Contact center technology plays an important role in helping to ensure a positive CX, particularly in an omnichannel world. Customers expect to be able to contact and engage with companies through any channel—in person or via voice, email, chat, social media, and more—to have their issues or concerns dealt with efficiently and completely. Contact center software, infused with artificial intelligence (AI), automation features, and the ability to pull in customer interaction data, can help organizations meet this challenge, and the result can be a well-deserved positive reputation for delivering excellent contact center CX.

However, the most important element to consider is agent selection and training, as these individuals are likely going to be the key representatives of the company that engage with customers and are often the ones handling the most complex or challenge issues. And while agents with the right personality, work ethic, attitude, and training can increase customer satisfaction, enhance customer loyalty, and add value to your company, unhappy, ineffective, or unmotivated agents will decrease team morale, anger customers, and, ultimately, tarnish the image of your company.

Indeed, there are specific “soft” and “hard” skills and personality traits that are integral to most successful contact center agents. Soft skills combine social, communication, and engagement traits that enable employees to perform well when complementing hard skills, such as technical knowledge, speed, and efficiency.

• Knowledge retention and understanding: Agents must be capable of learning, memorizing, and truly understanding the information about the organization’s products, services, and company. A true understanding of the company’s brand and service promise will help guide and reinforce the types of interactions and behaviors that support good CX.
• Detail oriented: The ability to pay attention to small details demonstrates to customers that the organization and agent truly care about their needs, and is essential for solving problems efficiently. This is particularly important when dealing with technical support questions, account issues, or service questions.
• Ability to multitask and remain organized: Multitasking skills are a must, particularly when agents are asked to handle multiple communication channels, or multiple interactions at once. They need to maintain an even, professional approach even when stressed, and accuracy should not suffer, even when they are busy handling multiple tasks at once.
• Flexible and calm: Agents should be flexible enough to meet customers’ diverse needs, while also maintaining an even and calm demeanor, even with angry or frustrated customers.
• Empathetic: Being able to authentically empathize with customers’ issues is one of the most important skills of a call center representative, as customers will sense condescension, annoyance, or flippancy as a sign the company does not care about its customers or their problems.
• Good communication skills: Beyond possessing a strong vocabulary, being able to “read the room” is fundamental to keeping conversations with customers productive for both sides.
• Ability to read between the lines: An agent who can listen actively is more capable of fully understanding the customer’s issues, as well as assessing the customer’s state of mind (are they about to cancel, are they ready to make an additional purchase, etc.).
• Fast on their feet: The ability to quickly and effectively respond to a customer’s needs vastly improves first call resolution rates.

Obviously, finding agents with all of these skill sets and personality traits can be extremely challenging. It is important to incorporate a robust training program that teaches these skills, and then set up incentives that reinforce the right types of behaviors, either with cash, comp time, or other tangible rewards that matter to agents. Ongoing coaching and training, which can be aided by an AI-driven analysis of past interactions, can also be useful in showing agents examples of both good and less-than-ideal interactions.

Frequent and detailed coaching and training must be augmented by providing agents with the tools required to support the skills mentioned above. An agent cannot be expected to multitask and remain calm if they cannot easily access and process customer journey information, or cannot access a company knowledge base to help customers troubleshoot a problem.

Finding and nurturing the right agents is a process that takes time and requires a significant amount of resources and effort. However, given the stakes at hand—a single negative interaction with a contact center professional could result in a lost customer—investment into contact center agent recruitment, training, and improvement is well worth the investment.