Contact Centre Agents Frustrated by IT
Low, unreliable and poorly integrated IT systems listed as most
stressful
factor for UK contact centre agents.
LONDON - According to new YouGov research
commissioned by Sabio, the contact centre consultancy services company,
poorly performing IT systems are proving the biggest cause of job
frustration for UK contact centre agents.
Findings from the 'Voice of the Contact Centre Agent' research project
conducted by YouGov reveal that slow, unreliable and poorly integrated IT
systems are listed among the most stressful factors for UK contact centre
agents who now account for some four per cent of the country's total
workforce.
The research found that 48 per cent of contact centre agents find the IT
systems they have to use the most annoying or stressful part of their job -
ahead of other concerns such as customer complaints, and being unable to
help callers. Amongst the key IT frustrations listed were:
* Slow systems, with applications crashing and systems freezing - 56 percent
* Over-complicated processes that aren't user-focused - 20 percent
* Poor systems integration - agents having to cut and paste between
applications - 11 percent
IT systems performance seems to be a universal problem for today's contact
centre agents, with slow systems impacting 41 percent of them daily and 86
percent weekly.
"As an industry we talk a lot about the customer experience, but it's rare
that we actually listen to what the contact centre agents themselves are
feeling. Theyıre an essential part of the customer service equation, and we
need to pay them more attention, particularly when it comes to IT where
we're not providing them with the tools to do their jobs well," commented
Sabio's Consulting Director, Kenneth Hitchen. "From the agent's perspective
IT is all about day-to-day desktop applications and the many different
corporate systems that supply essential customer data - many of which aren't
integrated, so we're regularly relying on agents to bring all these
different components together.
"Our research project found that over a third of agents are using five or
more application passwords to carry out their daily role, while 30 percent
of agents spend more than five minutes each logging into applications at the
start of the day," he continued. "We believe it's time for the Corporate IT
function to spend more time in the contact centre fixing these issues.
Contact centres are an essential part of a successful customer experience,
and organisations need to ensure that their core IT systems share the same
best practice approach that they're already applying to their often lower
value e-commerce operations."
These findings come from the UK's first ever survey panel of close to 1,000
independently recruited UK contact centre agents which has been put together
by Sabio and YouGov in collaboration with Avaya. This first 'Voice of the
Contact Centre Agent' research project focuses on customer service issues
from the agent's perspective, and highlights some of the key concerns facing
a representative sample of the UK's 1.2 million contact centre agents who
represent some four per cent of the country's total workforce.
Information