Any job that requires a heavy amount of verbal communication, conflict resolution and multitasking is exhausting, but contact centre agents have a large volume to manage. On a daily basis, a contact centre agent often has to juggle customers who may be confused and need clarification and guidance, some who may be angry about a lapse in service and need resolution, or even some who are just complaining about something for the sake of making a complaint. While there are some customers who are easier than others, it does not make the job any less tiring. They still have to navigate personalities, pay attention to tone of voice, resolve conflicts, keep customers calm and most importantly, not take any of it personally, even if the person on the other end of the phone is yelling at them. It’s difficult work.

How can you help your contact centre agents?

There are many ways to help your contact centre agents not feel the exhaustion of their work, and alleviate some of the pains to increase your quality of service and improve your agency’s customer satisfaction rates.

Manage targets sensibly

Contact centre agents often have very high individual targets that they need to meet, however sometimes, these targets are almost just out of reach, leading to agents overworking to achieve these targets. What can also happen is a drop in quality just to meet targets, which will reduce the customer satisfaction rate, impacting your clients directly. To avoid this, always ensure that your internal targets are not unrealistic and that they are achievable with a push, but not to the point of detriment to your overall service and agents.

It’s all about the ergonomics

Desk workers in general spend anywhere between seven to ten hours in a chair, and contact centre agents are tied to their desk via their headsets. Sitting in one position for a long period of time causes muscles to stiffen, leading to aches, pains and sometimes more severe conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome and pinched nerves. Encourage agents to stand regularly and stretch. Provide where possible more ergonomic chairs to support their posture to prevent back and neck injuries. High quality headsets have also shown an improvement in headaches and headset pressure related conditions, meaning less sick days and more comfort for your team. By making your agents more comfortable, they will be able to provide a higher quality of service and have a better attitude towards their roles overall.

Time to get chatty

Contact centres can also offer live chat to clients as another method of customer service. The biggest benefit of live chat software is the increase in productivity. An agent can chat with multiple customers via live chat versus only one at a time via telephone. That’s a massive increase! Agents who are on live chat are more productive, feel more motivated and less tired. The additional bonus is should you have more customers using live chat rather than telephone, your incoming call volume should also reduce, shortening the telephone queue for customers and reducing the number of people your agents need to speak to on a daily basis.

Enter stage left: AI bots

Let’s say you’ve deployed the best live chat provider, Click4Assistance, and now you’re well on your way to reducing your call volumes and making your contact centre agent team more comfortable. It’s time for the next level of innovation: the artificial intelligence chatbots. AI Chatbots are great at instantly engaging website visitors, leaving your team to focus on the quality of their customer service. A massive bonus here is that it instantaneously increases your clients conversion rates as customers who are engaged are three times more likely to purchase, increasing their revenue and strengthening the relationship between you and your clients.

A hidden advantage of an AI Chatbot like Artie is how much time it can save. Your customers can ask Artie simple questions that do not need human intervention, such as opening hours, return policies, locations, and so much more. This leaves human interaction for the more complex issues. Artie can also filter these to the right people by asking basic questions about their issue and transfer to a specialist agent once they are free, and this also provides some baseline information about the issue so that the agent can get to a solution faster.

By immediately engaging with a virtual assistant, answering basic questions, gathering information and filtering to the right agents, an AI chatbot is an invaluable addition to your team. And, because Artie is a virtual team member, he does not need sleep, does not take annual leave, does not get ill or tired, and can speak with an unlimited number of customers simultaneously. Your clients will love this service.

If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to level up your contact centre in 2020, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.