Improving agent experience (AX) has become a strategic imperative, not just for contact centers but for the companies they support. Agent empowerment is the key to both morale and performance. Supporting them through processes and technology is crucial for first-contact resolution.
Technology that does not deliver on the required functionality is the largest factor restraining even the most capable and empathetic agent from reaching their potential. In fact, 24% of agents blame sub-optimal technology for being the biggest hurdle to success.
Contact centers are often evaluated by KPIs such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), but they are even more important to the C-Suite, especially when they impact financial metrics like market share, profitability, and share price. There’s nothing wrong with having a passionate focus on CX, but it’s not enough to be concerned only with your customer needs. Focusing on the needs of your agents might be the best way to improve your CX.
Empowering agents to Provide frictionless customer service
We all know excellent customer service when we see it. Problems are quickly and correctly resolved, customers feels no anxiety, and they don’t need to expend much effort. Self-service plays a key role in providing great service; however, when customers do interact with agents, that great service can become exceptional. That is, if the agent is empowered to provide the best experience possible.
Of course, you want to deliver frictionless customer service every time, and your agents want that too. Noble as these aspirations may be, and despite their best-intentioned efforts, agents are often prevented from doing their best by issues outside their control.
Recognizing a legacy mindset in a contact center
Many contact centers still operate with a legacy mindset, and that means being focused on operational performance, not AX. KPIs at these centers are based on:
This legacy mindset can lead agents to be more transactional than personal. That’s not the best formula for great CX.
This focus on operational performance makes it hard for agents to feel good about their work—after all, as consumers, they know what it feels like on the other end when service is bad. In fact, study at Warwick University found that people who are happy at work and feel like they matter to the company are 12% more productive.
Given these scenarios, it’s not surprising that agent turnover is high and that The Great Resignation has hit the contact center world especially hard. Every business wants to be an employer of choice—the cool place where people want to work—and, in the contact center space, that’s going to be hard to do without being AX-centric.
NICE helped Radisson achieve agent utilization by 20% by integrating all channels into seamless omnichannel
Changing this legacy mindset can be a challenging transition for businesses to make, and in the contact center space, the first step should be to move on from legacy technology. Even though your agents want to provide great customer service, these technologies can cause points of friction, such as:
- Being unable to communicate with customers on their preferred channels
- Having incomplete or inaccurate information about the customer
- Wasting time navigating multiple apps or screens when dealing with customers
- Asking questions that customers have already answered
- Receiving routed calls that aren’t the right fit for the customer or inquiry
- Struggling with quickly routing customers to someone better qualified
- Dealing with simple inquiries that could be managed by automated, self-service options instead
- Lacking visibility into the customer journey to provide a more personalized service
This list is far from complete, but all these scenarios might sound familiar. Understanding the shortcomings of your premises-based platforms and legacy technologies will help you address these issues and make the necessary technology updates.
70% of contact centers lack access to relevant customer data at the moment of agent interaction
Updating technology to improve CX
While old deployment methods might continue serving their intended purposes in contact centers CX has evolved, and today’s service is all about the cloud, digital channels, and AI. These are the drivers for CX and AX in 2022. These tools are necessary for contact centers to properly support their agents and deliver great CX for every customer and during all interactions.
35% of global employees surveyed feel their job is harder than it should be because of outdated processes and legacy technology
The market now offers cloud-based omnichannel solutions that are very much built around CX. They still support legacy-based operational KPIs, but the demands of digital CX require much more.
This calls for a lot of integration and orchestration across many silos such as CRM, Workforce Management (WFM), Business Intelligence (BI), UC, and contact center. The same applies to the various channels used to interact with customers—voice, email, SMS, webchat, and video, along with the newest digital channels from the world of social media.
Updated technology is also the most important part of providing your customers with access to smart self-service. This allows customers to solve their own issues if possible, reducing the cost per interaction. It also makes agents happy because they can focus on more challenging work instead of mundane, repetitive tasks.
There is a lot to pull together here, and when it works well, all of this is transparent—not just to customers, but to agents as well. By being transparent, agents can focus on what’s most important—the needs of the customer. With friction removed, it becomes much easier to make CX great—and to make the agent experience great.
It's important to have great CX and AX in today's market, as it's never been more challenging to get and keep top-notch agents.
How technology can remove friction from AX and CX
NICE has embraced this new direction with cloud-based technology that enables contact centers to modernize with ease. Aside from the scale and flexibility that the cloud provides, the core thinking here is to bridge silos across the organization so agents can access all the relevant information needed to fully understand the customer journey. When contact centers can do this seamlessly, both agent and customer satisfaction will improve.
Contact centers can no longer afford to view agents as costly labor units that must be managed judiciously. They must be seen as being at the center of what drives CX. For customers who must interact with agents, having the right technology will elevate your best agents into being customer service heroes.
Agents will perform better at work when they feel important and like they play a crucial role in building brand loyalty with customers. It’s definitely worth the time and energy to nurture this type of environment in your contact center. After all, isn’t having a productive and positive experience what everyone wants?
While you need to focus on how cloud-based technology improves CX, you should also consider how to make your contact center the place where the best agents want to be. One way to do that is to “make experiences flow” for agents—removing friction from the process of providing customer service.
Becoming an employer of choice
Another way to make your contact center the go-to employment destination is to provide agents with the new tools—the right tools—to provide a friction-free, digital CX. While it's understandable how some legacy-based contact centers may be hesitant to adopt new technology, don’t overlook the fact that many agents are digital natives, and they’re ready for that.
Most agents grew up around technology, and they’re comfortable with change. They know what good digital CX feels like. When they see that you understand that—and can provide them with the right tools—they’ll embrace the opportunity to be the ones who can deliver that experience.
Finally, many agents have become comfortable working from home, not just due to the pandemic but also because it provides more flexibility for their digital lifestyle. Cloud-based technology allows you to do that and given how important flexible work is to digital savvy employees, this will boost job satisfaction and give them further reason to view your contact center as the place to be.
Get more tips about how to be the employer of choice through feedback and fostering agent purpose.
[1] NICE and ContactBabel: Inner Circle Guide to Agent Empowerment (2022)
