IT proves biggest frustration for contact centre agents

Slow, unreliable and poorly integrated IT systems listed as most stressful factors for UK contact centre agents according to YouGov research commissioned by Sabio

LONDON –25 August 2008 - According to new YouGov research commissioned by Sabio, the contact centre consultancy services company, poorly performing IT systems are proving the biggest cause of job frustration for UK contact centre agents. Findings from the ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ research project conducted by YouGov reveal that slow, unreliable and poorly integrated IT systems are listed among the most stressful factors for UK contact centre agents who now account for some four per cent of the country’s total workforce.

The research found that 48 per cent of contact centre agents find the IT systems they have to use the most annoying or stressful part of their job – ahead of other concerns such as customer complaints, and being unable to help callers. Amongst the key IT frustrations listed were:

• Slow systems, applications crashing – systems freezing – 56 percent
• Over-complicated processes – not user-friendly – 20 percent
• Poor systems integration – agents having to cut and paste between applications – 11 percent

IT systems performance seems to be a universal problem for today’s contact centre agents, with slow systems impacting 41 percent of them daily and 86 percent weekly.

“As an industry we talk a lot about the customer experience, but it’s rare that we actually listen to what the contact centre agents themselves are feeling. They’re an essential part of the customer service equation, and we need to pay them more attention, particularly when it comes to IT where we’re not providing them with the tools to do their jobs well,” commented Sabio’s Consulting Director, Kenneth Hitchen. “From the agent’s perspective IT is all about day-to-day desktop applications and the many different corporate systems that supply essential customer data - many of which aren’t integrated so we’re regularly relying on agents to bring all these different components together.

“Our research project found that over a third of agents are using five or more application passwords to carry out their daily role, while 30 per cent of agents spend more than five minutes each logging into applications at the start of the day,” he continued. “We believe it’s time for the Corporate IT function to spend more time in the contact centre fixing these issues. Contact centres are an essential part of a successful customer experience, and organisations need to ensure that their core IT systems share the same best practice approach that they’re already applying to their often lower value e-commerce operations.”

These findings come from the UK’s first ever survey panel of close to 1,000 independently recruited UK contact centre agents which has been put together by Sabio and YouGov in collaboration with Avaya. This first ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ research project focuses on customer service issues from the agent’s perspective, and highlights some of the key concerns facing a representative sample of the UK’s 1.2 million contact centre agents who represent some four per cent of the country’s total workforce.