How AI-Driven Real-Time Coaching Stops the Revolving Door of Agent Attrition, Increases Productivity, and Improves CX.
Read the full Cresta Insights Report
We at Cresta are proud to share our “Cresta Insights Report Q1 2022”, the very first of many reports that leverages Cresta’s proprietary data to uncover unique insights within contact centers.
When developing this report, we spoke to leading companies about the biggest challenges they’re facing in their contact centers. One thing rang true, agent attrition continued to be a major concern – especially given the rising numbers of live chat and voice interactions in this new normal. And two contributing factors were inefficient agent ramp time and overall employee experience (EX) or job satisfaction. This Cresta Insights Report uses data from over six thousand agents and 3.8 million conversations to benchmark the current states of contact center agent ramp time and attrition. We also introduce “The Agent Lifecycle” framework which explores how AI-driven real-time coaching stops the revolving door of agent attrition, increases productivity, and improves CX.
Today’s Status Quo: The Revolving Door Dilemma
While contact centers have historically had 30 – 45% average annual agent attrition, our data shows that attrition has jumped to as high as ~80% since the pandemic. In addition to the high costs of hiring and training new agents, agent attrition impacts customer experience, brand perception, and becomes one of the most substantial costs for all contact centers.
While obvious to contact center executives and managers, reducing agent attrition is notoriously hard to tackle. In fact, it seems that agents go out the door almost as soon as they finish ramping and getting up to speed. The near perpetual resource hole that has to be constantly backfilled barely allows contact centers to maintain the status quo, not to mention grow. At Cresta, we call this the “Revolving Door Dilemma,” and it’s become the norm for the contact center industry. This dilemma is further exacerbated by remote work dynamics, which are here to stay and increase competition to hire agents.
The Agent Lifecycle
The Agent Lifecycle is an intuitive framework that we’ve developed at Cresta to help contact center leaders reduce agent attrition and stop the Revolving Door. The framework separates the experience of a contact center agent into three phases: Ramp, Performance, and Progression.
By looking at the agent experience holistically and understanding the needs of an agent during each phase of the Agent Lifecycle, contact center managers can address the root causes of agent dissatisfaction and prevent the extreme symptom of agent churn.
Transforming the Agent Lifecycle
One key way to stop the Revolving Door is to upskill agents through coaching and training. Our data shows that top performers have 12% lower churn than bottom performers. So how do contact centers set their agents up for success in each phase of the Agent Lifecycle? Thankfully, new advances in machine learning have enabled AI-driven, real-time coaching solutions that learn responses, behaviors, and other best practices of top performers and share these best practices to all agents.
Agents that have received AI-driven, real-time coaching exhibit the following improvements.
Resolving the Revolving Door Dilemma
As retention for trained and qualified contact agents becomes more competitive in a post-covid world, agent attrition will continue to be a primary cost driver and focus for contact centers. So how do contact center executives and managers resolve the Revolving Door Dilemma?
To learn more, click here to get your copy of the Cresta Insights Report.
