In this post, we asked Simon Black, CEO of SellWith8 partner Awaken Intelligence, to explain where the contact center market sits on the topic of improving the agent experience—a crucial factor in improving holistic contact center operations.

Delving into the intricacies of contact center operations, it’s clear that perfecting the agent experience is the linchpin for an entire operational overhaul. Recent insights from a CCW Digital survey conducted in October and November 2023 shed light on the evolution of contact centers in their pursuit of a more empowered and engaged workforce.

While 2023 witnessed positive strides in agent engagement initiatives, the report unveils a picture where contact center leaders are just embarking on the journey to foster more agent-centric environments. This prompts the question: why is the agent experience so pivotal when customer experience often takes the spotlight? The answer lies in the interconnected dynamics: enhancing the agent experience ripples into elevated job satisfaction, heightened employee engagement, and increased productivity—all of which inevitably contribute to an unparalleled customer experience.

Despite investments in customer-centric initiatives such as team expansions and cutting-edge telephony equipment, the crux remains the agent experience. Without a focus on empowering agents, fostering a sense of control in interactions, and providing robust support, the risk of escalating agent churn rates looms large.

This article ventures into the challenges faced by agents, elucidates the dividends of refining the agent experience, and offers practical insights on how to navigate this transformative journey.

Why are contact center agents struggling?

Pressure: Agents are expected to be instant experts, head straight to the right system for what they need (keeping their fingers crossed that there’s no outage), and be able to quickly decipher what the customer actually needs. Agents are so preoccupied with getting everything right and staying compliant, that they’re struggling to deliver the level of service they want to which often leads to feelings of stress and pressure.

Training: The training process for agents can be lengthy and demanding, exacerbated by complex processes and disparate systems. Training new agents to the point where they can confidently and accurately deal with customer interactions can take weeks or even months. Training often has minimal time for more enjoyable learning for the agents like soft-skills or career development.

Difficult calls: At some point, all agents experience emotionally-charged calls. Customers may be angry or upset with something that has happened, and the agent often bears the brunt of those feelings. This can be overwhelming and stressful for any agent, and with line manager and senior advisor time having to be balanced across large teams this means agents can be left feeling unsupported and stressed.

Process inefficiencies: With internal project resources needing to be managed carefully, process inefficiencies can go unresolved for long periods of time—even when agents are experiencing them on a day-to-day basis and know that they’re increasing call length and impacting the customer experience. Unnecessary bottlenecks can lead to agents losing faith that the business they work for is efficient or effective, making them more likely to leave.

What happens when you focus on the agent experience?

Balanced Training for Empowered Agents: Achieving a harmonious blend of process knowledge and soft skills in training sessions has a profound impact on agents' sense of value and support. This equilibrium instills confidence in their ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences, alleviating feelings of overwhelm and burnout while fostering a heightened sense of empowerment.

Satisfaction Scores - A Symbiotic Connection: The well-established truth of a direct link between employee and customer satisfaction scores comes to the forefront. Agents content in their roles not only become vocal advocates for their employers but also play a pivotal role in shaping outstanding customer experiences, thereby elevating overall satisfaction scores across the board.

Efficiency Unleashed: Identification and swift removal of process bottlenecks result in a double victory for both agents and customers. Interactions unfold seamlessly as agents confidently guide customers through each step, leading to a noticeable reduction in average handling and hold times. Customers benefit from a more enjoyable and efficient calling experience.

Agents' Well-being - The Key to Stability and Savings: The logic is clear—happier agents translate to lower churn rates, mitigating the constant challenge of recruiting and onboarding new personnel. As agent experience improves, the ripple effect extends to decreased churn rates, ultimately reducing recruitment and onboarding costs and ensuring a more financially sustainable business model.

Although on the surface, it would appear that improving the agent experience is purely for the benefit of the agent, as you can see, it undoubtedly also leads to an improved customer experience.

5 tips to improve agent experience

1. Improve training: Our clients have reported saving 50%+ in time spent onboarding new agents because technology, such as Awaken’s agent assist solution – CoPilot, eliminates the need for extensive training on multiple platforms and processes. Although agent assist expedites agent onboarding and reduces training costs, it enables the training time that does take place to be equally balanced between procedural, soft skills and career development, improving the employee experience.

2. Provide real-time guidance to help resolve things quicker: Real-time agent guidance automates many tasks that agents typically have to manually perform during or after a call including information searches or finding customer details. The time saved on these types of tasks naturally increases the agent’s capacity to take more calls without any added pressure. The agent is free to focus on helping customers and delivering a great experience while real-time agent guidance takes care of the rest.

3. Make data available to improve coaching: Using conversational analytics means that coaching is fair across the board. Agents can trust that the coaching feedback they’re given is backed up by easily accessible and reliable data and not just someone interpreting things in their own way. Agents can see how to improve their performance and line managers can quickly implement the right support, improving the agent experience.

4. Automate processes: Automating processes can save a lot of time and eliminate pressure on agents. Our data writeback feature enables agents to type something into the front end and it can repopulate that information into other systems. With a two-way data exchange, it can also pull information into the agent’s workflow exactly when it’s needed. This eliminates a lot of unnecessary down-time between calls as agents no longer have to spend time updating multiple systems.

5. Remunerate better: If budgets are tight, contact centers may not have considered improving their remuneration package to improve agent experience. But one of our clients was able to use the money they saved from reducing agent churn and awarded it as a bonus to their agents based on performance. Although financial recompense isn’t always the answer to improving employee experience, when agents also experienced the huge benefits of the Awaken platform, it was a big success.

Happy agents = happy customers

The Future of the Contact Center report sums up the focus on agent experience perfectly: ‘The idea of “happy agents = happy customers,” has become as synonymous with customer contact as phrases like “the customer is always right.”’

Today’s consumers are no longer satisfied with the bare minimum, they have high expectations of what great service is and will complain or switch providers if they feel the service isn’t up to scratch, even if the information they were given on the call was correct.

Contact centers that focus on the agent experience to meet these expectations will be the ones who stand out from their competitors and take the lion’s share of customers. If improving the agent experience is a priority for you, then our agent assist technology can help.

8x8 and Awaken Intelligence

I’m pleased to say that in recent weeks 8x8 and Awaken have signed a strategic partnership agreement. We have joined 8x8’s Technology Partner Ecosystem, and most recently were announced as an inaugural partner in their new partnership tier, SellWith8.

Awaken offers an integration with 8x8 Contact Center that provides real-time agent guidance and assistance, supported by generative AI. The integration makes it easy for agents to seamlessly engage with customers across any channel while using the power of AI to become more efficient and empowered in their everyday activities.

The partnership supports organizations as they look to transform their customer experience and engagement by offering seamless, next-generation solutions that don’t require complex, custom development or exorbitant overhead costs that have traditionally only been feasible for the largest enterprises.

You can get a free demo to see how we are improving the bottom line of 100s of businesses through contact center optimization by contacting the team.