With so much attention now placed on perfecting customer experiences in the contact center, the experiences of agents and employees can frequently be overlooked.
However, the reality is that empowered, engaged, and informed agents are crucial to driving business results.
The experience of agents in the contact center has a direct impact on the level of support and service companies can provide to their customers.
McKinsey found that happy, engaged agents are 3.3 times more likely to feel capable of delivering exceptional service.
This means if companies really want to compete in today’s complex market on the basis of customer experience, they need to get their agent experience strategy right first.
Here are five of the best ways business leaders can enhance agent experiences in the contact center.
1. Preserve Context in Omnichannel Interactions
Increasingly, customers are leveraging a wider range of tools and resources to connect with companies.
Today’s consumers want to be able to interact with brands on their own terms, on the platforms where they feel most comfortable, whether it’s a social media channel or a video conferencing tool.
However, simply implementing various disconnected platforms into a wider contact center strategy doesn’t lead to benefits for customers or employees.
Consumers don’t just want to be able to communicate with brands across all channels; they want reassurance they’ll receive a personalized, consistent experience on every platform.
Creating a true omnichannel ecosystem in which agents can access context and insights into the customer journey helps to accomplish this.
With a truly unified contact center environment, customers benefit from a more streamlined service, while agents enjoy a more convenient experience.
An omnichannel contact center platform eliminates the need to jump between different apps to access crucial customer information and provides agents with more of the details they need at their fingertips.
Building that often starts with connecting all channels to a central CRM, making it simple for agents to find the data they need to deliver a personalized service.
Yet, that is only step one. As Jason Roos, CEO of Cirrus, reveals:
“The end goal is to synchronize all communication channels, provide a single view of the customer on one dashboard, and leverage advanced analytics.
We support contact centers in that mission, helping them to boost customer satisfaction, drive operational efficiency, and fuel their growth as a customer-centric organization.”
2. Keep Tabs on Agent Workloads
Even the most efficient agents can only handle so much. As customer journeys become more complex and agents are tasked with more challenges to overcome every day, it’s important for business leaders to be mindful of the threat of burnout.
That is critical as around 62% of contact center agents define burnout as one of their top workplace challenges today.
Burnout decreases engagement among staff members, increases turnover, and causes productivity problems within any contact center.
Fortunately, workforce management tools can help. WFM suites can track occupancy rates in real-time and provide access to useful tools that help business leaders to make the most out of their human resources.
Intelligent WFM solutions built into the contact center environment can even provide staff members with self-service tools for shift-bidding, shift-shopping, and holiday planning, improving work-life balance and minimizing burnout.
3. Close the UCaaS/CCaaS Gap
Even with the help of an omnichannel contact center platform integrated with crucial customer data tools and CRM systems, agents can still lose productivity if the UCaaS and CCaaS landscapes aren’t aligned.