Copyright Forbes
To better understand how things are changing in the customer service and experience space, I spend quite a bit of time speaking with technology vendors. One of my most recent chats was with Olivier Jouve, Chief Product Officer at Genesys, where he briefed me on all of the new developments that they have been working on with regard to their platform and business. One of the highlights of the conversation was how their recently expanded strategic partnership with ServiceNow is enabling them to connect conversations that are taking place with customers in the front office with actions that need to be performed in the back office. In practice, this means that through their use of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, Genesys’ AI agents can now automatically locate and connect with the appropriate AI agent in ServiceNow’s catalogue, carrying through all necessary front-office context to perform an action in the back office before returning information about the completed task back to the front office. Jouve thinks this is the start of a “real revolution,” and believes that with the advent of protocols like A2A and MCP (Model Context Protocol) and the complimentary capabilities of platforms like Genesys and ServiceNow, we are on the cusp of being able to move to an operating system “that goes beyond simple automation, to one that is purely autonomous, where you have agents starting to reason, make the right decision, and find the right agent to connect with.” But, he cautions, this only works if the right guardrails are in place to define what these agents can do, what limits they must observe, and what type of data they can access in order to maintain trust and accountability. Another highlight was the results their clients are achieving. One notable example was Best Buy Canada, which, since they implemented Genesys’ Cloud™ platform, have seen a 20% reduction in overall operating costs, a 19% decrease in average handle time (AHT), a 38% reduction in time spent in the IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and a 40% decrease in call transfers. These are impressive results. MORE FOR YOU However, it was what Jouve said next that truly stood out. He noted that their technology is helping address a problem that is not talked about enough and is arguably the biggest issue in the contact center: agent attrition. He told me that their technology is providing agents with real-time guidance, giving access to the latest documentation at the right time to help agents make the right decision, suggest the right offer, and focus on the right thing at the right time rather than just being a case manager. That is helping reduce attrition by as much as 10-30% in some cases. This is significant. Agent attrition is a perennial problem in the contact center industry and is often not given the attention that it deserves, particularly given the heavy burden that it places on not only customer service operations but also business and customer outcomes. According to Jouve, in the week prior to our conversation, he had spoken with companies that were wrestling with attrition rates ranging from 20% to 100% annually. These figures are not unusual. Research from Deloitte found that global contact center attrition averaged 52% in 2023. Jouve finds these numbers frightening and commented, “Imagine if you have 30,000 agents that you have to replace every year. That’s crazy. I don't think there's a single industry with this number. If I had to deal with that in my development team, that would be an absolute disaster. So, that's something that has to be addressed.” It is indeed a disaster and is one that many customer service leaders have to deal with on a daily basis. So, it’s great to hear that new technology is helping not only reduce the burden on agents when dealing with customers in real-time but is also helping reduce agent training time, assess performance, provide coaching, and identify real-time signs of burnout so that a wellness break or other intervention can be offered, all of which will contribute to the reduction of agent attrition. But can technology alone bring attrition down to levels of 12-20%, as seen in other industries? I’m not sure. Why? Well, firstly, an agent’s job is getting harder. Digital, automated, and self-service facilities are continually improving and will continue to mature. As a result, they are likely to eventually eliminate the need for human involvement in the majority of straightforward customer inquiries. This means that many agents will end up dealing with largely emotional, urgent, or complex queries. Moreover, these are likely to be addressed over the phone, as according to Steve Morrell, Managing Director of contact center-specializing analyst firm ContactBabel, when a query is emotional, urgent, or complex, customers tend to default to the phone to resolve their issue. From the agent's perspective, these calls often require much more concentration, are more emotionally taxing, and tend to have a higher cognitive load. The problem with that is that historically, agents often looked for simple customer queries to deal with following a challenging call, as it allowed them to reset. Secondly, given that reportedly 85% of all contact centres in the US now employ some sort of remote working, up from 10% pre-pandemic, many agents are losing the social support that they would receive from colleagues or their supervisor if they needed to take a quick reset break following a challenging call when in the office. Now, while there is technology available that can identify signs of burnout and suggest a wellness break, surely agents should be allowed to self-manage, too? After all, only the agents themselves know how they really feel. Right? Therefore, my suspicion is that to sustainably reduce attrition levels will require not just a tech-enabled approach, but a combination of the right leadership and a culture of trust, empowerment, and responsibility. So the question we need to ask is, how do we strike a balance between tech-driven insights and insights from the agents themselves? When firms crack that code, then, and probably only then, are they likely to deliver a working experience that agents are less likely to want to churn away from.
