The Cost of Caring: The Contact Center Agent's Dilemma, Part 1

Remember last week's blog? Where I wrote about the issue of personal history that everyone (agents and customers alike) brings to the party?

There are a couple of inputs in the chronic workplace traumatization of contact center--customer service--agents. Customer service is an outgrowth of company culture and beliefs.

Cultures that treat agents like vocal rule books who cannot express any modicum of power in customer responses will see higher levels of dissatisfaction and turnover.

Cultures that consider agents their best creative problem-solvers, and as valued members who impact the bottom line in many ways, are more likely to see lower levels of agent dissatisfaction.

Why? Overwhelming experiences blunt the ability to identify and make choices--for the customer and the agent.

While the constraint of rule-following can be helpful to people whose world is smaller because of trauma, it can also be paralyzing. If a customer's complaints, arguments, and haranguing shut down the agent's ability to think, call handling time and satisfaction decrease.

If the agent can remain open, empathetic, and respond in ways that are culturally sensitive, it always helps.

In either case, here's the rub: there's a kind of contagion to those emotions. The neurobiological impact of that on both the person who is overwhelmed and the agent is... the same.

The fact that we have mirror neurons means that when Ida Lou calls and rips me a new one because something isn't right with her bill? My brain--whether or not I know it--feels, or mirrors, what she feels.

Now how is that helpful for your bottom line? And what can you do about it?