The November 2024 Feature article, “Ensuring Quality in Anxious Times,” focuses on the quality assurance and quality management (QA/QM) challenges facing - but also opportunities available - to contact centers, such as those provided by artificial intelligence (AI)-driven applications.
This Feature article deeper-dives into the people issues and explores solutions, both human and automated, to ensure quality customer experiences (CXs) through the agents.
We’ve brought back our expert panel to answer these additional questions.
Dave Hoekstra, Product Evangelist, Calabrio
Manisha Powar, Head of Product, Qualtrics Customer Experience Suite
Dave Singer, Global Vice President, GTM Strategy, Verint
Elizabeth Tobey, Head of Marketing, AI & Digital, NICE
Q. Contact centers continue to face high agent turnover. Is this factor impacting quality and if so, how?
Dave Hoekstra:
Yes, the impact is high to quality. New agents just don’t have the same ability to manage through complex scenarios with quality. Add to that the fact that easy inquiries are few and far between and you get a recipe for disaster.
The secret? Hang on to your agents by giving them plenty of coaching, development, and work/life balance.
Manisha Powar:
High agent turnover indeed impacts quality, as it disrupts the continuity and consistency of service. Just like any team function or business, the loss of trained and experienced agents leaves a knowledge gap that can lead to decreased productivity and customer satisfaction until new hires are fully trained.
This is an area where new technologies can help by making new agents more efficient by providing real time guidance and knowledge base recommendations. Customer service leaders are also making investments in more personalized agent coaching, using AI to analyze agent behaviors and provide self-guided coaching opportunities.
Dave Singer:
The time it takes to onboard new agents can vary tremendously depending on the industry. In some cases, this process can take an exceptionally long time.
When a company is constantly dealing with a high turnover rate before agents can complete the onboarding process, and when the top-performing agents are seeking opportunities elsewhere, the company never has a stable team of highly competent and high-performing agents.
In this scenario, the focus then must be on continuous training, leaving little room for continuous quality improvement.
This lack of focus on improving service quality directly translates into poor customer service and satisfaction, as customers are consistently receiving sub-par service from sub-optimized agents-in-training.
Elizabeth Tobey:
AI is augmenting employee performance. By monitoring every interaction in real-time and historically, AI can provide in-the-moment coaching for employees to resolve customer issues quickly, thereby driving happier customers.
AI is also automating repetitive and mundane employee work so employees can focus on higher-priority and higher-value tasks like building stronger customer relationships.
These two primary forces of automated and augmented intelligence are enabling organizations to do more with less, utilizing high quality agents more effectively. And in turn encouraging them to stay by having them focus on more complex and challenging interactions and drive better CX.
Q. Are there sources of high-quality agents that contact centers have historically overlooked but they should consider reaching out to?
Dave Hoekstra:
Some of this is already happening, as the labor pool shrinks. There are fantastic services out there that help underserved groups with finding employment. Contact centers have always been a great place for individuals to gain some experience, get decent pay, and have consistent work.
The harsh reality of the industry is that it can be high stress, and the more experience a person has, the quicker they realize that.
“New agents just don’t have the same ability to manage through complex scenarios with quality.” —Dave Hoekstra
Contact centers have historically been good at utilizing the available labor pool, but the problem is as old as time: you get what you pay for. If you want high-quality talent, you need to offer a competitive salary, flexible hours, and job fulfillment.
Dave Singer:
Remote work has significantly leveled the playing field, offering inclusive opportunities for individuals who may have struggled in traditional office environments. The move to remote work and digital channels has opened new opportunities for organizations to tap into historically overlooked or underrepresented labor pools.
In the past, working in a contact center often meant commuting long distances and spending long hours at a desk in a physical office. For some individuals, particularly those with disabilities or other challenges that make commuting or sitting for extended periods difficult, this was a significant barrier to employment.
Now, with remote work options, these individuals can contribute their skills and expertise without the need to endure long commutes or physically demanding office environments. Digital platforms that comply with accessibility standards (such as WCAG 2.0) ensure that assistive tools are available for differently abled individuals, including those with visual impairments.
“Remote work has significantly leveled the playing field, offering inclusive opportunities for individuals...” —Dave Singer
Additionally, AI-driven solutions, such as real-time coaching bots, help employees get up to speed quickly and reduce the need for extensive in-person training, benefiting people from diverse backgrounds and abilities.
The shift to remote work and digital tools in contact centers also removes many traditional barriers, particularly for non-native English speakers or individuals from marginalized groups.
Digital channels, such as chat, remove reliance on phone communications, helping to minimize biases related to accents or language fluency. This creates opportunities for people who might otherwise face discrimination in a traditional office, including immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and formerly incarcerated individuals.
By reducing workplace prejudices and embracing flexibility, remote work is fostering more diverse, inclusive, and accessible job opportunities, benefiting both employers and employees.
Q. A long-advocated best practice is to have complex questions, issues, and sales opportunities escalated to subject matter experts (SMEs). But is this happening, and is the expectation for high quality, customer-satisfying engagements being met?
Dave Hoekstra:
It is not, and there is one reason why. There is no such thing as a simple engagement anymore. All the easy stuff is being managed by automated methods like websites, chatbots, and IVRs. Only the complex questions make it through the gauntlet. The SMEs are being inundated with all the questions, and it has the effect of homogenizing all the agents.
Manisha Powar:
SMEs are a prized resource in any organization, but they are often overwhelmed with requests. The more we can help them by removing repetitive and automatable tasks, the more they can help customers solve complex problems. The goal of solutions like automated knowledge base assistance, bots, and real time shortcuts is to help free up their time.
Dave Singer:
Brands are working to find a balance between human agents and AI in the contact center. The goal of AI and CX automation is to make every agent your best agent – and that includes bots – who can provide the best level of service possible.
By using agent-facing virtual assistants and automation coaching technology, companies can leverage AI to assist in complex queries, sales opportunities, and potential issues.
For example, AI-powered real-time coaching tools support QA, ensuring agents follow company protocols and provide consistent service. Done right, they deliver the support agents want and need without business disruption. These tools are designed to guide only the agents who need it, elevating agent performance in specific targeted areas.
Elizabeth Tobey:
AI is transforming knowledge management systems, empowering businesses to deliver faster, more accurate, and more personalized CXs without the need, in most cases, to escalate contacts to and schedule engagements with busy SMEs.
Traditional challenges like siloed knowledge bases, disparate data sources, and generic AI models trained on unreliable internet data have hindered efficiency and trust. These have caused agents to reach out to others with their knowledge to help customers.
However, interaction-centric AI hyper-platforms are transforming these limitations into opportunities. By centralizing data, knowledge, and AI models on a unified platform, organizations can seamlessly automate workflows and provide consistent, real-time information across all touchpoints.
As a result, agents no longer waste time searching for answers: AI delivers knowledge directly to their fingertips, enabling faster resolutions and improved productivity. These platforms can also leverage enterprise knowledge and insights from top-performing agents to train Conversational AI, creating a dynamic feedback loop that continuously enhances performance.
“The introduction of AI in customer service has begun to ease the tension between quality and productivity, but challenges remain.” —Elizabeth Tobey
Additionally, AI is not only instantly providing information to live agents but also to chatbots and self-service solutions, ensuring that queries are addressed intelligently and efficiently.
AI-driven knowledge management is not just an operational improvement: it’s a strategic advantage that redefines how businesses meet and exceed customer expectations.
Q. Is there a continued conflict between quality and performance/productivity, even with the new AI-powered tools, as expressed in “I’d like to help you more, but I need to finish this call.” And if so, how do contact centers square this issue?
Dave Hoekstra:
There has always been pressure on a customer service agent to get the job done as quickly as possible. But in the last decade, the pressure has eased; contact centers seem to focus much less on handle times and more on customer satisfaction.
AI has promise in helping agents resolve problems more quickly, but it hasn’t fulfilled that “magic box” challenge yet. Contact centers should continue to focus on providing the highest quality interaction, regardless of whether AI is involved.
Manisha Powar:
Yes, the tension between quality and productivity remains a challenge for contact centers, even with the introduction of AI-powered tools.
While these tools can enhance efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and providing real-time insights, it’s essential to ensure they support, rather than overshadow, the human aspect of customer interactions.
To address this conflict, organizations should adopt a balanced performance measurement approach that values both quality and efficiency.
“SMEs are a prized resource in any organization, but they are often overwhelmed with requests.” —Manisha Powar
Implementing AI-driven tools that focus on context and sentiment analysis can help agents better understand customer needs while still meeting productivity goals.
By fostering a culture that emphasizes meaningful connections and providing proper training on these tools, contact centers can successfully enhance both service quality and operational productivity.
Dave Singer:
CX automation provides contact centers with the ability to achieve the “holy grail” of improving quality, performance, and customer and agent experience, all while reducing costs.
Digital tools, such as intelligent virtual assistants, are becoming increasingly sophisticated for improved adoption and successful channel shift, lifting the burden of routine tasks from agents. This creates more space for agents to focus on more complex interactions that require human nuance.
AI-empowered agent copilots, such as real-time coaching bots, help streamline complex calls, reducing the time it takes to resolve issues by delivering real-time knowledge, guidance, and assistance at the right moments.
I like to think of bots as a virtual team of assistants behind every contact center agent, providing support in real time. Imagine each agent has a team of 10 bots helping them with tasks like starting applications, creating cases, or detecting customer sentiment.
For example, if the sentiment starts to trend negatively, the bot can alert the agent and offer tips on de-escalating the situation. Agents often recognize when a customer is angry, but by the time they do, it’s usually too late to prevent an escalation, which can extend call length.
AI-infused capabilities help solve this by detecting signals of frustration early, allowing agents to course-correct and resolve the issue more efficiently, leading to better experiences for both customers and agents.
CX automation, particularly through AI, is helping contact centers strike a balance between performance and productivity by streamlining routine tasks.
With AI handling administrative duties such as note-taking, drafting responses, and processing transactions, agents can focus more on delivering high-quality, personalized service without getting bogged down in time-consuming tasks.
This allows agents to prioritize customer interactions while AI takes care of the back-end work. As a result, agents can maintain a high standard of service, even while managing multiple priorities simultaneously.
Elizabeth Tobey:
The introduction of AI in customer service has begun to ease the tension between quality and productivity, but challenges remain.
Many organizations still deploy AI in silos - such as bots operating on separate platforms from human agents - resulting in clunky handovers, customer frustration, and inefficiencies. Disconnected knowledge bases, workflows, and teams exacerbate these issues, driving agent turnover and inconsistency.
Success lies in seamless collaboration between AI and human agents, combining their strengths to deliver exceptional service.
By leveraging platform data and historical interactions, businesses can rapidly create precise AI agents and equip employees with AI copilots for real-time, role-specific support. This synergy enhances productivity, engagement, and learning, turning every employee into a customer service champion.