What Is Agent Experience And How It Influences Customer Experience

For some time now, companies have been focusing more on the concept of “CX” (Customer Experience). They know that they need to provide a perfect balance of personalization, convenience, and innovation in every interaction if they want to succeed in a competitive market.

While it’s a good strategy for any company to prioritize CX, some brands have overlooked another critical experience concept in their quest to become more customer-obsessed: the employee experience.

If you want to keep your customers happy, you must first start with engaged, empowered employees. Happier team members make better agents, and better agents lead to better customer interactions. In essence, CX and EX (Employee Experience) aren’t separate initiatives – they’re two sides of the same coin.

What is Agent Experience?

To generate positive EX, organizations must first define what the agent experience actually is. Fortunately, this isn’t a difficult concept. The term “Agent experience” simply refers to all aspects of how your employees interact with your company.

Companies ensure a positive employee experience by prioritizing the well-being of their employees, enabling them to do their jobs effectively, and avoiding frustration as much as possible.

The factors that influence the employee experience vary from company to company.

For example, if you operate a contact center, you can ensure a positive experience by providing employees with access to quality technology, flexible work schedules, and supervisor support. In most cases, you can provide a better experience by simply listening to your employees.

Why is Agent Experience Important?

Happier, more satisfied, and more engaged employees ultimately lead to better results for organizations. Studies show that engaged team members are 21% more productive than their peers and also generate up to 20% more revenue than other team members. And why? Because people prefer to interact with other happy, knowledgeable people.

When we approach a customer service team and are connected to someone who is clearly exhausted, frustrated, and just itching to get their paycheck, we can tell. An employee who has had a good experience with an agent is more likely to be confident, well-informed, and cordial when interacting with customers.

Improving agent experience isn’t just important for CX. It directly impacts your company’s performance by determining how many employees stay with your brand. Talented employees don’t want to work at companies where they feel undervalued or burned out. In an age where people can work from anywhere, not prioritizing agent experience could mean you quickly lose your best employees to the competition.

The Challenge of Delivering Great Agent Experience

On the surface, creating happy agents doesn’t seem like an overly complicated concept. You simply pay attention to the needs of your employees and respond accordingly. In recent years, however, mastering the agent experience has become more difficult.

Changing work strategies such as hybrid and remote work offer new flexibility to today’s service agents, but they also bring other challenges, such as feelings of isolation and disengagement.

In addition, 70% of agents say they regularly feel overwhelmed and burned out due to the increasing demands of customer service. In today’s fast-paced service environment, only about 15% of agents are satisfied with their workload.

To make matters worse, many agents are also dissatisfied with the training and support they receive. Only 30% of agents say they feel they’re sufficiently empowered to do their jobs well. All of this shows that companies need to develop new strategies if they want to improve the agent experience and interactions with customers.

It’s not enough to simply offer customers flexible hours and good benefits. Business leaders must also pay attention to the frustrations their employees face daily.

How Bulb Technologies Can Help

Bulb Technologies is a leader in developing software solutions and platforms for businesses focused on digital transformation and customer experience. However, we don’t just focus on “CX”. We believe in the power of “Total Experience,” which means our platform addresses all parts of the customer experience ecosystem – including the agent experience.

We develop tools that support agents and customers at the same time, providing more assistance and guidance to both parties in the conversation. In this way, we enable companies to provide agents with a more valuable experience:

• All-in-one omnichannel tools: Switching between a variety of different apps and tools to serve today’s omnichannel customers is time-consuming and frustrating for agents. These disparate tools not only waste time but also make it difficult to retain contextual information throughout the customer journey. Our all-in-one omnichannel environments give agents access to all the information they need for personalized interactions in one convenient place, without the need for complicated interfaces or app changes.
• Implementing AI: Artificial intelligence can be an extremely powerful tool for agent experience. Our chatbots and virtual assistants act as partners to team members in your organization, helping them get more work done without having to worry about it. Virtual assistants can provide instant, useful access to information to streamline your employees’ workflow. At the same time, chatbots provide a useful way for teams to sort through potential customer service requests, so you can reduce the number of calls your employees handle each day.
• Workflow automation: Agent’s work delivers the best results when they can focus on serving and supporting customers. The last thing they want is to spend their days on boring repetitive tasks. Our workforce automation tools make it easy to eliminate the time-consuming chores that would otherwise take up your agent’s valuable time. We even have low-code and no-code solutions available which allow employees to build their own workflow from scratch. This means every employee has the power to improve their work experience.
• Simple, intuitive technology: The platforms offered by Bulb Technologies are simple, straightforward, and require minimal training to learn. They integrate with the tools your customer service representatives are already using, so they have access to all the resources they need in a single place. Users can customize their ecosystem to meet their specific needs, so every team member has all the tools they need at their fingertips.
• In-depth analytics: Informed employees are more productive and efficient. Integrated analytics and reporting tools in Bulb Technologies’ Cempresso DCS platform give your team members access to valuable insights on all metrics and KPIs relevant to their work. The comprehensive tools we offer can make it easier for employees to figure out what they need to do to continue delighting customers. At the same time, supervisors and managers can use their own analytical insights to track employee performance and engagement.

Build the Ultimate Agent Experience with Bulb Technologies

With our Total Experience platform, companies can create a powerful employee and customer experience in a convenient all-in-one environment. Our tools are easy to implement, deploy, and maintain, so business leaders spend less time worrying about technology and more time exploring new growth strategies.

An all-in-one environment gives any organization a unified suite to enhance their experience ecosystem with access to endless customization options and integrations. That means you’re not limited to a one-size-fits-all strategy. Find the Agent Experience solution that works best for your team and customers.

Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how we can help you improve your agent experience and engage your employees.