A strong performance management practice is essential in today’s leading contact centers. As companies expand their digital business, contact center agent interactions remain among the few human-to-human connections for customers and prospects. Today’s agents don’t just place orders and solve customer service issues, they are tasked with the role of brand ambassadors — a critical element of the customer and prospect experience. This responsibility raises the stakes for contact centers and pressures leaders to ensure their agents can master best and required practices while leveraging soft skills, such as empathy.

Zenarate is laser-focused on solving these challenges. We are pleased to announce that Zenarate AI Coach simulation training for contact center leaders has been honored by Frost & Sullivan with the Customer Value Leadership Award for Performance Management. Zenarate AI Coach elegantly solves these issues by developing confident top-performing new hire agents before their first “live” customer or prospect interaction and by closing tenured agent call type and skill gaps. Our AI Coach is the “flight simulator” for customer and prospect engagement, where agents are immersed in life-like conversation, screen, and chat simulations to master high-impact topics they will face with “live” customers and prospects.

Learn more about our Customer Value Leadership award here AI Simulation Training Receives 2023 Award

Contact center leaders face an uphill battle with continuously improving customer and prospect experiences while keeping contact center costs down. Some of the biggest challenges include new hire screening, training, onboarding and upskilling of agents. Contact center leaders want confident top performing agents, but need proven and cost-effective training methods for success.
Frost & Sullivan notes: “This is where the Zenarate platform truly shines; it allows agents to practice and role-play without requiring expensive resources to assist them.”

“Zenarate was founded to tackle the oft-overlooked portion of performance management, which, If properly addressed, rapidly reduces the downstream costs of agent churn due to poor agent fit, pre-hire screening, inadequate onboarding, training, and agent engagement.” – Nancy Jamison, Senior Industry Director, Frost & Sullivan

AI Simulation Training Impact on EX and CX

Despite the advances of digital self-service, contact center leaders need high-performing agents, as they are in place to handle inquiries and issues when self-service falls short, or for when a more human touch is required. Advanced technologies and chatbots handle simple inquiries, leaving agents with the toughest problems to solve. Agents are most likely to interact with frustrated or impatient customers or prospects. With a training foundation, the contact center leader avoids placing unprepared agents into live scenarios, helping improve both employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX).

In recent years, we’ve learned that the employee and customer experience are deeply connected. Research from Forbes and Salesforce revealed that 70 percent of executives agreed that a better employee experience leads directly to a better CX. Ultimately, poorly trained agents that lack confidence can damage important key performance indicators (KPIs) and brand image, and make it more likely for them to leave their positions, starting the hiring and training cycle all over again.

Frost & Sullivan also monitors the increasing need to improve EX. According to Frost & Sullivan, “the nature of the agent’s job has changed due to the shift to digital customer engagement. As consumers have rapidly adopted digital self-service, agents are increasingly saddled with the more complex inquiries that self-service has not handled. Work-from-home models driven by the COVID-19 pandemic also made agent engagement even more difficult, as there is less personal interaction between agents and agents and their supervisors. The complexities of maintaining ever-changing compliance regulations during customer interactions are also burdening agents.”

However, with Zenarate AI Coach simulation training, organizations with large contact centers are seeing customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores rapidly improve while agent attrition significantly drops further demonstrating the EX and CX connection. Confident top-performing agents, certified for ‘live’ conversation, screen and chat readiness, are transforming contact center KPIs. Zenarate AI customers are seeing dramatic results, including:

• Increase Speed to Proficiency by 56%
• Improve CSAT Scores by 33%
• Reduce Agent Attrition by -32%
• Reduce operating costs by 20%-50%

Want to learn how you can get excellent results at your contact center? Check out a demo of AI Coach: Here

Want to Learn about Zenarate AI Coach in Person?

We are excited to attend the 19th Annual Customer Contact East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange event, from April 23-26, 2023, in Orlando, Fla. We will join other industry leaders sharing tools, insights and building relationships to execute a successful customer contact strategy, improving customer satisfaction rates, reducing customer churn and increasing revenue.
The Zenarate team will exhibit and demonstrate Zenarate AI Coach at booth #3055. Planning to attend? We’d love to see you! Stop by the booth any time or set up a meeting with a Zenarate team member.