Overwhelmed & Overworked: Identifying Burnout in Contact Centre Agents
Use these tips to identify exhausted or disgruntled agents before their burnout escalates.
According to a 2013 HayGroup report, 43 percent of employees do not feel motivated to outperform what is asked of them at work. While this doesn’t necessarily equate with burnout, a lack of motivation can lead to employee burnout if it continues unaddressed. ‘Burnout’ has become a common, even colloquial term among tired, overwhelmed or apathetic individuals. In fact, the expression “I’m burnt out” typically goes hand in hand with “I need a vacation.” But is burnout something that can be quantified, or is it more of a loose expression?
What Is Burnout?
While the ‘burnout’ phenomenon is far from being a clearly defined disease, the syndrome has become so widespread and commonly cited that some institutions are actually making efforts to define burnout in technical terms. In general, burnout usually refers to feelings of exhaustion, stress, demotivation and a lack of engagement.
While burnout in any place of work has the potential to negatively impact employee performance, in the contact centre, burnout can be cause for a serious crash in customer service. Contact centres rely heavily on agent performance, and when it comes to delivering excellent customer service, agents must have a certain level of energy, motivation and affability.
But contact centres can also be extremely high-stress environments and agents can easily become overwhelmed or discouraged by disgruntled customers or other workplace variables. Because of the high potential for burnout in the contact centre, knowing how to identify the symptoms of burnout is critical for contact centre managers.
The Stages of Burnout and How to Spot Them
Burnout can be understood as comprising of three stages. While the exact symptoms of burnout can vary for each individual, here is a guideline for the stages of burnout and how to identify them.
Stage One: Exhaustion
This is typically the first stage of burnout. While exhaustion can easily progress into the second or third stages of burnout, if you catch agents in this initial stage, you may be able to pull them out.
Exhaustion is characterized by physical and emotional tiredness. Agents may feel overwhelmed at their responsibilities or adopt a sense of helplessness if their efforts to perform well either fail or go unrecognized. In a Globoforce Workforce Mood Tracker report, more than half of employees surveyed reported that they were unhappy with the level of recognition they received. Exhaustion is also accentuated if agents lack emotional resources to support them, whether in their personal life or in the workplace.
Stage One identifiers can include:
- Irritability
- Decline in productivity
- Pessimism
- Lack of enjoyment at work
- Conflict with colleagues, management and/or customers
Stage Two: Detachment
Following a period of exhaustion, agents typically become emotionally detached from their work.
Because exhausted agents feel depleted from energy, the detachment stage serves as a coping mechanism to prevent further emotional depletion and fatigue. When agents feel powerless in the workspace, the easiest thing to do is to emotionally detach, as this erects a barrier between work and mental/emotional space. However, this barrier can be quite detrimental in the customer service industry, as service necessitates soft skills and a human touch that must be emotionally receptive to customers’ needs.
Stage Two identifiers may be:
- Difficulty concentrating
- Reduction in interpersonal communication, whether with customers or colleagues
- Unhealthy lifestyle changes as indicated by eating habits, hygiene, substance abuse, etc.
- Lack of diligence with schedules, deadlines and punctuality
- An increased tendency to pass customers or problems on to other workers or upper management
Stage Three: Performance Failure
This is the stage of burnout during which managers are most likely to take notice of changes in the employee. The stage comprising of a noticeable and measurable drop in performance can be destructive in the contact centre.
Following a stage of detachment, the burnt out agent progresses to a state of performance failure as a result of the accrual of unresolved stresses. The identifiers in Stage Two, such as poor concentration and a lack of diligence, inevitably result in poor work performance and an inability to emotionally connect with either customers or colleagues.
Stage Three identifiers may include:
- Missed opportunities to upsell to customers
- Apathy
- Increased complaints from customers or coworkers concerning the agent’s performance
By understanding the identifiers of burnout as well as the typical stages of burnout, contact centre managers can stop the problem before it escalates. Maintaining a happy team of agents is critical in the contact centre when tensions can be high and there is potential for an accumulation of stressors. For more information on identifying burnout in contact centre agents, download our free white paper.
