This year, 72% of companies made improving customer experience a top priority. It’s a smart move; customer experience is the next frontier in marketing for good reasons. Positive, on-brand experiences increase revenue, decrease costs and improve customer loyalty. That’s powerful stuff.

Frontline employees shape the everyday experiences customers have with your company. To provide exceptional experiences, equip your contact center employees with the tools, direction, and motivation they need.

If happy agents make for happy customers, it’s time to make employee engagement a key component of your customer experience strategy.

Customer Service Reps Have It Tough

Being a contact center employee isn’t always an easy job. Frustrations rise if customers experience long waits, aren’t connected with the best person to solve their problems or must repeat information. This puts your employees under pressure from the start.

The right technology platform alleviates pressing pain points and makes agents’ jobs easier. Intelligent routing factors in availability and expertise to direct customers to the best agent for the job. And a true omnichannel contact center solution gives your employees a complete interaction history in a single view. This provides the context they need to empathize with customers and resolve problems quickly and seamlessly.

It’s easier to make employees happy and feel fulfilled at work when you provide the tools they need to do their jobs well. And happy employees are more likely to go the extra mile for your customers.

Employees Want More Feedback on Their Performance

According to the 2017 Dimension Data Global Customer Experience (CX) Benchmarking Report, just over half of companies have agent analytics to measure employee performance. Without clear insights into how your agents perform, you’re missing out on easy ways to improve employee engagement.

Gallup found that only 1% of employees who received positive feedback were actively disengaged, compared to 40% of employees who received no feedback—and even negative feedback boosted engagement. So, if you want a simple way to improve employee engagement and shape future customer interactions, offer praise or guidance.

The Genesys PureCloud platform has native performance metrics, so employees can see their own performance and how their teams perform—at a glance, in real-time. With the PureCloud nGAGEMENT integration you can even leverage these real-time metrics in an agent gamification dashboard. Having a single source of truth for performance management supports transparency and trust. It also creates a rich source of data you can use to tailor your coaching and encourage exceptional customer experiences.

Evolving Technology Makes the Human Element Even More Important

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds incredible potential in the customer service space, but it’s not ready to replace a human agent yet. An interactive tool created by management consultant McKinsey estimates that a robot can perform just 29% of a customer service representative’s job. As contact centers incorporate chatbots and other AI technologies to automate some of those simpler and more predictable tasks, interactions passed to human agents become increasingly complex—and important.

As always, context and interaction history is crucial for smooth handoffs. If a situation is particularly tricky, agents might need to tap teammates for assistance. When collaboration tools are built into your contact center software, you can work seamlessly across business units to meet customers’ needs.

Blended AI provides convenience and efficiency and can boost customer and employee satisfaction—just don’t underestimate the importance of the human element. Employees excel at understanding context and conveying emotion, which are key tenets of great service. Empower employees to set the right tone and infuse the experience with your brand’s character, whether that leans toward humor or gravitas.

Engage Employees as Brand Ambassadors

Choose a future-proof customer experience platform with the tools necessary to get employees excited about representing your company. See how the Genesys PureCloud platform makes it easier and more enjoyable for agents to resolve problems fast.

Discover Tools for Contact Center Managers and Supervisors

Learn how contact center supervisors can become better coaches and drive the kind of employee engagement that leads to extraordinary customer experiences. Read our recent blog post, 3 Ways Supervisors Can Improve Employee Engagement.