Stop Playing a Zero-Sum Game with Your Contact Center

What if I told you the way most contact centers are run is built on a lie?

A deeply embedded assumption that for one side to win, the other has to lose. It shows up in the way we pit efficiency against experience, or how we drive CSAT at the cost of agent burnout.

This isn't strategy. It's a zero-sum game. And it's killing your CX.

Agents rushing through calls to hit time targets. Customers feel unheard and unsatisfied. Attrition rates are skyrocketing because no one wants to be a script-reading stopwatch operator. According to Gartner, 96% of customers who had high-effort experiences became more disloyal, while 94% of those who had low-effort experiences were more likely to repurchase.

These numbers confirm what many leaders already sense: when systems create friction, you lose loyalty. When you reduce effort, you win it back. If your systems force agents to prioritize speed over simplicity, you are engineering friction, not loyalty.

My fellow ICMI contributor Luke Jamieson summed it up well: we have been optimizing the human instead of the system. Too many centers chase AHT and abandonment while ignoring agent satisfaction, and the result is predictable.

When systems are slow, knowledge bases are clunky, and agents toggle between six apps to complete a single task, the metric suffers, and so does the experience. The solution is not to pressure agents to work faster, but to remove friction so they can focus on solving problems and building relationships.

Agent Experience vs. Customer Experience

You don’t have to choose between great customer experiences and great agent experiences. The fact is that one fuels the other. When agents have the tools, training, and autonomy to solve problems, customers feel it.

When agents feel supported and not micromanaged, they bring energy and empathy to every interaction. Gallup has found that highly engaged employees lead to about 10% higher customer loyalty and 18% higher sales productivity. That’s not a coincidence. Stop trading one for the other. Start building systems that elevate both.

How to Win Without Making Anyone Lose

So, how do you stop the zero-sum spiral and start creating mutual wins? A few ideas:

• Redesign your KPIs.
• Align metrics so agent success equals customer success.
• Replace AHT with FCR and effort scores.
• Invest in systems, not scripts.
• Provide agents with context-rich platforms that integrate customer history, not just canned responses.
• Make QA a coaching function. Use it to grow agents, not grade them.
• Shift from compliance policing to performance development.
• Involve agents in strategy. Let frontline feedback shape processes, tools and policy.
• Automate the right things. Use AI to eliminate low-value tasks, not replace high-value humans.

Stop Playing Small

The zero-sum mindset keeps you in a scarcity loop: protect the budget, protect the metrics, protect the status quo.

But contact centers are evolving from cost centers to value engines. That means the real game isn't agents vs. customers. It's friction vs. flow. Burnout vs. belonging. Siloes vs. synergy. The winners are the leaders willing to break the game and build something better.

Stop choosing sides. Start choosing systems that elevate both.

Your agents deserve it. Your customers demand it. And your operation depends on it.