The Engaged Agent Perspective and Advancing CX Technology

As new data has revealed the importance of the employee experience in improving customer outcomes, “agent engagement” has become the latest hot topic in the customer contact space. CX leaders are faced with tough decisions regarding the adoption of new technology, and it is critical that they have a solid understanding of how changes impact the agent experience. The reception of new adoptions and changes to the customer service model are often ‘make or break’ moments; the way agents embrace or reluctantly accept these changes can be predictors of how they will affect the organization overall. Involving agents in these decisions early is one way to reach better technology outcomes. 

Once organizations are able to prioritize the agent perspective, they will begin to learn what makes an engaged agent in their contact center. While every single employee has an important role to play, engaged agents are one of the most active drivers of customer satisfaction and delight. The most successful CX leaders understand that engaged agents have a lot more to offer than their frontline customer interactions.

If your leadership team is not already factoring in the insights of frontline agents, now is the time to begin leveraging this valuable feedback. 

Defining agent engagement 

New tools are constantly arriving to the market with promises of improving both the output and the efficiency of your contact center–but what does “agent engagement” really mean? Is it a catch-all term to characterize the median demeanor of a given contact center’s staff, or is it a primary variable in the contact center’s equation for success? Engagement isn’t a metric, rather it is an aggregate assessment of an agent’s performance and other qualitative factors, like enthusiasm and curiosity. Engaged agents are usually the highest performers, but not always–it is critical to look at your metrics over a long period of time to see who is steadily engaged.

Unfortunately, 78% of contact center team leaders do not believe their agents have access to enough real-time customer data to consistently deliver high-quality, consultative customer service. If the current data and systems don’t allow for easy identification of engagement, upgrading performance measurement systems should be a top priority. 

Engaged agents are a multi-purpose tool for your company

Because engaged agents have bought into the company’s overall mission and big picture, they are more likely to be amenable to projects outside of standard customer interactions. This means you can leverage their individual skill sets to assist in specific projects that would benefit from the agent perspective. Agents bring a deep understanding of company processes and likely have strong, informed opinions on which potential changes will create or reduce friction. 

The most critical use case for the engaged agent’s perspective is in evaluating new contact center tools, especially when the new technology would impact the way agents interact with customers. Proposals for significant changes to the customer journey and company tech stack should incorporate feedback and direction from the employees working with them the most. 

When done incorrectly, agents and team leaders can become dissatisfied or burnt out when they have to navigate sudden, major changes to their work without proper preparation. The top-down approach of implementing tools without some amount of collaboration with agents doesn’t inspire confidence in the team, and is likely to exacerbate existing concerns that AI will lead to a reduction in headcount. 

There are other benefits to taking the agent perspective into consideration during these key decisions. For example, multi-tool, all-in-one contact center platforms are often attractive to executives and leadership because of their potential outcomes and ease of backend management. However, agents assess this tool from an entirely different perspective: how it will impact the actual day-to-day interactions with huge volumes of different customers. An entire tech overhaul might not be appropriate for organizations seeking to make minor changes to their agents' workflow. Understanding the needs of your employees and adjusting operations and technology to suit them is critical for long-term success. 

Engaged agents should assist their team leaders in identifying the tools that would generate the best ROI, without significantly disrupting the existing processes that are currently successful. 

Beyond just being a part of operational decisions, agents are looking for a sense of belonging and connection in the workplace. Agent engagement is reinforced when these individuals feel seen, heard, and respected by leaders in the company. Currently, the top three drivers of agent satisfaction are their managers, flexibility, and career development. Letting specific agents know that their stellar performance makes their perspective valuable is likely to improve the agent’s perception of all three of these aspects of work. Telling an agent that they are respected and reliable demonstrates trust and enhances satisfaction. Being entrusted with projects is also an excellent way to offer upward mobility to agents who are not quite at the next promotional level.

While there are an abundance of ways team leaders can interface with their engaged agents to bring about positive change, leadership should be careful to not overburden their top performing agents. Giving these individuals more work and additional responsibilities without the proper resourcing or pay raise can cause agents to burn out or become dissatisfied. Managers must make it a priority to consider factors that affect their employees and not just their bottom line. For example, initiatives like re-evaluating agent compensation and rethinking career pathing are ranked lowest in importance to contact center leaders, but mean a great deal to agents.

Putting changes into practice

It can be challenging to get buy-in to make changes to any contact center processes. Thankfully, there are both small- and large-scale ways to use the agent perspective in decision making processes. There are straightforward ways of aggregating agent feedback, like hosting town halls meetings or distributing surveys. Managers can simply ask engaged agents for their individual feedback on product demos. 

Team leaders with more bandwidth can initiate a formal project with their engaged agents, directing research into different technologies or putting together the framework for a knowledge management system. Companies with a Voice of the Employee program can incorporate technology questions into their regular communications to collect insights. At any level, leaders will not regret putting time and effort into collecting feedback from their most engaged agents. 

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