One of the major initiatives abuzz in the Contact Center industry is agent empowerment and how it will improve performance and CX.
The concept is simple. Agents who feel empowered are comfortable making decisions on their own, which gives them a keen sense of ownership with every customer interaction. The conventional wisdom states that this is a win-win for all and seems like a no-brainer!
And while the concept of agent empowerment sounds great, the ability to achieve its promise is a problem. That is because empowerment is made up of two equally important components, and right now, almost every Contact Center in the world has only one.
Without both parts, agent empowerment will underperform or cost far more than promised.
Everyone has the first part of agent empowerment
The first part of agent empowerment is agent enablement.
This requires managers to define the rules of agent engagement that enable agents to know which decisions to make in each type of customer engagement. It is a top-down approach, because it’s managers who define the processes and decisions needed to arrive at desired outcomes and then train agents in their use.
It’s like giving a superhero their powers, and in this case the superheroes are your agents!
Why you might ask, isn’t this enough to achieve agent empowerment?
Agent proficiency measures hurt empowerment because they reward inequality.
Because agents must be measured on their proficiency using these rules of engagement, and this naturally favors Agents who adapt quickest. It leaves a lot of good agents and new hires to struggle with demonstrating their commitment and hard work. It’s one of those things where all the Agents know who the quick learners are that get the rewards. The result can be higher turnover and lower morale.
One way Contact Centers try to overcome feelings of inequality is culture building. And while hugely important, culture alone cannot solve this problem because it is a group or community driven set of emotions that do not enable agents to tangibly understand their individual value within the whole.
This is why agent empowerment requires a second component to bring everything together.
Almost everyone is missing this part of agent empowerment
To realize the true benefits of empowerment, your agents must be properly valued. This means measuring performance in a way that does not disadvantage them based on location, salary, experience, skill group(s) they handle, how quick a learner they are, or how long they’ve worked for you.
What measure do you have today that agents understand, can manage, and trust that they can prove their value on a level playing field relative to all? One that managers can realize maximum ROI?
To fully take advantage of the benefits of agent empowerment, we need to prove to each agent they are valued fairly. This requires a single measure that every agent in the world has an equal ability to achieve regardless of all the Contact Center variables. Called Agent Engagement Index (AEI), this financial measure is the percentage of an agent’s salary they put toward customer engagement and back-office work.
How to tangibly value every agent in the world as an individual
Achieving true empowerment requires the ability to answer two financial questions:
1. How efficiently is money working down to any decision, channel, process, and agent?
2. How are decisions saving or making money, where, when, and how much?
Called Financial Clarity, these answers not only empower agents — they empower everyone!
· Financial Clarity empowers agents — it gives agents the trust in knowing that they are being valued fairly. It improves the ROI of enablement and culture building initiatives because agents tangibly see their individual value within the whole. For example, it doesn’t matter if one Agent is paid $17/hour or $25/hour, or if they are in Manilla, Bangalore, or San Antonio. If they each have an AEI of 85, that means they are each putting 85% of their pay toward engagement.
· Financial Clarity empowers managers — to identify and manage the costs of processes down to the individual agent, including off-phone work, to be more financially fact based with decisions that drive engagement and improve CX. For example, metrics such as Utilization or Adherence can reduce decision ROI more than 50% because an agent can be logged in or in the right place 90% of the time, but that does not mean they are working. And with remote working being the new normal, knowing who is working hard vs. hardly working is critical.
· Financial Clarity empowers leadership — to manage expenses against the work Contact Centers are expected to carry out, and to identify specific efficiency and financial opportunities that reside in their Contact Center to create instantaneous financial value. It bridges the communication gap between finance and customer service, and the gap between WFM software, analytics and the financial contributions of the Contact Center.
Conclusion: Focus on how you value agents to encourage empowerment
“The most damaging phrase in the language is it’s always been done that way.”
Grace Hopper, Pioneering Computer Scientist
Giving agent’s a tangible value equal to every other agent in the world, that they can understand, trust, and achieve, is the most important decision Contact Center leaders can make to realize the true potential of empowerment.
Without the “level playing field” measurement of AEI, Contact Centers have no financially efficient means to optimize process, training, staffing, and technology decisions in a way everyone from C-suite to agent can understand, trust, and manage.
When applied transparently, agent empowering metrics like AEI have increased productivity by over 40%, generated a 900% ROI on IT decisions, reduced turnover by 50%, and sustained an average customer satisfaction score of 92%.
Robert Bradshaw is Founder / President at WiserOwl LLC and a CCNG colleague and advocate.
