Caring for Customer Care Agents: Train Customer Service Agents Against Burnout

A Tale of Two People and Great Expectations

Monday 8:30 a.m. It’s a cold and rainy day. Alexa, a customer support representative, logs in to work. She has attended to her first irate customer and now Alexa can finally answer the call from her manager, Frazer. He has been on hold for two minutes but needs some info ASAP regarding a 9am meeting with his own boss. He is already running late.

Alexa scrambles to get Frazer the correct data from the system, but the system’s unresponsive. Frazer becomes increasingly frustrated and makes a nasty comment about Alexa’s “chronic incompetence”. He hangs up abruptly. Flustered, Alexa moves on to her next call, while deciding that she will move on from this job.

Meanwhile, Frazer rushes in for the meeting with his boss, who’s clearly annoyed at being kept waiting. The boss starts complaining about Fazer’s “selfish ineptitude.” Exhausted by this unpleasant start-of-the-day interaction, the final straw, Frazer concludes the meeting and decides to quit his job, too. 

The current escalation in customer service exasperation can lead to chain reactions that result in business casualties, a situation more pronounced post Covid. Today, whether a customer service representative interacts with a customer on a call or in person, they are required to fulfill far more needs than ever before.

Consider this.

A study by Zendesk states that in 2021, 90% of business leaders reported that customer expectations had reached an all-time high. Interestingly, companies required their service agents to assist with new upsell and cross-sell goals. This figure becomes even more somber given that 50% of customer service agents state they have a hard time handling difficult conversations with their customers stemming from miscommunication or communication. The escalating goal demands on service agents is leading to increased stress and burnout. 

Can anything be done about it? To understand its impact, let’s examine how the situation affects you in concrete terms.

Burnout: Landscape and Landmine

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon in three dimensions:

• Energy depletion or exhaustion
• Increased mental distance from one’s job including negativism and cynicism related to one's employment; and
• Reduced professional efficacy.

Note that it is not characterized as a medical condition but an occupational one. This means that when employees face burn-out, they are operating in a chronic workplace, and they do not have the resources to manage stress successfully.

Consequently, according to a 2021 Work and Well-being Survey report by the American Psychological Association (APA), burnout among customer support agents is extensive, as evidenced by the following statistics regarding agents whose primary responsibility is customer interaction:

• 51% of agents report high levels of physical fatigue

• 41% report cognitive weariness
• 41% report emotional exhaustion 

The ‘U’ in Business, Burnout, and Customer Support

This dismal picture grows even more sobering when we examine business performance, as the same APA survey reports that when a company replaces a customer service agent, it typically will spend six to nine months of the former employee’s salary to recruit, onboard, and train a new employee. 

A 2019 article by Gallup Workplace further estimates that a company can spend one-half to two times an employee’s annual salary to replace that employee. 

There is a considerable opportunity cost as well. A survey by Toister Performance Solutions reveals that a vacant customer support position on average requires two to four weeks to refill, leading to customer dissatisfaction, poor customer service, and lost business. 

How can Training Help?

Considering Alexa and Frazer, the tale of two people with great expectations about which this blog began, the question arises: what could their companies have done to prevent them from quitting? After all, no company can control how their customers talk. As it turns out, the issue can be easily remedied. Burnout among customer service agents can be caused by inadequate support by management. These agents feel unseen, unheard, and not poised for success. To this end, proper training can be a company’s authentic acknowledgment of “We see your problem and will resolve it.”

Of course, meaningful customer service training requires a holistic, nurturing approach rather than a piece-meal, fractured one. In a sense, the entire forest will benefit only by carefully tending to each individual tree. Employees are profoundly impacted by their work environment. Therefore, focusing solely on fixing the employee’s performance and mindset without tending to the world in which they operate will not last long. In fact, this limited way of thinking can even be detrimental.

Guidelines for Designing Training that Your Customer Support Agents Will Love 

• Make Resilience Endemic to the Process: To ensure that customer service agents withstand stress, the customer service ecosystem must have outlets through which employees feel visible and nurtured. One way to rejig the existing system is to build in frequent breaks and feedback sessions. Additionally, companies can teach employees strong coping mechanisms to go the distance when the going gets tough. 
• Get The Right Approach: Think ‘Enable and Empower rather than ‘Fix and Improve’. You can accomplish this by employing automation (tools, AI, etc.) for routine tasks. This initiative can ensure employees are not bogged down by swivel-chair tasks, thus cognitively freeing them up to learn new skills.
• Ensure Training Aligned with Workflow: Overwhelmed customer support agents do not need to be inundated with one more thing they need to squeeze out time for. Instead of a unwieldy 90-minute learning modules, consider smaller chunks of 5 - 10-minute modules that can quickly assist agents with the task they will be performing later. Consider the Learn-Now-Apply-Quickly-Revise-As-Needed route rather than its prevalent alternative, Learn-Everything – Retain-Little- Apply-Even-Less. 
• Strengthen the Employee: At the core of good customer support is an empathetic employee, and at the core of an empathetic employee is a confident, resilient individual. Ensure that the training empowers customer service agents with the right mindset. They should be able to detach from crisis through creative troubleshooting.

With these guidelines in place, you can provide your customer support team with the necessary resources in these challenging times. This could then spell the ‘U’ in your success. 

If you’d like assistance with enhancing your customer service performance, reach out to us at: https://ozemio.com/contact-us/