How to promote mental health among your contact center agents

By Jennifer Lee

Contact center work is stressful in all industries. In the insurance industry, it can be downright exhausting. Instead of taking calls about return policies or clearance sales, contact center agents work with policyholders regarding high-stakes health or financial issues. These calls are always personal, and sometimes they’re heart-wrenching.

On any given day, an agent might take a call from a policyholder who is distraught about a six-figure hospital bill, a family home damaged in a fire or a loved one injured in an accident. Similar calls follow throughout the day. Handling such interactions requires great sensitivity and professionalism. Plus, customer loyalty and brand reputation are at stake.

I began my career as a call center agent and later I supervised agent teams. I’ve felt the anguish of customers grappling with emotional situations, and I’ve seen the panic of agents overwhelmed by such conversations. I’m also a consumer and a mother. When my daughter was two years old, she developed a life-threatening condition that required emergency surgery, and in a state of profound distress, I called our insurance provider to discuss coverage and options. The agent I spoke with was also a mother, and her empathy was critical to my ability to maintain composure in that terrible moment.

I’m sure that call was stressful for her too. And I’ll bet mine was just one of many emotionally delicate calls she handled that day.

May might be National Mental Health Awareness Month, but as leaders we should be focused on our team’s mental wellbeing all of the time. So how can contact center leaders better support the mental health of those on the front line of these complex, emotional issues?

Manage stress, avoid burnout

Every job comes with pressure, of course. Work-related stress takes a heavy toll on our health, resulting in poor sleep, depression, anxiety and a variety of physical illnesses. The key is to manage that stress before it leads to burnout, which the World Health Organization recognizes as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

In any contact center, there are many obstacles. Agents are tightly scheduled, back-to-back calls frequently run over prescheduled breaks, budgets are tight, and functional and emotional support is not always adequate. Many agents give in to the frustration and quit, leaving a bad taste in their mouth for that role and, potentially, the industry.

From the business leaders’ side, finding replacement agents and getting them up to speed is costly, and service quality suffers when agents lack experience. It’s a no-win situation for the agents, the business and the policyholders.

In the past, there wasn’t much done about this vicious circle, and attrition without a valid solution, has continued to riddle contact centers not only in the insurance industry but across sectors. Supervisors manage many tasks manually and don’t always have the bandwidth to provide timely support to agents — let alone detect which agents may be on the verge of burning out.

Tap technology for an assist

Fortunately, growing awareness of the importance of employee well-being is coinciding with new technologies to help contact center leaders address these challenges. While many business and contact center leaders feel that the latest advancements in artificial intelligence have proven successful as agent replacements, they will never replace the human touch that a well-supported, properly trained agent can.

So instead of finding tech replacements for contact center agents, leaders should look to technology that can support them and help agents be more successful in their role.

For example, AI has proven successful in the contact center to automate what would typically be manual data entry and analysis, speeding up this process and providing insights to agents and leadership in real time. Further, AI is now being used in contact centers to monitor for signs of burnout in agents so that leadership can take appropriate actions to help that person feel more secure, such as one-to-one conversations, surprise breaks or additional training.

Research has shown that short breaks reduce stress and improve our ability to focus and engage at work, so having a tech platform or partner that can automate these mental “resets” will help agents relax and rejuvenate throughout the flow of their workday, rather than bottling up those feelings of stress and anxiety and taking them home at the end of their shift. For example, my company has partnered with Thrive Global to provide such a service to our customers.

These and other AI-powered innovations offer long-overdue tools to help manage on-the-job stress and support critical employee mental health. Tools that provide frictionless, real-time intervention methods to prevent stress from accumulating, and help agents remain poised, focused and ready to guide customers through their moments of truth with sensitivity and professionalism.

Supporting mental health is a year-round responsibility

Contact center leaders are rapidly gaining the ability to “see” and support their agent teams, which may comprise thousands of remote-working individuals. Collecting and processing insights from multiple systems in real time - which had never been possible — allows organizations to allocate limited support resources more efficiently.

The potential upside is enormous; agents who feel supported and valued are better equipped to manage unavoidable stress and solve customer problems. But this shouldn’t be limited to Mental Health Awareness Month or event biannual check-ins from leadership. Leaders should be leveraging their interpersonal skills and tech solutions to consistently monitor and support employees, ensuring they are able to function in a workplace that promotes strong mental – and physical – well-being.

In this scenario, everybody wins: agents, customers and your organization.

Jennifer Lee is co-CEO of Intradiem. Contact her at [email protected].