“The Inner Circle Guide to Agent Engagement & Empowerment” is based on surveys with over 400 UK & US organisations. It was updated in December 2023.

Each Inner Circle Guide is available for the US and UK. 

The Inner Circle Guides are a series of analyst reports investigating key customer contact solutions and business issues. The Guides aim to give a detailed and definitive view of the reality of the implementing and using technologies, how best to address these issues, and a view on what the future holds.

To improve agent engagement and empowerment requires technology, HR and business processes to work together: this is not simply something that can be handled through implementing new systems.

The culture of the organisation has to move to becoming more trust-based, backed up by the technology required to do this:

• encourage them to own the customer’s issue and follow it through rather than focusing only on cost-based metrics
• provide a fair assessment of agent performance based on analysing all of the customer interactions they have, rather than focusing on a tiny proportion
• reward and recognise agent achievements and knowledge, based on the metrics that the business actually wants to improve
• make agent roles more fun and interesting through gamification, blending channels and reducing the amount of repetitive and dull work that they are presented with
• allow agents to choose their own schedules and holidays as far as possible
• support remote working through effective team communications, coaching and robust IT systems.

Having agents who are happy in their work and who care about customers will mean that the customer experience will improve very quickly. This will also mean that these agents are far more likely to stay with the organisation and that their absence rates will decrease.

While calculating a hard return on investment for agent engagement and empowerment may not be straightforward, businesses should acknowledge that the command and control model of contact centre working should be consigned to history, and that there is a new and better way of doing things.

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Report contents

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Why You Should Care About Agent Engagement & Empowerment

• Agent Engagement & Empowerment Techniques
• Increase Variety through Call / Digital Blending
• Voice of the Employee programmes
• Agent behaviour and business strategy alignment
• Flexibility, ownership and empowerment
• Reward and recognition
• Remote working and the effect on agent engagement and morale
• Coaching, Training and Empathy
• Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
• Engaging the New Agent
• Engaging the Experienced Agent

Agent Engagement & Empowerment Solutions

• Customer Identity Verification & Fraud Reduction
• The omnichannel hub
• Self-service and chatbots
• AI-enabled Real-Time Analytics
• Predictive Analytics
• The Knowledge Base
• The Unified Agent Desktop
• Robotic Process Automation
• Workforce Management
• The Use of Interaction Analytics for Quality Assurance
• Gamification
• Performance Management

The Impact of Agent Engagement & Empowerment

• Agent attrition rates
• Agent absence rates
• First-Contact Resolution Rates
• Average speed to answer
• NPS / customer satisfaction scores
• Cost of service

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