The report highlights trends and challenges for contact center leaders working to improve agent performance and reach important KPIs
Zenarate, the leading AI Simulation Training solution for contact centers, announced the CX Agents: A Survey of CX Leaders Regarding Their Most Valuable Asset report. Zenarate partnered with Execs In The Know to survey Customer Experience (CX) leaders to better understand the evolving role of the contact center agent and define CX leaders’ greatest needs for improving agent coaching and training.
“The CX Agent report verified that the human experience remains high value and the agent role is increasingly important to the brand,” said Brian Tuite, CEO and founder of Zenarate. “Today’s agents are truly on the front line of the business. It’s more important than ever for training to be executed with a direct impact on top KPIs while ensuring that agents are confident and proficient in best and required practices in addition to important soft skills.”
Execs in the Know 2023 CX Agents stated, “Although there have been massive strides in AI-powered solutions, particularly in the area of Generative AI, consumers are still not ready to give up the high touch, personable experience of interacting with a skillful live agent. In fact, these human-to-human interactions likely carry more weight than ever before, as they are now largely reduced to only the most complex, sensitive, and meaningful engagements. Agents are no longer a means to an end when it comes to solving a customer’s problems, and they are also best-positioned ambassadors for creating brand-defining experiences.”
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Key findings from the report include:
- Hybrid work is the most common model. In 2020, remote work accelerated. Survey findings revealed that 62% of respondents follow a hybrid work model. Only 11% of respondents had agents fully in-house, and 23% were fully remote.
- Smaller contact centers. Survey findings revealed that 47% of CX leaders reported fewer than 100 agents. Only 2% had more than 2000. More training is necessary when departments have fewer agents on more dispersed teams.
- Top KPIs involve customer experience. When approaching training, CX Leaders need to understand the KPIs that matter most to customers and the business. CSAT (47%) took the lead when looking at which KPIs respondents closely track. Followed by handle time/volume (43%), then quality/compliance (36%) and resolution rate (25%).
- CX leaders focus on soft skills. Agents need to interact with customers or prospects in a personalized and empathetic way, and businesses are spending most training time and resources on improving soft skills (26%). Soft skills are followed closely by increasing training resources (24%), raising performance (22%), improving processes and tools (20%)
- Speed to proficiency is key for new hires. When asked what matters most for new trainees, 44% of respondents said improved speed to proficiency.
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How AI Coach Helps Today’s CX Leaders
Zenarate AI Coach uses advanced natural language processing and natural language understanding, allowing agents to role-play with their personal unbiased AI Coach from home or office without any new equipment. It helps leading brands accelerate agent speed to proficiency by 56%, improve customer satisfaction scores by 33%, and reduce agent attrition by 32%. Contact centers also report a 20-40% reduction in operating costs from developing confident and prepared new hire agents before their first live call and closing tenured agent call type and skill gaps.