Research shows that there is a strong correlation between contact center agent satisfaction and customer experience (CX). Yet most agents are relegated to inflexible schedules contributing to agent dissatisfaction, high turnover and declining customer experience. In fact, 65% of U.S. employees rank flexibility as one of their most-desired benefits. Customer care agents are no different – they seek more control over their shifts to better manage work/life balance.
When businesses fail to empower agents with flexibility and support, they experience a higher rate of employee burnout and attrition. According to our research, 63% of contact center leaders face staffing shortages while replacing an agent can cost up to $15,000 – a hugely disruptive and expensive scenario.
Employee burnout isn’t just a human resource issue, it’s a societal and macroeconomic issue – costing the global economy a staggering $8.9 trillion dollars annually. Reducing employee attrition and absenteeism presents a massive opportunity to save money and elevate customer support quality, directly benefiting the bottom line.
The solution is simple: Empower employees with the freedom to manage their own schedules to promote work-life balance, boosting job satisfaction and retention along the way. And, thanks to the evolution of AI, businesses can now offer this to agents without sacrificing support coverage or customer experience.
With AI, companies can automate real-time scheduling adjustments in a way that balances workforce flexibility with the need for consistent service quality and business operations. It’s a win-win: AI-powered scheduling can eliminate overstaffing and unnecessary overtime, improve scheduling efficiency across time zones as well as locations and boost employee satisfaction.
Empowering agents: Flexibility without compromise
Life happens – children have doctor’s appointments, cars need maintenance, pipes burst – and employees often must juggle these planned and unplanned occurrences along with work responsibilities.
Without control over their schedules, contact center agents are often forced to choose between their work and personal responsibilities. They might need to wade through a lengthy, intrusive, resource-intensive Time-Off request process or call in sick in an attempt to balance their competing responsibilities. In the past, it’s been difficult to accommodate last-minute schedule updates or tailor schedules to each individual’s needs, but with AI, intelligent workforce management is finally a reality.
For example, AI can empower agents to manage their shifts autonomously by understanding and surfacing business impacts, then guiding agents to make changes, ensuring operational coverage. Agents might choose reduced work hours one day to handle a personal responsibility and make up those hours later in the week at times that are beneficial for both the agent and the business.
Empowering agents to own their schedules demonstrates that the business trusts and values individuals’ contributions and respects their personal autonomy, leading to higher job satisfaction, fewer unplanned absences and reduced attrition. Employee happiness is good for business; 87% of business leaders agree that prioritizing worker happiness gives companies a competitive advantage and 96% say it makes it easier to retain talent.
Optimizing performance and costs with AI
Organizations have business objectives that must be met. But businesses don’t need to trade employee happiness for operational performance and cost reduction – AI can help achieve all these goals.
Through machine learning, algorithms can analyze patterns and anticipate staffing needs by assessing common service experiences.
For example, AI can recognize that certain agents handle highly complex escalation cases more quickly than others, with higher customer satisfaction scores. They can then prioritize those agents for higher-touch call categories, improving both efficiency and service quality.
That’s probably why 57% of business leaders who are highly confident in their ability to provide the level of service that meets consumer demand are investing more in quality and performance.
AI scheduling systems can predict peak demand periods and tailor schedules in real time, while enabling agents to modify shifts as needed without harming coverage.
With AI, companies gain better shift planning, reliable service levels and improved response times – reducing customer wait periods and improving the overall customer experience.
AI-powered contact center flexibility: A triple win
AI-powered scheduling benefits contact center employees, business leaders and customers – a true win-win-win scenario.
AI can improve morale, productivity and retention by giving employees control over their shift schedules without lengthy approval periods. It can lower operating costs by better aligning staffing levels to demand. And finally, AI can help prioritize the contact center agent experience, which empowers those agents to deliver the best customer experience.
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