Contact Centers Should Give Agents Freedom Within Scripts to Boost Morale

Strict adherence to scripting and brand voice can have negative results, specifically when it comes to agent morale. Yes, it’s important in many industries that companies adhere to rules and regulations. I’m not saying we need to remove training and scripts from contact centers and tell agents, “Say whatever you want!”

What I am saying is that agents should be given trust from their supervisors and other leaders. They should be trusted to use a script as a guideline with the freedom to help the customers without strict adherence. This freedom certainly benefits customers due to a more conversational (and potentially helpful) interaction, but it also provides a benefit for employee morale.

Heavy turnover has plagued contact centers for decades. Being an agent is a tough job dealing with angry customers, but it’s made even harder when you don’t feel like you’re a vital piece of the customer experience. By giving more trust and freedom to your agents, you encouraging them to think critically and go beyond a rigid script in order to find solutions for customers.

You have chatbots and other AI to handle mundane and script-specific tasks, why treat your human agents like you expect them to be robots? There are obvious standards that will always need to apply to customer service representatives (they can’t just lie customers or make promises that the company can’t back up).

However, the more experienced and comfortable agents become in their role, the more opportunity they should receive to have a creative, solutions-oriented mindset within the job. This will help agents feel more like they’re a respected, important piece of the big picture and could potentially lower attrition rates.

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