These employees are the conduit between panicked customers and businesses experiencing unprecedented disruption
As industry shutdowns and business disruption continue in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, Australia’s frontlines are continuously being redrawn. Doctors and nurses are clearly bearing the brunt of the recovery efforts – and gaining incredible admiration for their resilience in the process – while grocery workers, cleaners, and delivery drivers are rightfully experiencing a newfound respect for the crucial roles they play.
But there’s one group of frontline workers who are often forgotten despite the critical services they provide – contact centre agents.
These employees are the conduit between panicked customers and businesses experiencing unprecedented disruption. With many Australians facing the prospect of losing their livelihoods (if they haven’t already), contact centres are receiving calls from customers who want to cancel or downgrade subscriptions, arrange compassionate payment terms, or inquire about services they never thought they’d need.
In all these instances, the customer has faced major upheavals. Simultaneously, businesses have been forced to shut down their contact centres for the safety of their employees, often inhibiting their ability to service customers as promptly and successfully as they would normally. One of the expected consequences is long wait times that only add to their frustration – a frustration that can boil over and be taken out on the agent who eventually answers their call.
Various Australian companies have used technology to allow their contact centre agents to work from home. One example is AGL Energy, which rapidly transitioned more than 1,000 frontline customer service agents to remote working, enabling a seamless continuation of its services despite having to close contact centre offices.
Other major companies, particularly telecommunications providers such as TPG and Vodafone, have similarly been able to shift contact centre roles to work-from-home operations. While these initiatives help customers receive the service they need in these uncertain times, organisations must also ensure their agents’ well-being, particularly their mental health, is supported while working from home.
Extended periods of remote work, particularly when mandated and enforced, carry with them a number of mental health risks. Chief among these are isolation and burnout. While this is true of any industry, contact centre agents who have never before worked from home need particular support in these times.
During normal operations, contact centres are lively, social, community-driven office spaces. Agents interact with each other throughout the day, between calls, on breaks and during the water-cooler chats which help people feel like they’re part of a team. When this is removed – and compounded by the lack of other social outlets due to enforced social distancing measures – agents can quickly begin to feel isolated.
Further, the nature of the calls they’re taking can potentially lead to burnout. With customers panicking as a result of coronavirus, contact centre agents have to help people through some of the toughest circumstances they’ve ever experienced.
In the past few years there has been a huge focus on customer experience (CX), but little attention has been given to the agent experience. For example, almost every business conducts post-call surveys of their customers but far few regularly survey their agents to determine ways to improve their experience.
As the customer-facing frontlines of a business, it’s crucial that the agent experience is given as much attention as the customer experience – after all, it is the agents who interact with the customers, and there is a symbiotic link between happy agents and happy customers.
Making matters even harder for agents is the digital divide that has occurred over recent years. While CX initiatives have seen businesses roll out a plethora of new digital products and services to its customers, relatively little has been offered to the agents who serve them. Customers have access to mobile applications, chat bots, and voice recognition, but agents have been neglected in the digital transformation. Many are forced to work with archaic platforms that are slow to respond or contain idiosyncrasies that hamstring their efforts to provide the best possible customer service.
All these issues – isolation, burnout, agent experience and the digital divide – can leave contact centre workers at risk of adverse mental health. Managers and business leaders need to ensure their agents feel supported during these times by bringing them the social outlets they lack from working from home. Perhaps it’s a weekly video conference catch-up to discuss how they’re coping with the new arrangements or a regular virtual ‘Friday coffee’ session with the wider team.
Above all, agents must be given the tools they need to provide the best possible customer service. This is just as critical whether they’re working from home or when they eventually return to the office – whenever that may be.
Anthony Brown is corporate consulting engineer at Avaya Australia
