The Future is Empathy: Why Your Agents Will Define Success

In today's rapidly evolving contact center landscape, the use of AI is often heralded as the future, and let’s be honest, it is. However, while AI offers numerous efficiencies, it's the human element — our agents and leaders — that futureproofs a contact center. Investing in our people ensures that we harness technology's benefits without losing the personal touch that defines the exceptional customer service we all strive to provide.

The Human Advantage: Beyond AI Capabilities

AI excels at handling repetitive tasks, organizing and sifting through volumes of data and providing quick responses. Yet, it lacks the ability to deeply understand emotions, offer true empathy and navigate complex problem-solving.

Human agents can read between the lines, sense a customer's frustration and adjust their approach accordingly. This emotional intelligence fosters trust and builds lasting customer relationships — this is even more important if your team is handling pre/soft-sales and closing deals. A recent survey by Hiver found that 52% of customers prefer interacting with human agents over AI, highlighting the importance of human connection in our centers and why we, as leaders, need to be doubling down on our people.

Investing in Training — For the Future

To remain competitive in this AI-supplemented landscape, investing in agent skills is crucial for empowering agents to have meaningful conversations and provide the often-missing but mission-critical skill: empathy.

Studies by PwC and Capgemini have shown that not only are customers willing to pay more for positive customer experiences, but they’re also willing to stop doing business with a brand they once raved about after just one bad experience.

While GenAI, LLMs and the new hot-topic Agentic AI have seemingly become the biggest and most important initiatives for many, attracted by the potential labor efficiency and overhead savings, many are approaching their AI rollouts without taking the whole picture into account — it’s the shiny new thing that everyone needed implemented last year and is racing to figure out.

Is cutting back on headcount worth losing the phenomenal track record of world-class support you spent years to achieve? Losing once-loyal customers because we want a bot to handle all chat communications? For some businesses, the answer is yes; but for the ones who look at their contact center as a source of pride and not a cost center — this is a big conversation you should be having.

Actionable Training Strategies to Drive Agent Improvement

To build a people-first contact center, organizations must implement training programs that equip agents with the necessary skills to handle interactions not just efficiently, but effectively. 

Below are some key training initiatives that should be implemented to upskill your agents:

1. Emotional Intelligence & Empathy Training
• Help agents develop the ability to read and respond to customer emotions appropriately.
• Implement role-playing exercises to simulate real-world scenarios where emotional intelligence is crucial.
2. Active Listening Workshops
• Teach agents how to listen with intent rather than just responding to inquiries.
• Reinforce techniques such as paraphrasing, summarization, and verbal nods to show engagement.
3. Situational Awareness & Problem-Solving Drills
• Train agents on how to assess customer needs and adapt responses based on context.
• Encourage critical thinking to provide tailored solutions beyond scripted interactions.
4. Real-Time Call Coaching & Feedback Loops
• Shadow sessions and side by sides are valuable coaching and supervisor tools to get a sense of what your agents are dealing with and providing real-time feedback.
• Implement peer mentorship programs where top-performing agents assist in training new hires. 
5. Communication & De-escalation Techniques
• Offer training on how to defuse tense situations and maintain composure under pressure.
• Provide scripts as guidelines but emphasize adaptability based on customer temperament.
6. Customer Journey Mapping
• Help agents understand the full customer experience to foster proactive and customer-centric interactions. If your agents live in a silo and don’t what know customers are hearing/seeing before getting to your queues or have no knowledge of what happens next, this is a big area of opportunity.
• Align agent goals with long-term customer retention and satisfaction strategies.

By focusing on these training initiatives, contact centers can ensure that their agents are empowered with the skills necessary to provide superior, human-driven customer service.

While AI will continue to play a significant role in the evolution of contact centers, it's the human agents who bring empathy, creativity and nuanced understanding to customer interactions. By investing in our people and viewing AI as a supportive tool rather than a replacement, we can ensure that our contact centers are truly futureproof, delivering exceptional service in the years to come.