What Does The Voice of Your Business Say About Your Agent Experience?

Often as we move along in business, we forget that all the process changes, new KPI’s, new software releases have a direct effect on the Agent Experience.

Recently, I learned that contact center resources working for Company “Mystery” were leaving in droves. Over 35% attrition. They said, in exit discussions as they left, it was like “Working in a Grinder”. Digging into this, I learned that the experts referred to it as this because they felt they were put through a grinder to work there.

The reasons were clear: the process was constantly changing, the documentation of the process was sometimes updated to match the changes in the process, sometimes not. The training they had to take took a long time and was not accurate by the time they finished it (due to various process changes) They were tested on skills that didn’t apply to the role.

The list went on and on. Figuring out the right thing to do to resolve the issue came down to a few elements. Picture pepper in the mill, being ground down to tiny bits. No wonder folks were leaving. The question became how to remove the grinder. Often as we move along in business, we forget that all the process changes, new KPI’s, new software releases have a direct effect on the Agent Experience.

Recently, I learned that contact center resources working for Company “Mystery” were leaving in droves. Over 35% attrition. They said, in exit discussions as they left, it was like “Working in a Grinder." Digging into this, I learned that the experts referred to it as this because they felt they were put through a grinder to work there.

The reasons were clear: the process was constantly changing, the documentation of the process was sometimes updated to match the changes in the process, sometimes not. The training they had to take took a long time and was not accurate by the time they finished it (due to various process changes) They were tested on skills that didn’t apply to the role.

The list went on and on. Figuring out the right thing to do to resolve the issue came down to a few vital elements. Picture pepper in the mill, being ground down to tiny bits. No wonder folks were leaving. The question became how to remove the grinder.

Ask How You can change the Agent experience AND still get the desired results while keeping attrition low?

That is the dream for all contact centers, right?  You want folks to love working for you, provide the best support to your customers, with little cost and impact to the ongoing business.  But how do you begin to change from a Grinder situation to a thrive/thriller contact center?

Make the environment be like a smooth-running train station, if you miss the first one - there will be another one along in a minute (meaning new changes in product or service, don’t panic, and have defined methods for dealing with the misses.  

So how do we address the fast pace of constant changes?  Training & Change Control

This ties in both Training and Change Control. In the past, the use of simple tools, such as decision trees (see below) help everyone understand the severity of the change & impact of training needed.  Once you understand the impact, the importance, the significance of the change, you will find the COMMUNICATION of the change simplifies. Group together the less urgent changes.  Have Managers know that low urgency/severity changes only go out once a month, or once a week.  

Even if the software releases a change, you can have the training documented, but not shared until the regular communication path. If someone encounters the change, they can go to their job aides, but you do not need to interrupt ALL the experts to get one low level change rolled out. Think about leveraging a decision tree to help the team get the right communication out that matches the needs of the change.

Address the Stress - directly.

You have significant and constant change in your contact center, folks are going to naturally be bothered by it, ESPECIALLY in a contact center where agents and experts live for the wins of making a customer happy and meeting their KPI goals.  

WE HAVE TO TALK about the impact of the changes – empathy is a great healer of frustration, confusion, and uncertainty.  Hold regular feedback sessions with not only your FTE staff but your outsourced staff will give you the feedback you need to hear to begin to make real changes. Often you will hear REAL FEAR in the voices as they describe how they try to keep up, but they feel like they are failing.  No one who goes into Customer Support wants to fail, they WANT to WIN – for the customer, for the company and for their own sense of satisfaction.  So be empathetic, listen to the feet on the street, the Voice of the Employee, to hear how THEY want the issues solved.

Then, as you lead, you can weigh those desired empathetic solutions against the needs of the business – perhaps they won’t all fit or work, but some will, and that will go a LONG way to building trust and empathy with the agents.

Here is another example of a way to address the stress - a long, long time ago, I worked at a place that would periodically provide “stress breaks” someone would roll around with a cart of healthy snacks, and folks would take a break, talk, snack, laugh, and then get back to work. That was 100 years ago, so find a modern way to relieve the stress.

In our virtual contact center worlds can we think of fun virtual ways to relieve stress?  During covid I made the team virtually play a quiz type game, letting different resources pick the categories each time.  It might have looked like wasted time, or time poorly spent but the result was a moment of stress relief in a high-tension time.  And I can tell you, each one of those resources still works for that company today.  They are happy, they know they can tell me when they are stressed, and I will listen, I will try to help them MOST importantly – they KNOW by my example, that I am a safe space for them to share.  So ask yourself, are you the safe space?

Retention & Pay

Now that minimum wage is $20 in some places, contact centers are seeing attrition because agents and experts feel like the job is too stressful and they might make more money in a more menial job.  And they may be right!  

It is our job as leaders of contact centers to make sure that our agents REALLY FEEL valued in their current roles, that they see a clear path to promotions, that they understand, and can really earn role/metrics-based incentives. One thing we all need to feel is incentivized to stay at a place, and sometimes it comes down to money.  Yet, most HR resources will tell you folks don’t leave their role for more money, most often they leave their roles because of poor management. All contact center manages should be fighting to make the environment the best place to work.  Otherwise, you too may experience high attrition.

Be Honest with the Customer

Please do not infer that I am suggesting you aren’t honest with your customers.  What I am talking about is Rigorous Honesty. The contact center scripts that say, “we will reach out to you” and then somehow that customer/contact gets lost, or the agents know that it takes 5 days, but the SLA says you will respond in 2 days. 

In those roundtables conversations from above, take the feedback on how best to allow the agents to follow up, maybe just giving your agents the rights/permission and paths TO be able to verify if the follow up happens is enough. Maybe you will need to re-analyze your metrics to see if the 2-day SLA can still be met. Whatever the case, you have to be rigorously honest, because customers learn about hollow promises quickly, and nothing can damage a contact center reputation as fast as an unhappy Customer.

Rigorous honesty is the best policy, as long as your contact center metrics match and can support it.

In the End

We as contact center leaders need to demonstrate that our contact center is a viable career enhancing location, that the folks who work for us are valued, that we hear their concerns and are taking REAL action to resolve the overarching issues. If you take action on the voice of the employee your contact center will from attrition to retention.