Your Contact Centre Agents are Exhausted - Here's How You Can Assist Them

Customers rely on customer service representatives for assistance with everything from address changes to insurance claims. However, frontline agents are leaving in droves, citing burnout and a lack of flexibility - according to a recent Salesforce survey, 71% of agents have considered leaving their job in the last six months alone!

We interviewed 40 contact center agents and supervisors to learn how companies can better support agents and prevent the "Great Resignation." We discovered:

• Agents want to work for companies that believe in them, empower them with technology, and provide upskilling and training.
• Supervisors struggle to be effective managers when they are not physically present with their agents. New technologies can be beneficial, but they also have the potential to alienate agents.

We discovered four principles for human-centric agent management while analyzing the data:

1. Center agent challenges

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are becoming more effective at handling simple cases, but they can cause customer frustration when used incorrectly or in a complex workflow. "They can send us a note by clicking on a feature on our website," one agent explained. However, if the note is not recognized by the system, which appears to be about 80% of the time, they receive an email informing them that they must call us. So they call us and wait an hour to speak with us before we say, "Oh, well, we received your email." Is there anything else you require?'"

“Whether automated or not, the goal is the same: to provide the best possible outcome for customers and agents."

What you can do: First, involve agents in the evaluation and testing of the technology. Next, consider your agents' skills and value when thinking about contact center burnout. They are a strategic pillar of your customer experience, not just a cost center. Finally, concentrate on use cases that assist agents – or customers – in locating information to solve problems. The goal, whether automated or not, is the same: the best possible outcome for customers and agents.

2. Increase trust through transparency.

In contact centers, there is a trust crisis. Agents frequently do not understand how they are evaluated or when they are monitored, and supervisors cannot always tell if a remote agent is on-task or "if they are doing dishes while on a call."

Recognize that remote agents face new challenges.

What you can do: Make it clear that a call is being monitored whenever possible, and incentivize supervisors to provide timely feedback. Provide clear evaluation metrics as well as actionable suggestions for improving performance. Recognize that remote agents face new challenges, such as poor internet connectivity and suboptimal workspaces, and encourage them to communicate these issues so that you can troubleshoot them together.

3. Adapt key performance indicators (KPIs) to the current situation

Metrics assist businesses in measuring and improving results, but they rarely provide a complete picture. Customer satisfaction scores, for example, are useful for benchmarking, but can’t tell you if a customer was already frustrated by a Chabot by the time they’re routed to a live agent. Over-indexing on certain metrics can even penalize agents for doing a good job.

Consider implementing a relative feedback system in which agents and supervisors both score a call and then discuss its outcome and opportunities for improvement.

What you can do is supplement traditional metrics with outcome-based metrics. In addition to "average call time," you could assess an agent's impact on customer lifetime value. Consider implementing a relative feedback system in which agents and supervisors both score a call and then discuss its outcome and areas for improvement. These outcome-driven, communication-centered approaches can help reduce contact center burnout.

4. Train on purpose

Remote training is difficult for both agents and trainers. Before taking solo calls, new hires would receive hands-on training and shadow more experienced agents. Most people nowadays teach in large groups and entirely online - one agent we spoke with said there were "88 people in a Zoom training session!" As a result, "it's becoming more difficult to retain people because they only get half the training we used to give them," according to one supervisor.

Allow remote agents to shadow someone more experienced using existing monitoring tools.

What you can do: Make use of technology to your advantage. Create a digital buddy system, for example, to provide new agents with collaboration-as-training. Allow remote agents to shadow someone more experienced using existing monitoring tools. Make upskilling a part of intraday management by providing agents with short digital training modules that teach a new product or skill and incentivizing them to complete them.

A human-centric approach to contact center management, putting your employees at the heart of what you do, is critical for work-from-anywhere success.