The industrialization of customer relationship centers: what are the consequences?
We have all been in contact with customer service at some point. Whether it’s for a purchase or after-sales service. By phone, by email, or on social networks, making omnichannel even more vital for businesses. On the other end of the line or keyboard, valuable assistance is offered with a well-rehearsed and perfectly mastered speech…
And yet. Psychological distress is an integral part of the landscape of contact centers. A sector in full expansion since the 90s, contact centers allow companies to better streamline their customer relationships through increased availability and personalization of their speech. However, this industrialization of services inevitably tends to create a fragmented work environment, akin to modern-day Taylorism. Xavier Niel even stated that “workers in call centers are the workers of the 21st century […]. The job they do is the worst job.”
High work rates, strict daily objectives, constant stress, alarming turnover… Let’s take a closer look at the daily life of contact center agents, and the solutions that can be provided to them.
The worst job?
The observation is indisputable. Jobs in contact centers are often precarious, repetitive, or sources of stress. Let us remember that these structures initially developed around a strong desire for cost reduction for businesses. To do this, contact centers attempt to build an organizational model by combining new technologies and human skills to deliver quality remote communication services. Similar to the frantic and monotonous pace of mass production lines, work becomes mind-numbing and almost transforms advisors into mere executors. The pace and queue of incoming and outgoing calls go on endlessly on the overloaded screens of agents whose fragmented and disembodied work submits the general idea of a work that is endured. Beyond the responses provided - quickly - to clients, tele-advisors are led to add a surplus of commercial value to their prescribed interventions by adapting to unforeseen events.
In addition, there is a significant and heavy hierarchical pressure. Indeed, managers and supervisors use tools that allow them to monitor, in real-time, the performance of their agents: numbers of ongoing calls, duration of call handling, conversion rates, and abandonment rates if applicable… It is worth noting that the opinion is divisive: surveillance tools have ambivalent effects and their impact is felt differently by advisors. Nevertheless, in most cases, the approach is no longer perceived as managerial but rather totalitarian! And the consequences are profoundly felt…
An irrevocable sentence!
Feeling weakly engaged in their jobs, agents lose productivity and that’s where the problem lies! The lack of involvement and high turnover of advisors naturally lead to absenteeism and staff shortages. The role of the CRC, intended to relieve businesses and satisfy clients, results in a boomerang effect, contrary to the one sought. Contact centers are then perceived as cost centers (and of excessive costs!) rather than as profit centers and creators of added value. Furthermore, it is undeniable that the quality of the work of tele-advisors requires certain skills and knowledge: relational and linguistic ease, sharp listening abilities, or perfect knowledge of the products and services offered by the company. But when agent turnover is omnipresent, the invested training is completely lost, forcing organizations to reinvest to train successors once again! And the result is clear: too many incoming and outgoing communications for too few staff, inexperienced and pressured agents, all leading to longer call times, greatly annoying clients and lengthening waiting lines.
To address these endless frictions, we at ViaDialog wanted to bring a new breath to these organizations often devoid of agility. And we have succeeded.
ViaFlow, your omnichannel ally for managing client interactions in all circumstances!
ViaFlow is the first natively omnichannel solution that allows handling all client interactions through a unified interface, thus offering a 360° view to agents in contact centers. They can easily switch from one channel to another while maintaining the complete context of the exchange. However, agent stress and the growing dissatisfaction of clients are both linked to the multiplicity of applications necessary to effectively respond to client requests. This multiplicity is today the cause of an average response time for agents on a client call of 2 minutes 30 seconds.
With ViaFlow, this time is reduced by 40%! Moreover, ViaFlow is fully accessible remotely in a completely secure manner, and with a low hardware footprint, facilitating the establishment of a peaceful telework environment for agents. The detection of emotions from callers allows for directing emotionally unstable clients to specific waiting lines. Self-care tools, led by voicebots for call qualification such as ViaSpeech, greatly relieve agents of redundant and low-value tasks. Finally, through its dynamic supervision module, ViaFlow enables supervisors to provide valuable assistance to their agents during a call by suggesting response elements or by directly joining the call.
To learn more, our experts are available to support you at every stage of your projects.
