Contact centers and customer service teams have a lot of challenges to deal with in today’s world.
Technology is evolving, customer expectations are growing, and the channels businesses use to interact with clients are increasing. However, perhaps the most significant challenge is retaining service staff.
The average turnover rate for call center agents has always been notoriously high (26 percent compared to the national average of 15 percent).
Yet, in recent years, employee churn is becoming even more of a problem. In the remote working realm, where people can work anywhere, at any time, and for anyone, the rise of the “Great Resignation” continues, pushing people to leave their jobs in search of the ideal workplace.
Moreover, the world of hybrid work, in general, is adding more complexity to many jobs. According to the Washington Post, many find the modern landscape “messy and exhausting”.
Once branded as the toolset to replace human workers in the contact center, AI has emerged as the ultimate knight in shining armor for retention issues.
Indeed, by incorporating AI into an agent-based cx strategy, contact centers can improve agent retention.
Below lies lots of advice to do that and overcome four critical retention challenges.
Challenge 1: Rising Stress and Burnout
Burnout and stress have become commonplace issues for all employees in today’s fast-paced and demanding world.
In the contact center, chaotic schedules, conflicting management expectations, and emotional customers often magnify the problem.
Shockingly, one report finds that 74 percent of agents are at risk of burnout.
As such, many companies need to act fast to ensure they can protect the well-being of their staff.
Fortunately, analytics tools offer a solution. Harnessing natural language processing (NLP) technology, these efficiently detect sentiment in both customer and agent voices.
If an agent’s sentiment appears increasingly negative across multiple calls, an AI system can alert a supervisor, who then steps in to offer support and guidance.
Challenge 2: Sub-Par Coaching and Development
65% of customers say they consider a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than good advertising strategies – according to the PWC. However, delivering a positive experience at a time when customer expectations are rising is tricky – especially when left in the hands of agents.
As such, a forward-thinking coaching strategy, which helps to manage expectations, is perhaps more essential than ever,
Yet, many businesses still struggle to find the time to deliver the proper training. Moreover, without a clear view of agent performance, they fail to offer the targeted coaching that keeps agents engaged.
AI-infused quality management systems can help with this. These tools help to automate much of the agent call scoring process, uncovering crucial agent trends. Such a capability streamlines the evaluation process and provides agents with consistent, targeted feedback at scale.
These solutions can also spotlight information on the strengths and weaknesses of each agent, adding insight that helps personalize the coaching process.
In addition, as these tools highlight where employees excel, contact centers may spot remote agents doing good things and show recognition. Doing so is an act of positive reinforcement that refuels the desire of agents to deliver excellent customer service.
Challenge 3: Challenging Contact Centre Conversations
One of the most significant problems agents face today in combatting agent turnover is the increasing complexity of contact center conversations.
After all, in today’s world, most customers seek solutions to their problems on the internet before reaching out to the contact center.
As such, by the time a customer reaches an agent, they’ll already have tried finding solutions online and may be frustrated by a lack of results. Now, they want quick, informative, and valuable responses to their questions. Agent empowerment is essential here.
Enter agent-assist. The solution supports agents in surfacing valuable information for the employee from the moment they answer a call.
To do so, it leverages knowledge base articles pertinent to the customer’s query and can take insights from a CRM, delivering these to agents and driving more personalized experiences.
Moreover, these solutions can lift a hefty weight from agents’ shoulders, lowering workloads and improving EX and CX. As Anthony Perez, Marketing Manager at MiaRec, says:
“At a time when customer expectations are on the rise and the value of each interaction is so valuable, AI is a practical way for companies to increase agent happiness and elevate customer experience.”
In addition, such agent-assist tools can proactively suggest solutions to problems and use historical data to determine which actions are most likely to drive customer satisfaction.
Challenge 4: Operational Complexity
Alongside the increasing complexity of customer queries is the rising sophistication of the tools agents harness. While these often aim to improve their experience, system navigation may become nightmarish without adequate integrations.
Indeed, a Gartner study found agents use an average of 8.2 tools to combat customer queries every day, which slows them down.
Thankfully, AI and automation tools are starting to address this issue, pulling information from different applications into a single pane of glass.
Although, this is sometimes tricky to achieve, companies can reduce the time team members spend various searching applications with the proper support.
As Gennadiy Bezko, CEO of MiaRec, says:
“AI and automation allow agents to focus their attention on the experience they provide to customers at a time when customers place increasing value on the quality of the interactions they have with the brands they choose.”
Indeed, with AI, businesses may ease the workload on employees, automating activities like form-filling, launching applications, and transferring information from one environment to another. As a result, agents can focus their attention on meeting customer needs.
Empowering Agents with AI
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the most effective ways for business leaders to augment, optimize, and empower contact center teams.
Capable of reducing stress and frustration, transforming raw data into actionable insight, and spotlighting training opportunities, the right AI systems can significantly enhance employee experiences.
Learn more about how you can optimize your contact center with AI. Visit: www.miarec.com
