This is a guest post from Ross Daniels, Chief Marketing Officer at Calabrio.
The impact of the past few years has been wide-reaching and traumatic. Flexible working practices, growing customer demands and a fast-changing competitive landscape are all taking their toll. And these stressors are affecting everyone in the contact centre and beyond.
Stress levels among agents are rising sharply with 96% claiming to feel stressed at least once a week, while 33% of agents are stressed multiple times a week – up from 25% in 2017. Is it any wonder, given that they are dealing with 14.4 additional omnichannel interactions per day? At the same time, many people are still adapting psychologically to an often disorienting ‘work from anywhere’ culture while faced with the practicalities of juggling home and work life.
A recent study by ContactBabel revealed that 60% of respondents agreed that staff attrition and absence, while initially pandemic-related, is still causing CX issues. Just how do those running the show (aka the operations of the contact centre) juggle agent schedules and skills throughout the day while planning for future recruitment, coaching and training, as cost-effectively as possible? Contact centre leaders also need to understand the bigger picture, such as why staff are leaving for the competition or why customer churn rates are higher than usual. The pressure is on contact centre operations to manage agent stress while at the same time dealing with hybrid working and increased numbers of digital communication channels. Add to this the need to optimise performance, keep teams connected and meet ever increasing customer expectations. It’s all created a perfect storm for anxiety and stress that threatens the wellbeing of employees and the long-term prosperity of their organisations. What can be done to reverse the trend?
Wellbeing translates into agents who are empowered, taking control of their working lives and the customer experience; where supervisors support the business with a motivated workforce that surpasses key metrics and service levels and where executives strike a fine balance between cost control, innovation and business expansion. Here are three ideas for inspiration:
Success depends on removing stress at all levels of the organisation. Head to our new “Workforce Wellbeing Recovery Kit” to gain hints and tips for three key stakeholders, with the main stressors to target, checklists to process change and tech buyer’s guides.
This is a guest post from Ross Daniels, Chief Marketing Officer at Calabrio.
About Ross
As Chief Marketing Officer, Ross Daniels is responsible for Calabrio’s global marketing efforts, including digital marketing, demand generation and pipeline marketing, content strategy and creation, customer marketing, partner marketing, and corporate communications. Ross is also responsible for supporting Calabrio’s partners–driving strategic technology and platform partner relationships, channel programs and marketing, and developer and services partners. Prior to joining Calabrio in 2017, Ross spent 18 years at Cisco in roles encompassing product management, product marketing and marketing, including serving as the Senior Director of Collaboration Marketing for Cisco’s nearly $5B Collaboration business. Ross holds a BA in English from Harvard University and an MBA from Babson College.
Calabrio is the customer experience intelligence company that empowers organisations to enrich human interactions. The scalability of our cloud platform allows for quick deployment of remote work models—and it gives our customers precise control over both operating costs and customer satisfaction levels. Find more at calabrio.com and follow @Calabrio on Twitter.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay