being disconnected from my regular schedules of meetings, planning sessions, coaching, etc to fully engage with out gig workers experience. I decided that I was going to use downtime of my travel to try to answer or review as many customer interactions as possible, and I have to say it was a lot of fun.

Answering questions on delivery eligibility while taking a bus from the airport to the hotel in Lloret De Mar, reviewing another “agents” response on skipping deliveries while waiting for my plan to board from Barcelona to Bilbao, answering a question about our diabetes friendly meal plan while sipping on sangria in San Sebastian waiting for my lunch to come. Building on another agents answer about a question on a late delivery while sitting on turrets of Castelo de Sao Jorge in Lisbon while my girlfriend got coffee. After the first couple of days I was looking forward to the notifications in my email “you have new tasks” and even a little disappointed when I would sign into the app and see the message “You have no new tasks at the moment”. Or even worse getting frustrated when I didn’t have good internet coverage and couldn’t answer a question I knew the answer to.

In addition to having fun, getting a great feel for the freedom of being able to “work” on my own time and convenience, and paying for a couple of dinners on my vacation, I took away a couple of opportunities to improve the Knowledge base and in app experience which I passed on to my team when I returned. It also gave me an opportunity to stay connected to any trending customer issues while I was away.

If you have already started your Customer Service Gig work and have not taken the time to truly experience it from your end user perspective (outside of a couple of test case) I challenge you to take the opportunity on your next vacation. If you have not started yet, make sure to build this into your implementation plan, I wish I had done it earlier.

If you are still not sure about how to incorporate gig workers into your workforce, please join us in Denver CRS where our panel will discuss how global brands and enterprises are adopting gig-based customer service and engagement models to win the war on talent, tap into existing brand knowledge and loyalty, create more agility, and operate cost effectively in a competitive environment. Hear from gig-economy experts about how brands like Microsoft, Sun Basket, and Postmates are harnessing freelancing to maintain an on-demand flexible workforce available 24/7, in any language.

Happy gigging!