Who can experience call center burnout?

Call center agents experience burnout a large majority of the time, although managers and supervisors can experience it too. This holds true for both in-person and remote workers.

Why are call center jobs so stressful?

Call center jobs are stressful because agents must deal with frustrated customers, without much of a break between interactions. Further, agents are pressured by malfunctioning technology and excessive monitoring.

How can call centers reduce employee burnout?

Call centers can reduce employee burnout by properly staffing, using up-to-date technology, integrating with a CRM system, and avoiding excessive call monitoring for discipline.

Call Center Burnout: Causes & How to Overcome It

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Every day, call center agents face difficult customers, high call volumes, and increased workload demands. These interactions can leave agents exhausted, stressed, and burned out over time.

Unfortunately, call center burnout is more common than you may think–with 87% of call center workers reporting high or very high stress levels.[1] However, you can take steps to support agents and remedy this widespread contact center problem.

This article will cover everything you need to know about call center burnout, including warning signs, why it happens, and how you can fix it.

Overview
Impacts on Business
Signs of Burnout
Root Causes
How to Prevent Burnout
Supporting Burned Out Staff
Sources

What is Call Center Burnout?

Call center burnout is the emotional, mental, and physical fatigue that call center agents experience due to chronic stress over time. Burnout leads to behavioral changes, physical and mental ailments, and poor work performance.

Customer service workers have high burnout rates due to frustrating customer interactions, unrealistic performance expectations, and the repetitive nature of their jobs. Many call center agents also report feeling isolated from coworkers, improperly trained, and restricted in their ability to help customers. By remedying these causes, contact center managers can provide a healthier work environment for their staff.

How Call Center Burnout Impacts Your Business

When agents are burned out, their performance and mental health suffer. This has wide-reaching consequences for your company, including lower customer satisfaction, a damaged reputation, decreased productivity, and higher operating costs.

Here are some of the ways call center burnout can impact your business:

Worse Customer Service

Burned out customer service workers are more likely to become cynical, apathetic, and mechanical in their actions.[2] Exhausted agents are less likely to take initiative, slower to handle customer queries, and may struggle to develop new skills.

Burnout results in inefficient and unproductive customer support–and given that 63% of agents report high burnout rates, it’s a widespread call center problem.[3]

Damaged Public Perception

When customers interact with burned out representatives, they’re more likely to have a negative perception about the interaction and your company’s overall service level. Since 88% of customers are likely to purchase again if your company meets their service expectations, a damaged reputation may result in lost business.[4]

Workforce Shortages

Burned out call center agents tend to call out of work, have inconsistent schedules, and quit their jobs more frequently. Stressed workers are more than twice as likely to miss work, leading to understaffed teams, poor retention, and longer customer wait times.[1]

Higher Costs

The average customer service company loses almost $600,000 yearly due to agent attrition, which becomes higher in cases of agent stress.[5] High absenteeism and turnover rates force companies to waste money on training, feedback, and other hiring or onboarding expenses.

Decreased Productivity

Tired agents are less productive during work hours, with longer average handle times than healthy peers. Further, high turnover from burnout forces managers to spend time and money hiring and training new staff. Getting new agents up to speed can take months, resulting in lost productivity.

Signs of Call Center Agent Burnout

You can recognize burnout through an agent’s behaviors and patterns–such as schedule deviation, apathy, and displays of tiredness.

Look for the following signs to identify burned-out agents:

Absenteeism and Schedule Deviation

Chronically stressed agents are more likely to miss work, show up late, clock out early, or demonstrate other variations in schedule. There is a direct correlation between burnout rate and schedule inconsistencies.[6]

Call center workforce management tools can help track this data and identify trends in agent schedule adherence.

High Average Handle Time

Even when burned-out agents are on the clock, they’re less effective in helping customers. Burned-out agents have higher average handle times than healthy peers, taking longer to resolve customer issues.[6]

Apathy or Negative Behavior

Burned out employees develop depersonalization, indicated by apathetic behavior, cynicism, mechanical interactions, and excessive use of jargon.[2] If an agent becomes detached, negative, or robotic in their interactions with coworkers and customers, they may be exhausted from stress.

Avoiding Calls or Coworkers

Burned-out agents tend to demonstrate antisocial behavior like avoiding coworkers and clients. They may handle fewer calls during the workday, taking larger time blocks between tasks.

Tiredness

Agents under high stress report sleep problems, resulting in feeling turned and worn out after a night’s sleep. Exhausted staff will likely appear visibly tired during the work day, yawning and displaying less vigor than usual.

The Root Causes of Call Center Burnout

Agents experience call center burnout for many reasons, including excessive monitoring, stressful customer interactions, a lack of freedom when helping customers, no opportunity for career advancement, and low pay.

Here’s a deeper breakdown of what can cause call center burnout:

Excessive Monitoring

Call monitoring tools–like analytics, leaderboards, call recording, and whisper and barge technologies–help managers observe agent performance, but these tools can put excessive pressure on agents, causing burnout. Studies show that the more monitoring methods a call center uses, the higher agent stress levels are.[7, 1]

Stressful Customer Interactions

Abuse from customers is one of the top causes of agent burnout. 73% of agents reporting high stress levels said they frequently experienced customer abuse.[1] This includes insults, disrespectful language, and anger from customers.

While angry customers are inevitable in a customer service role, keeping call centers properly staffed helps reduce wait times, which minimizes customer frustration and can improve the agent’s experience.

Low Discretion or Freedom in Customer Interactions

The most frustrated call center workers feel they have little autonomy and discretion when serving customers. On the other hand, call center staff experience less stress when they have more choice about how they interact with callers.

Studies found that 70% of highly stressed workers had to use predetermined scripts “word for word” during customer interactions, while only 47% of low-stress workers did.[1]

No Opportunity for Career Advancement

When agents don’t see an opportunity for a promotion, pay increase, or a path to a leadership role, they’re more likely to express apathy for their current performance and seek work elsewhere. The availability of promotional opportunities accounts for 14% of contact center employee job satisfaction,[7] while 76% of agents predicted to leave their current jobs cite lack of career development as a major reason for quitting.[8]

Lack of Flexibility and Variety

Agents feel more satisfied when they have more flexibility regarding their schedule, where they work, how they interact with customers, and the types of customer interactions they have. And staff are almost twice as likely to feel satisfied when they have ample flexibility.[5]

Agents appreciate the opportunity to choose their schedules, work remotely when possible, and have some choice in how they interact with customers. Modern CCaaS software includes AI forecasting technology that automatically creates agent shift schedules, considering each agent’s preferences.

Poor Perception of Managers

Happy agents are more than 2.3 times as likely to feel satisfied with their managers.[5] An agent’s perception of their manager depends on feeling understood and supported, job security, proper training and feedback, realistic performance expectations, and flexibility with scheduling and time off.

Call center managers benefit from building relationships with call center staff, receiving feedback from agents about their experience, and offering suggestions from a constructive perspective–rather than a disciplinarian one.

Low Pay

As you may expect, an agent’s well-being suffers when they feel unfairly compensated. 41% of agents at risk of burnout say they aren’t paid fairly, making them frustrated and disengaged.[9]

What Companies Should Do to Prevent Agent Burnout

Call center managers can help prevent burnout by providing sufficient training, giving agents the proper technology for customer service, and allowing some agent discretion and flexibility during interactions.

Properly Train Agents

Workers with more training hours experience lower stress levels on the job–especially those who had received in-person rather than online training.[1]

Advanced call center software lets you build and assign training modules, streamlining the onboarding process. But whether you use an automated solution or not, it’s worth investing in comprehensively training your agents.

Provide the Right Tools

86% of call center staff say their technology is too slow.[1] Outdated, poorly functioning technology limits an agent’s ability to provide customer service, setting your staff up for frustrated customers and failed interactions.

Lagging tech frustrates agents and damages your company’s performance. 58% of agents at underperforming organizations had to toggle between multiple screens to find what they needed.[10] Offering comprehensive tools like a call center software platform and CRM system helps your agents manage all interactions in one place.

Encourage Employee Freedom and Discretion

While call scripts and canned responses may assist flustered agents, reps appreciate flexibility in how they interact with customers. Many call center platforms offer built-in knowledge bases, which let agents choose articles to recommend. Further, some CCaaS platforms connect with product databases, allowing agents to provide discounts and promotions when applicable.

These tools encourage agent autonomy, empowering reps and making the job more fun.

Use Monitoring to Help Employees, Not Discipline Them

Call monitoring technologies like analytics, leaderboards, and call whisper/barge provide real-time insights into agent performance–but they’re also a huge contributor to agent stress. 78% of call center employees at risk of burnout say their company uses leaderboards or incentives to encourage good performance.[9]

Further, only 30% of agents believe call monitoring is used to grow their skills, while 70% believe the technology primarily serves to discipline them. If you use call monitoring tech, ensure it’s a constructive tool–not one to intimidate or punish agents.[1]

Create Reasonable Goals and Metrics

Agents become overwhelmed when their supervisors set unrealistic performance goals and quotas. One study found that over 70% of call center workers felt that performance metrics were unreasonable.[1]

You can motivate agents by setting targets for the number of calls handled per day, or first call resolution rate, but ensure these targets are within an agent’s reach.

How to Support Burned-Out Call Center Agents

If your agents are already experiencing burnout, you can support them by using AI assistance tools, keeping your technology stack up to date, integrating with a CRM system, and offering constructive performance feedback.

Here’s a more thorough breakdown of how you can help burnt-out agents:

Use AI for Agent Support

Call center software often includes AI features that optimize scheduling, provide agent feedback, and assist call center reps with real-time feedback. These AI tools can help agents find knowledge-base resources quickly, offer relevant promotions, and choose the best action to help customers.

Ensure That Your Technology is Working Right

Support your agents by ensuring your staff have up-to-date technology like call center software, sufficient bandwidth, the right VoIP phones, and a CRM system.

Poll your agents about their experience with the technology, confirming the software runs smoothly. IT staff and team managers–not agents themselves–should deal with call center vendors.

Provide Feedback

While call monitoring technologies cause stress when used for discipline, providing feedback helps agents develop skills. 31% of agents at high risk for burnout say they don’t receive regular feedback.[9] Constructive feedback, like recommending strategies and language to improve unsuccessful interactions, builds trust and stronger relationships between manager and staff.

Use a CRM system

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software organizes data and interaction history for your company’s contacts, leads, and customers. Tools like Salesforce and HubSpot streamline sales campaigns, marketing efforts, and customer service insights.

CRM solutions provide context and insights that make it easier for agents to serve customers. Since nearly all contact center software solutions integrate with CRM systems, you can support your agents by subscribing and connecting to a CRM.

Optimize Your Routing System for Efficiency

Happy customers are much easier for agents to handle. If your call routing system leaves customers in the queue for too long, or if customers need to be transferred between multiple departments, they may become impatient and take it out on agents.

Ensure your IVR menu is clear and thoughtfully designed, and monitor each queue’s wait time.

Properly Staff Your Call Center

Understaffed call centers will experience large queue wait times, frustrated customers, and overloaded agents. Help agents relax between calls by properly staffing your call center, which frees agents from having to rush between calls.