Contact center work is notoriously stressful, so it's no surprise that agent attrition is notoriously high. The job entails back-to-back calls and intense time pressure, demanding customers, and monitored and measured performance. Breaks and training sessions are missed when calls run over. Budgets are tight and supervisors are stretched thin, so agents don't get all the problem-solving support they need. And for many working remotely, isolation adds another layer of stress.
It's a recipe for burnout. Attrition of 30 percent or higher is typical, with some contact centers turning over their entire agent teams each year. It also creates a persistent hole in service budgets: Recruiting, onboarding, and training a new agent can cost up to $30,000. Time-to-proficiency for a new agent can take six to 12 months. That's a significant investment, and it should be protected.
For agents, attrition is a matter of well-being. For businesses, it's a matter of cost—usually in the millions. That's where artificial intelligence comes in. AI tools have proven successful in solving for drops in productivity or supporting slim teams, but agents worry they can be replaced by such technology. By coupling AI and a people-first approach to team management, leaders can more effectively prioritize and address agent well-being without sacrificing performance or budgets.
Tapping AI's Automation Power
AI's ability to automate increases support for agents and supervisors alike. From an agent perspective, advanced automation can monitor data from multiple contact center systems and identify unforeseen intervals to deliver training instantly to desktops, then alert them back to service when demand resurges. It can steer incoming requests away from agents due for breaks and even offer surprise breaks to agents after multiple back-to-back calls. This ability to leverage untapped capacity to deliver critical support helps prevent stress from accumulating and keeps agents fresh and ready to perform.
Automation of scheduling adjustments also relieves pressure on supervisors, who spend much of their precious time making those adjustments manually. Supervisors are also often tasked with fielding messages from late-arriving or absent agents, canceling and rescheduling training sessions, and monitoring for performance issues across large agent teams. When these tasks are automated, supervisors have more time to engage directly with agents and help develop them while ensuring they feel supported as an employee.
AI is taking agent support to a new level. Take, for example, the immense processing power of new AI models. They offer a unique opportunity to eliminate chronic attrition by benchmarking current employee metrics against those of agents who have quit in the past. This modeling gives supervisors advanced insight into which of their many agents are approaching critical burnout thresholds. With this knowledge, supervisors can then prioritize those agents for extra support and head off costly attrition.
Automation's ability to monitor and streamline operations in real time delivers significant savings and clears the path for human skills to move back to the forefront of customer service—where they belong. And ultimately, AI tools can free up time for agents and supervisors, allowing management to support a people-first culture.
When implementing and engaging teams with new AI tools, it's critical to pair this with a people-first approach to ensure each employee understands the expectations around the tool and their day-to-day roles. To do so, The following key strategies should be emphasized:
Communicate clearly.
When it comes to company policies or technology deployments, business leaders need to define objectives carefully and communicate them clearly. The many companies currently working to incorporate AI into their operations must tell their teams exactly how they plan to use it. How will AI complement employees? How will each function and role be affected? Important questions left to interpretation will often be misinterpreted, sowing doubt and disruption among employees.
Reinforce constantly.
Once a policy has been decided, get the entire leadership team aligned around it. Explain the policy clearly and repeatedly and execute it as planned. My organization's biweekly town hall meetings always kick off with a review of our mission, strategy, and core values. When employees see consistency, they embrace the organization's mission and their roles within it with greater conviction.
Check in often.
Through regular team meetings or trainings, ensure that agents are familiar with and comfortable functioning under new tools or policies. Leadership should be keen on signs of discomfort among agents and take proactive steps to address this. Consistently clear communication between leadership and agents can help alleviate challenges that might otherwise snowball into burnout and attrition.
Incorporating human touch has always been at the heart of customer service. But in recent years, it has been pushed aside by complexity and false paths to efficiency and profitability. AI, however, creates countless opportunities for positive change if leaders focus on the bigger picture.
AI allows businesses to reimagine how human workers and technology can combine to deliver better customer service. It enables them to identify and recover costly unused capacity, while reducing employee stress and creating more space for human touch. In the end, a people-first AI approach will be good for employees, good for customers, and good for business.
Jennifer Lee is co-CEO of Intradiem.