Empathy is Job One for Successful Contact Center Agents

The job of a call center agent is a difficult one. For inbound calls, they’re often speaking to people who are agitated because they have a problem. For outbound calls – which really take a backbone of steel – they’re talking to people who may be resistant to being sold something on the telephone, or angry that his or her phone rang in the first place.

At the same time, agents must learn the technologies they use and rapidly shift between a half dozen (or more) applications on their desktop. They must be able to read customer information quickly to get up to speed on a customer’s history with the company. They must understand the company’s products or services, and other business policies such as shipping or returns. They must be able to remain cool under pressure. And with a few exceptions, they’re not exactly overburdened with salary to perform these jobs.

This makes the call center hiring process a difficult one. Not only must managers look for the right hard skills in a candidate (such as computer literacy and product knowledge), but they must cultivate people who have the right soft skills. And according to a recent article by Laurie Petersen writing for AOL (News - Alert) Jobs, listening is one of the most important soft skills an agent can cultivate.  In the article, Petersen interviews Chris Vodola, a Client Development Manager at StellaService, which measures the quality of customer support with data analytics.

“It's about listening, empathizing, seeking to understand problems and having the ability to find solutions,” Vodola told AOL. “More important than that is genuinely enjoying that process. The only basic requirements for a new entry-level hire are being likable (I've never hired someone I didn't like) and knowing how to use a computer, because you'll be using it to either talk to your customers, use systems to solve problems, or just take record of the interactions you're having.”

Vodola told AOL that one of the most important things call center agents must keep in mind in order to empathize with them is that customers are human, not simply a voice on the phone or a customer account number.

“At their core, no matter how much technology we have in arm's reach, customers are human,” said Vodola. “We all just want to get from point A to point B without aggravation, but empathy helps grease the path. Sometimes point B is landing flowers into mom's hands by her birthday, and other times it's having a working internet Wi-Fi connection. What has changed is how quickly we expect to get to point B.”

Customers are more demanding and impatient today than ever. As a result, contact center agents who expect to succeed must be more accommodating and empathetic than ever. Without these skills, companies risk turning the contact center into a battleground: and that’s good for no one. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi