Dive Brief:
- More than three-quarters of call center leaders say their agents are overwhelmed by systems and information, according to a Deloitte Digital survey of 600 senior contact center leaders released Tuesday. The survey, conducted by Lawless Research in March, polled leaders from companies with 1,000 or more employees and $100 million or more in annual revenue.
- Agent-facing technology can help. At companies that don’t use generative AI, 81% of agents were overwhelmed by the information available to them during calls, compared to about 53% of employees at companies that have deployed generative AI.
- Agents are struggling with the sheer volume of policies and programs they need to assist customers, according to Tim McDougal, service excellence lead at Deloitte Digital. Tech that helps them understand customer inquiries and find answers can ease the burden.
Dive Insight:
Agents are navigating more difficult tasks as AI takes over simple self-service inquiries, studies show. Companies that fail to help agents keep up with rising expectations risk losing workers and harming customer relationships.
"We're throwing so much information at them, and asking them to diagnose and solve more complex issues,” McDougal told CX Dive. “You can imagine that employee satisfaction has a direct correlation to customer satisfaction and things like cost and agent attrition.”
Leaders seeking to better support their agents can look at the support strategies of top-performing customer service operations for inspiration.
Service innovators — defined as companies whose performance on factors like service quality and agent attrition rate ranked in the top 25% — are 4.6 times more likely to report excellent customer satisfaction and 2.5 times more likely to report excellent employee satisfaction, Deloitte Digital found.
Technology played a significant role in their success. Service innovators are eight times more likely to use generative AI compared to companies with less advanced service capabilities, the study found.
These top performing companies are investing in technology for specific use cases, from omnichannel orchestration to channel steering, according to McDougal.
Omnichannel orchestration tracks a customer’s journey across channels — such as from a FAQ page to a chatbot to an agent — allowing agents and leaders to record the customer’s actions at every channel they visit. Prior research has shown agents are better equipped to help customers if they understand the journey leading up to the live call.
“We see improved customer satisfaction because the customer doesn't have to talk about all their problems at each step along the way,” McDougal said.
Channel steering is another way to ease the burden on call center agents, according to McDougal. Four in 5 companies use this strategy, which guides customers toward the most effective channel for their inquiry.
Call centers can steer customers toward chatbots and other self-service options for simple, low-emotion inquiries like address changes, McDougal said. Complex inquiries with higher emotional investment, like billing errors, are often better off directed toward agents.
Channel steering takes time and practice to perfect, according to McDougal. As companies learn customers’ preferences, they become better at guiding them to the right channel, saving agents time and customers frustration.
