Burned Out? How Are Your Customer Service Reps Feeling These Days?

Much has been said about how business owners and leaders are feeling, post-pandemic. Many are short-staffed and frustrated regarding the customer service quality—or lack thereof—their current employees are delivering. Now that we’re making the Great Adjustment it’s time to review what is working, and what is not, and discover why CX training isn’t a luxury, it is a necessity. That means taking care of your customer service representatives (CSRs).

It’s no longer enough to be the customer’s brand of choice. Becoming the employee brand of choice, the company drawing the best candidates from the labor pool, is foundational to growth. To accomplish that, you must have your finger on the pulse on how your CSRs and/or frontline employees industries are feeling.

According to a study by Zendesk, the mood in 2022 is Burned Out: overworked and undervalued. Since last year, customer support requests have jumped 14% and customer service reps are often expected to cover extra bases across the entire customer journey, far beyond their job descriptions, and not only when there’s an issue.

They believe their work is increasingly important, with a greater need for a strategy to deliver the highest quality of experience to the customer. Yet the statistics for categories in which CSRs are “extremely satisfied” are shockingly low:

• Training quality: 20%
• View of CSR team by the company overall: 17%
• Ability to suggest changes: 17%
• Training frequency: 17%
• Workload: 15%
• Career path options: 14%
• Performance metrics: 14%

Not exactly a recipe for high morale or even employee retention, much less delivering a world-class experience to your customers.

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Editor’s Note: The DiJulius Group’s annual Customer Service Revolution Conference will take place November 8–9 in Cleveland. Find more information here.

John DiJulius, author of The Customer Service Revolution, is President and Chief Revolution Officer of the DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies including Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Contact him at 216-839-1430 or info@thedijuliusgroup.com.