The Agent Experience is Key to Improving the Customer Experience

One of the biggest challenges contact centers face is agent morale. Most managers struggle with high rates of absenteeism and turnover, whose costs hit a company’s bottom and top lines. While many organizations have made some strides in this area— by allowing agents to work remotely, for example—most continue to ignore the issue that drive down productivity and performance: boredom from having to process routine tasks that could be better handled by a machine.

The good news is, artificial intelligence is making it possible for companies to move banal, mundane processes like data entry and search to automated systems and leveraging advanced analytics to make contextual exchanges easier, better and more effective. That helps companies free up human agents to work on high-level, complex interactions on a variety of channels and in a number of ways—all while taking advantage of the context and analysis AI provides. That, in turn, increases morale, reduces turnover and results in measurable improvements in common Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including better customer satisfaction scores and higher revenues per customer.

Of course, like any significant technology upgrade, new contact centers require new approaches to management and performance. In order for these new approaches to take hold they must be driven by changes in both upper management and among the agents themselves, whose jobs will transform significantly. Once you offload rote tasks to intelligent software systems, you’re left with higher-value opportunities that also require higher-value skills and input. Somewhat counter-intuitively, when companies introduce AI, agents are usually required to take more proactive action. They must get used to thinking on their feet and make the gradual, but important transition from support to sales—and their managers must give them the tools they need to do so.