Reducing Stress in the Call Center is Good for Business

If you made a list of the top 10 most stressful jobs, there’s a good chance that call center agent would land on it somewhere, alongside “emergency room health worker” or “air traffic controller.” While most call center agents aren’t handling life or death situations (those manning 911 call centers being the exception), they’re still working in a high-pressure environment for relatively low pay, and they can’t hit “pause” on the calls when they need to catch a breath. Add in the pressure to meet performance metrics, and call center work can be a very stressful job.

Here’s the problem, however: stressed out workers can’t be good workers in the long run. They’ll burn out, they’ll make mistakes, they’ll call out sick a lot, they’ll alienate customers, and then they’ll leave. It’s up to call center management to ensure that agents are becoming overwhelmed. It’s far from an easy task, however, since managers are often under pressure themselves. And first, managers need to identify the largest sources of stress.

Some of the top sources of stress in the contact center include:

Handling irate customers. Agents who are fully trained on how to deal with angry, upset or even abusive customers will handle these situations better and are less likely to take it personally.

“While advisors are often stressed because of the pressure to meet targets, it is having to deal with angry customers that is arguably the primary source of stress,” according to callcentrehelper.com. “So, consider coaching advisors how to reassure customers, show empathy, keep interactions factual, add personality to conversations; and offer solutions, while not dwelling on the issue.”

Be sure that agents know how to escalate calls when they’re losing control of them and lay down the law about how much they have to put up with when callers become abusive. If a call has evolved in to raw abuse, make sure agents know when they can simply disconnect.

Bullying. You wouldn’t imagine a group of adults would resort to bullying coworkers, but many call center agents have identified their fellow employees as their biggest sources of stress. Research conducted in 2016 by the University of Phoenix found that nearly 75 percent of workers have reported being bullied in the workplace. Call center management should be paying close attention to the interpersonal relationships in the contact center. Troublemakers are often easy to spot, but they can occasionally be surprisingly canny at hiding their activities from managers. It’s important not to keep toxic people in the call center even if they’re high performers.

Unreasonable managers. Most people’s complaints about their jobs originate at the management level. Too many companies are willing to keep toxic managers on staff as long as they’re producing results, but this is flawed thinking. In the long run, bad managers will drive off too many good people and cost the company too much money. Ensure that call center managers and supervisors are being evaluated by their ability to positively lead call center agents, and not just by how much they contributed to the bottom line today. (One study by Harvard Business Review found that bad managers are very good at flying below the radar with their toxic habits.)

Keeping a positive and family-like call center culture will drive down turnover, improve customer and employee engagement, reduce sick time and keep employees healthier. In the long run, less stress for your agents means more success for your company.

Edited by Maurice Nagle

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