Contact centers spend a lot of time measuring the customer experience—as they should. But there are measurements beyond the customer experience that can have a noticeable impact on contact center performance, and contact centers that focus exclusively on customer experience run the risk of sub-par performance.
One crucial data set that often is overlooked is agent satisfaction.
Agent engagement has an equal impact on both call center efficiency and the customer experience.
For all the systems that are put in place, both from a business process and technology standpoint, at the end of the day agents often make the difference between a satisfied customer and one that will start looking elsewhere.
Agents are the front line of a company, the public face of an organization. And if they’re happy and engaged, the customer knows it. If agents are tuned-out or unhappy, there’s a subtle but noticeable difference. While most of the time a customer can’t see an agent, smiles and frowns still come across a phone call. Customers can tell. As human, most of us are born to read body language and hear subtle changes in voice inflection.
A happy agent also is more efficient, engaged with their work and caring about outcomes. This leads to less wasted time, meaningful professional goals on the part of the agent, and an overall focus on quality work that just isn’t there if an agent is, well, phoning it in.
“What we find over and over again in our External Quality Monitoring programs is that call center agents want to feel empowered and they thrive on performance recognition,” noted Dr. Jodie Monger in a recent blog post, talking about the role that agent satisfaction can play. “Just like those gold stars from our younger years, when call center agents are held accountable for resolving customer complaints quickly and efficiently, and they are provided the tools to improve their performance, it’s not hard to see the link between satisfied agents and quality customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.”
Knowing that agent satisfaction can play an important role in the contact center, recently BenchmarkPortal (News - Alert) completed its first in-depth investigation into agent satisfaction, Agent Voices.
Based on more than 5,000 surveys, the groundbreaking study covers 18 topic categories and really breaks down what it takes to ensure that agents are satisfied and engaged.
Readers of the report will gain valuable insights that will help them be better managers, according to the report, and it will also provide a basis for comparing a company’s agent morale to industry averages.
The report includes cross-tabular analysis such as full-time vs. part-time employees, overall satisfaction broken down by commuting distance and at-home agents, size of center, and geographical location, among others. It also includes a sampling of open-ended responses from the participants, providing context and depth to the statistical results, and indicating what agents really feel about their colleagues and employers.
The report is much needed because not only is the customer experience important for a contact center—but so is the agent experience.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson