Respondents to a survey of more than 200 UK businesses were asked to rate the attributes that they believed were most useful and valuable in contact centre agents.
By far the most important factor was empathy – the ability to listen, understand and help customers – which was placed in no.1 position by 42% of respondents. Of course, empathy is only really useful when the supporting systems and processes allow and empower the agent to handle the interaction as they need to: there is no use in valuing empathy in an agent if they are not permitted to spend the time required to fulfil the customer’s request, or the systems prevent them from achieving their goal. This report looks later at how to train and support agents to be more empathetic with customers.
