Improving
the Agent Experience:Ways to Use AI in Your
Contact Center Now

The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform

Table of Contents

Improving the Agent Experience

Prioritizing the Agent Experience3

Lack of Scheduling Flexibility

4

Difficulties of the Job

5

Demanding (and Often Frustrated) Customers

6

Lack of Feedback and Ongoing Training

7

Improve the Agent Experience by Putting AI at Agents’ Fingertips

8

1.

Empowering Employees with Flexible Scheduling

92.

Eliminating Repetitive, Manual Tasks

10

3.

Alleviating Customer Stress and Frustration

11

4.

Increasing Performance Feedback for Improved Quality and Compliance

125.

Enhancing In-the-Moment Experiences

13

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2Prioritizing the Agent Experience
Contact centers are caught in a cycle of high employee attrition andunderstaffing. According to a recent study, 63 percent of contact center
leaders are facing staffing shortages¹, and replacing an agent can cost up
to $15,000. But reducing attrition is just the tip of the iceberg. When youragents can do their job more quickly and easily, you can save millions from theresulting increase in agent capacity.
To counter high attrition rates and improve the agent experience (AX), contact
centers must understand the most important challenges agents face, namely:••••

Lack of scheduling flexibility
The difficulties of the job
Demanding and often frustrated customers
Lack of feedback and ongoing training

Let’s take a closer look at each challenge.

(1) Recent Research Suggests That Something Has to Change inthe Contact Center Space, Forbes, July 26, 2023.

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Lack of Scheduling Flexibility
Contact center agents highly value a healthy work-life balance. Since
about 40 percent of the total labor force² are parents with a child underage 18 at home, their need for flexible hours is not uncalled for.
Yet it’s not just parents who could benefit from flexible hours and easyschedule changes. Say you have a broken pipe, and the plumber can
only come at 4:00 p.m.—but your shift ends at 6:00 p.m. To avoid thehassle of a lengthy change-request process, you might simply call in sick,leaving the team short-handed for the day.
To optimize the agent scheduling experience, contact centers shouldlook for a solution that allows agents to adjust their schedules or swap
shifts on their own while maintaining team balance.

(2) Parents have returned to the workforce, but gains are uneven andchallenges persist, Glassdoor, September 16, 2022.

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Difficulties of the Job
Customer service representatives have a tough job. They often have toswitch between multiple applications to find answers, and they have toengage with customers across channels. In fact, the need to search for
information is one of the primary reasons for placing customers on hold.
Plus, an agent’s day is often filled with tedious, repetitive tasks, likeanswering the same questions again and again or manually writing asummary of each call. Approximately 75 percent of an agent’s time isspent on such repetitive tasks,3 which can be very demotivating.
Without the right technology, agents can feel frustrated andunproductive, leading to annoyed customers, low NPS, and wastedproductivity. Automating boring tasks in contact centers can free agentsfor more valuable work, boosting engagement and creating capacity.

(3) Will AI Put Agents’ Jobs At Risk?, Verint, January 26, 2024.

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Demanding (and Often Frustrated) Customers
Today’s customers have higher expectations than ever. And when
their expectations aren’t met, some customers can be angry,argumentative, and even disrespectful. In addition, customers areoften frustrated because they have to make repeated calls to solve aproblem, which further complicates agents’ lives. In fact, their dislikeof dealing with dissatisfied customers is one of the main reasons thatagents quit their jobs.
Although frustrated customers are not something contact centers
can easily take out of the equation, it’s important to be aware of this
aspect of agents’ challenges and focus on solutions that can easeagents’ job, such as real-time support for handling complex issues or
dissatisfied customers.

Improve theImproving
theAgent
Agent
Experience
Experience

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Lack of Feedback and Ongoing Training
Prior to 2020, less than 20 percent of contact center employees
worked remotely. Today, remote and hybrid workers make up around60–80 percent of that workforce. 4The work-from-home model (WFH) has many benefits, but it does
complicate a manager’s ability to deliver performance reviews,
feedback, and training. Accurate, unbiased feedback not only
improves employee engagement and retention, but also drives
significant improvements across compliance, efficiency, and customer
experience. Companies and agents must find new ways of setting
expectations, discovering improvement opportunities, and asking forand receiving in-the-moment guidance from afar.

(4) IDC, Enabling Agents With Technology for Productivity and Employee
Experience, Doc # US50109523, December 29, 2023.

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Improve the Agent Experience by Putting AI at Agents’ Fingertips
To improve the agent experience and increase agent capacity, contact
centers must bring the right tools to the table. Let’s look at a practicalscenario where a contact center supervisor increased his team’s
capacity while keeping his agents happy with the help of automation.
Kyle is a Team Lead who manages a WFH team of agents. His
team includes experienced and talented agents, but they all
have their own needs, strengths, and weaknesses.
Let’s meet a few of Kyle’s agents and learn how artificial intelligence(AI)-powered, specialized bots are helping create a better AX todrive real business outcomes.

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1. Empowering Employees with Flexible Scheduling
MyVerint Mobile App
MyVerint™ Mobile App is Anne’s biggest help when it comes toflexibility. She can view her schedule and performance data at any timeand from any location. In addition, with the Verint® TimeFlex Bot™,
Anne can make unlimited schedule changes without having to wait forapproval.
Thanks to the app’s natural language interface that leverages Verint
Open Platform™ data and Verint Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA)
technology, Anne can even chat with the app to quickly find answers
when needed.

Anne is an excellent support agent and a single mom of two
who needs flexible working hours to keep her work-life balance.

A multinational insurer deployed the TimeFlex Bot to increase
scheduling flexibility. They decreased attrition by 30 percent andreduced absenteeism by 23 percent for a savings of $4.5 million.

Improving the Agent Experience

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92. Eliminating Repetitive, Manual Tasks
Verint Interaction Wrap Up Bot
Verint Interaction Wrap Up Bot™ takes a significant load off Joe’s
shoulders by summarizing interactions in seconds. The completed
summaries are accurate, consistent, and unbiased, providing the next
agent with proper context. The bot can be easily embedded in both
voice and digital interactions with minimum disruption and maximumimpact.
With the Interaction Wrap Up Bot, Joe can increase his capacity andfocus on customer interactions rather than administrative tasks.

Joe is an experienced support agent. He’s great with people
and excellent at customer interactions but has trouble
remembering all the details when writing call summaries.

Improving the Agent Experience

The Interaction Wrap Up Bot can save up to 60 seconds on every
single call. What would 60 seconds of additional capacity per callmean for your contact center?

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3. Alleviating Customer Stress and Frustration
Verint Coaching Bot
Verint Coaching Bot™ provides the assistance and focused guidance
Liz needs—in real time. The bot listens to conversations and uses AI
to notify her if customer sentiment is negative, and it offers guidance
if the customer may be a churn risk. If a customer has positive
sentiment, the bot can help Liz with timely cross-sell and upsell offersthat may be relevant.
Using the Coaching Bot, Liz could reduce call duration, increase sales
conversion and customer retention, improve compliance adherence,and enhance customer sentiment.

Liz has noticed some customers are extremely frustrated
when they call and has trouble helping them calmly resolve
their issue.

Improving the Agent Experience

A bank deployed real-time coaching for those agents struggling
with mortgage applications and raised their contact center NPS
from +3 to +39.

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4. Increasing Performance Feedback
for Improved Quality and Compliance
Verint Quality Bot
Verint Quality Bot™ helped Kyle’s team go from evaluating a very small
sample of calls per week to evaluating 100 percent of interactions—without increasing supervisor effort. The bot can spot every
compliance mistake—even if it’s buried in thousands of interactions.
The Quality Bot can also work together with the Coaching Bot toprovide real-time reminders about relevant compliance procedures.

A bank provided guidance to 2,000 agents with timely remindersof compliance requirements and achieved 100 percent compliance
A company recently learned that key regulatory phrases wereomitted during a customer interaction, which could resultin hefty fines. Jimmy handles these types of interactions
frequently, so it’s critical the company can track that healways follows these guidelines.

Improving the Agent Experience

with local regulations.

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125. Enhancing In-the-Moment Experiences
Verint Knowledge Bots
One of Verint’s Knowledge Bots, the Verint Knowledge Suggestion
Bot™, provides instant access to information directly in Zoey’s workflow.
The bot suggests relevant knowledge in real time during customer
interactions, without even having to type a search. And when she
does choose to search, the Verint Knowledge Automation Bot™ scours
through all available content sources and summarizes the best answer
using generative AI.
With the Knowledge Bots at hand, Zoey could significantly reduce
her average handle time, which means she can now help morecustomers, faster.
Zoey is a fresh graduate and an entry-level support agent.
She is eager and quick to learn, but there’s a lot to cover ina short time. She needs an easily accessible knowledge baseto quickly find answers.

Improving the Agent Experience

A large bank reports that Verint Knowledge Bots save an
average of 20 seconds on each call, for an annualsavings of $9 million.

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13Improve the Agent Experience with Verint
Drive Immediate AI Business Outcomes
A positive AX is essential to maintaining high service levels at acontact center. That’s why companies that invest in AI-powered
solutions to enhance the experience of their employees have aserious advantage. Yet, implementing such solutions may sounddaunting, as companies don’t want to rip and replace their entire
contact center infrastructure.
The good news is that with the Verint specialized bots, you don’t haveto do that. You can start with just one bot, one improvement area, ora subset of agents and expand over time. The Verint bots are quick
and easy to deploy and can drive immediate AI business outcomes,
including improving customer and employee engagement.

Improving the Agent Experience

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14Americas
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at any time without notice. Features listed in this document are subject to change andnot all functionality is available in all configurations. 09.2024

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