Of the customer service and CX leaders RingCentral and Benchmark Portal surveyed, 55.9% of them cited “increased workload” as the main contributor to employee turnover, making it their top factor of agent attrition.
COVID-19 magnified the workload challenges that were already prevalent in contact centers prior to the global shutdown. Gartner found that in 2020, more than 40% of customer support teams experienced an increase in contact volume compared to their initial 2020 projections.
With more people than ever shopping, communicating, and doing business online, both the volume and handle time of contact center support tickets have increased. According to SQM Group, call centers’ average handle time (AHT) increased by 8% from 2019 to 2021. And customer engagement with service agents hasn’t slowed since then—support requests are up 14% from last year.
