It is well documented that working in a contact centre can be a cause of job stress, with the latest data by the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association, reporting that Australian contact centres experience turnover rates of 32%.
This high turnover rate underscores the continued challenges faced by those working and managing these teams. So why are contact centres prone to high levels of job stress? And what can organisations do to help reduce stress and minimise job burnout for their contact centre agents with a Knowledge Management System?
Here is what we'll cover
Customers increasingly expect a personalised experience at all times, and when contact centre staff are not able to provide responses to customer queries efficiently with the correct information, it not only causes risks to the relationship with the customer and their experience, but also to the agent having to manage uncomfortable conversations when the information is not easily accessible and up to date.
With multiple platforms for incoming customer queries to manage with many customers still preferring phone contact, in many organisations there is demand for call centre agents to juggle customers across multiple environments with call volumes while still achieving KPIs.
Contact centres are often environments that experience regular or high turnover of staff. This can mean increased pressure for existing agents to be readily available and pick up overflow, and also for new staff to come up to speed quickly.
Contact centres are often under-resourced creating immense pressure to always be available and adequately staffed. This means that training can sometimes be lacking or insufficient, increasing stress.
Your contact centre teams are generally the first to hear about customer issues or organisational inefficiencies. However, there is often a lack of effective processes for providing feedback and addressing these concerns. This deficiency in communication can lead to feelings of powerlessness and frustration among your staff, contributing to contact centre stress.
When organisations use technology that cannot keep up with today's advancements, it can be a source of stress for call centre agents and inconvenience for customers. Underperforming systems make it more difficult to complete tasks and lead to increased tensions as customers face longer wait times
These causes can all play a role in increasing stress for agents and can include feelings of exhaustion, of not being effective and increased negativity towards their job and organisation. In its most severe state, it can lead to burnout resulting in increasing cost of employee down-time, plus recruitment and training of additional resources.
A Knowledge Management System, like KnowledgeIQ, centralises all information sources on a given topic, and presents it in a way that is easy to understand, locate and in a consistent format at their fingertips.
Utilising scripts and process wizards can significantly reduce contact centre stress by removing uncertainties and alleviating anxiety among agents. These tools also promote consistency in customer interactions. A versatile call centre allows for calls to be handled faster and ensures that information is accurately explained to the customer. Scripts can be stored as documents as part of process flows within your KMS. Your KMS should have process wizards and decision trees to support your agents.
In the context of contact centre stress, one of the most critical factors is reducing the time it takes to find information. Give your staff the tools to discover up-to-date information using everyday language. Intuitive navigation, taxonomy creation and a quality search are imperative in keeping the call handling time at a minimum.
This not only reduces the time and effort associated with resolving customer enquiries, it also helps to ensure that contact centre agents more effectively manage customer conversations and expectations, minimising complaint escalation while maximising resolution times.
Delivering consistent, accurate and relevant knowledge to customers across engagement channels ensures confidence for your contact centre agent by reducing anxiety associated with locating information and resolving enquiries.
KnowledgeIQ has shown to be a powerful tool in addressing contact centre stress. Customers have experienced up to 50% reduction in onboarding and training time by providing guidance and visual workflows on how to approach and complete tasks. Streamlining the on-boarding of staff sets them up for a speedy path to competency by building confidence in the range and quality of resources they have at their disposal.
Ensure agents remain competent with continuous learning. While some of this will come via the feedback loop, your agents need to be aware of any changes in the system with understanding validated with quizzes.
Helping agents feel connected to your organisation by empowering them to share feedback and opinions based on their experiences with customers and how information and knowledge are shared. Empowered employees are associated with stronger job performance and job satisfaction. They are also more committed to reaching their goals, demonstrating initiative, and providing exceptional customer service.
KnowledgeIQ offers a comprehensive platform for maintaining up-to-date knowledge resources. With the help of in-article ratings, comments, and forums, your staff can actively contribute to the knowledge base while staying engaged and informed. By utilising these interactive features, KnowledgeIQ transforms passive knowledge consumption into active knowledge collaboration, which can significantly reduce contact centre stress.
KnowledgeIQ KMS could be the key to reducing contact centre stress and improving overall job satisfaction and morale by enabling staff to find the information they need to perform their roles, and increase a sense of ownership, autonomy and confidence in their abilities.
Ready to learn more about how the KnowledgeIQ KMS can help reduce contact centre agent stress for your teams? Contact us today.
