Challenges/Pain Points of a Contact Center Agent
Overview
Understanding the real, day-to-day struggles of contact center agents is the absolute key to designing a solution that truly makes a difference, not just one that adds another layer of complexity.
The modern contact center agent is no longer just a voice on the phone. They are expected to be problem-solvers, tech support specialists, salespeople, and therapists, all while navigating a variety of digital tools.
This document covers the core real-life challenges that contact center agents face.
Consider a real-life Contact Center Agent and analyze the challenges they face.
Challenges:
Frequent context switching:
Example: An agent, David, is supposed to solve a customer's billing issue. David needs his softphone, the CRM to see the history, the billing system to check their account details, and a separate Knowledge Base for quick answers. He's constantly alt-tabbing, copying and pasting content from one window to another, which makes the process slow, painful, and prone to errors.
Balancing between the Average Handle Time (AHT) and First Contact Resolution (FCR)
While dealing with customer queries, David needs to keep the average handling time low, but at the same time, he also needs to make sure that the customer’s concerns are addressed in the initial contact, achieving high FCR and customer delight. However, both of these metrics are contrary to each other. David needs some tools that can help him balance between those two metrics.
Siloed Customer Journey - lack of unified customer experience across channels
Without a unified customer history, customers must repeat their issues multiple times. This repetition increases frustration and lowers customer satisfaction scores
Dealing with upset, frustrated customers
While David handles frustrated customers on the front line, he needs real-time insight into customer sentiment to adjust his tone and resolve queries.
Since David is receiving direct customer feedback, he needs to have access to tools which he can use to record the customer feedback and take actions such as forwarding their concerns to the relevant departments or, needs to de-escalating, such as by creating a ticket, or sending the query to the supervisor.
Reduce after-call work time
David must conclude a conversation by providing wrap-up reasons and notes for his managers to review. This wrap-up process extends conversation handling time and affects overall agent performance.
To address this, David needs an AI-assisted wrap-up process that applies the most relevant wrap-up and summarizes the conversation on his behalf.
Ineffective CRM integration
In the absence of a well-integrated system, David is not able to see the complete picture of the customer journey and hence, might not be able to provide the right service.
Clunky User Interface (UI)
Using a poorly designed user interface, David must spend much time searching for options and perform multiple clicks for a single operation. This significantly impacts his overall performance, especially the conversation handling times.
Painful Realtime Insights into Individual and Queue Stats:
Stressful Queue Stats:
To keep him going, David needs to know the real-time statistics of his today’s work while also looking at the other team members' performance to motivate him to perform better. However, the dashboards that he sees are just the numbers with several stressful figures, such as longer AHT, AWT, and Calls in Queue. David sees the queue building and feels guilty for taking the necessary time to solve a complex problem properly. He's forced to choose between a good customer experience (high FCR) and being a "team player" by grabbing the next call.
The stats are just numbers. They don't tell David why his AHT is high or how to improve. Is there a specific type of query that's taking him longer? Does he need any training courses to address a specific type of query?
The Low-performing Individual Metrics
While continuously dealing with customers' anger, David needs to see his real-time performance statistics and ensure that his performance indicators meet the set target. This creates immense pressure to perform better and do more, which may result in repeated customer calls and reduced customer satisfaction.
Team Competition
While viewing the Team Leaderboard, he sees that he is ranked 12 out of 15.
Presenting raw numbers without guidance or coaching fosters a competitive, often toxic environment rather than a collaborative one. Why would David help a struggling teammate if it might hurt his own stats?