6 Ways To Improve the Performance and Experience of Call Center Agents

We are all more than familiar with the importance of maintaining a positive customer experience in the contact center, but what about the agent experience (AX)?

If keeping users happy is the ultimate goal of call centers, agents who are satisfied with their roles are 10 times more likely to deliver excellent customer service.

In fact, a recent Accenture study found that 61% of consumers said they stopped doing business with a business after a bad customer service experience. Although there are many factors to consider when defining poor service, contact center agent performance is undoubtedly one of the most influential.

With that in mind, in this post we’ll explain six ways to improve agent productivity and experience to help optimize agent performance and ensure you meet customer expectations.

6 Ways To Improve the Performance and Experience of Call Center Agents

1) Establish Best Practices for Resolving Common Queries

Knowledge is power, and providing each agent with a roadmap with the best practices for resolving the most common queries that are made in a contact center, increases their productivity.

With this roadmap in place, agents will feel more comfortable knowing that they always have a guide to follow for every situation. As a result, the number of queries will be reduced and their performance will improve.

2) Offer Continuous Training to Agents at All Levels

All call centers provide training to new agents to familiarize them with their role and teach them their day-to-day tasks.

By offering agents ongoing training and giving them multiple opportunities to expand their skill set and further advance their careers, it’s much easier to keep them motivated.

Therefore, with a training schedule, employee retention rates will likely increase along with customer experience (CX) levels.

3) Invest in Smart Call Routing

Few things cause call center agents as much stress as being forced to attend to a customer request that they cannot resolve independently. Similarly, it can be very frustrating for highly-skilled employees to spend their entire workday solving low-level, repetitive tasks.

For this reason, many contact centers have invested in intelligent call routing technology (Smart Routing) that automatically routes customers with specific, more complex inquiries to the agents best trained to resolve them.

In addition to saving time and cost for the business by reducing employee turnover, agents are more motivated when they fill requests specifically tailored to their field or skill level.

4) Access Customer Data

Today’s call centers have multiple entry points for users and process large volumes of data every day. Trying to track or retrieve this customer data during every interaction is nearly impossible for any agent without the help of specialized technology like Computer Telephony Integration (CTI).

With this technology, agents can easily access all the data they need from existing customers at the start of each contact seamlessly, regardless of where/when they signed up, positively impacting agent performance. In addition to speeding up resolution times and reducing wait times, tools like this make the life of every call center agent much easier.

5) Take Advantage of Live Call Recordings

Many contact centers use call recordings as a security measure to deal with potential complaints, but they are also a great way to improve the agent experience (AX).

While it may seem hard to imagine why an agent would feel better knowing that every word they say is being recorded, it actually helps them during training programs to ensure that the agent knows what to do to solve a more complex query.

6) Listen to What Employees Have to Say

One of the simplest, yet most effective ways to ensure that an agent is satisfied in a call center is to listen to what they have to say.

By having an open dialogue with employees, you let them know that they are more than a number or a cog in the machine, feeling valued and respected.