Agent burnout continues to be one of the most widespread, far-reaching, costly, and persistent issues facing contact centers. It manifests itself in many ways, including:
- Critical, negative, weary, or disinterested comments, language, and tone when engaging with customers and colleagues.
- Lowered performance and productivity.
- Late arrivals, early departures, longer breaks, unexpected and unexplained absences, and ultimately, sudden quitting.
Agent burnout touches on practically every dimension of the organization because contact center agents are often the primary, and sometimes only, human touchpoint with customers. Therefore, how agents interact with them shapes brand perception and loyalty.
Customers may be asking themselves: “What is wrong with this company, and can I trust their products and services?”
To learn more about agent burnout, its impacts and causes, and how it can be mitigated and prevented, I had an interview with Dave Rennyson, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of SuccessKPI.
His company offers a cloud-native workforce engagement management (WEM) platform that is revolutionizing how contact centers can utilize AI and data automation to improve business outcomes and transform customer experiences (CXs).
Dave himself is an early pioneer of contact center transformation, having previously served in senior executive roles at MicroStrategy, Genesys, Angel, Broadband Office, Interactions, Spirent, and Verizon. He is the co-author of the book “The Art of SaaS”.
Q. Are contact center agents burning out and why?
Burnout has become one of the biggest workforce challenges in the contact center industry. We’ve done a lot of research and work around this. A lot of the data SuccessKPI surfaces for companies is predicated on improving what is happening in the agent world.
Frost & Sullivan has recently published some documentation around agent satisfaction, churn, and what helps keep agents happier, including improvements in the use of AI in the contact center.
The role of the agent has fundamentally changed over the last several years. Agents are no longer simply handling basic customer inquiries. Today, they are expected to manage emotional, complex, and high-stakes interactions after customers have already attempted self-service options and failed.
Modern agents are expected to be more empathetic, more knowledgeable, and capable of handling omnichannel interactions across voice, chat, SMS, and social channels.
At the same time, customer patience has declined significantly, creating more emotionally charged interactions and higher stress levels for agents.
“Companies that look at contact centers as CX centers vs. cost centers fare better than those that do not. They see them as productive investments rather than as expenses to be cut whenever possible.” —Dave Rennyson
Burnout is also being driven by repetitive work, inconsistent scheduling, lack of training, remote work isolation, and what feels like constant performance monitoring.
If you look at Reddit boards where agents from contact centers of all sizes post questions and comments, you can really feel how difficult this job has become. It was never a walk in the park, but there are so many more nuances to the role now.
We have seen one of the biggest contributors to stress is a lack of confidence. When agents do not feel fully trained or equipped to handle difficult conversations, anxiety increases dramatically.
Frost & Sullivan’s research shows that companies continue to experience significant attrition rates, with 44% of organizations still reporting over 20% agent turnover annually.
Burnout is not simply about workload. It is increasingly tied to whether agents feel empowered, supported, informed, and successful in their roles.
Q. What are the impacts of burnout?
The impacts of burnout extend far beyond the individual employee and can affect nearly every aspect of a contact center’s performance.
Churn is by far one of the largest expenses within a contact center. For each churned agent, turnover can cost the organization 100% to 300% of the employee’s annual salary once all organizational costs are factored in. But beyond the explicit costs, there are many other issues the company faces:
1. Increased customer dissatisfaction, negative brand reputation, and revenue losses
- Burned-out agents struggle to deliver empathetic, personalized CXs. Customers can quickly sense frustration or disengagement from agents even in digital channels like chat and SMS, where tone is conveyed through wording and phrasing, and can be easily misconstrued.
- Poor agent experiences (AXs) inevitably translate into poor CXs. Engaged agents are essential for building customer trust, loyalty, and brand affinity.
2. Declining engagement quality and operational issues
- Burnout also contributes to declining performance quality, lower engagement, absenteeism, and inconsistent customer handling.
- It’s one thing when new agents churn quickly; but when experienced agents disengage or leave, organizations lose valuable institutional knowledge and continuity. That loss creates instability and negatively affects service consistency across customer interactions.
3. Compliance and security risks
Agent stress and fatigue can create compliance and quality risks. Agents under pressure are more likely to miss required procedures, fail to follow scripts correctly, or overlook critical customer details.
Q. Let’s play devil’s advocate. Wouldn’t the burnout issue diminish if agents are fearful of losing their jobs? There has been a lot of discussion about AI shrinking the need for positions like these.
Leading with a stick is not ideal. In fact, fear often intensifies burnout rather than reducing it.
Anyone who feels like they are fighting day to day to just keep their job has an added level of stress. It induces a fight or flight response, and anxiety. No one wants to work this way.
Add to that the possibility that AI may take their jobs and there’s a lot of mistrust. While agents have seen satisfaction increases due to AI-powered tools, AI-related job anxiety still exists within many contact centers.
“The most successful organizations will likely be the ones that use AI to elevate the human experience, both for customers and employees.”
The world has changed. People have changed. Each generation is different. Modern employees increasingly value flexibility, wellbeing, empowerment, recognition, and career growth, not simply job security.
Organizations should not look at this like it’s a bad thing; they should look at it as an opportunity. The opportunity to treat your agents in a way that ultimately helps them improve CX, which ultimately improves your business.
Companies that look at contact centers as CX centers vs. cost centers fare better than those that do not. They see them as productive investments rather than as expenses to be cut whenever possible.
Q. Let’s dive deeper into AI. Do agents trust it, and if not, could it also be a cause of burnout?
Trust in AI depends almost entirely on how it is implemented. Recent research found that 88% of agents reported that AI had improved their experience when implemented properly.
Agents are increasingly receptive to AI when they see it helping them perform better, reduce repetitive work, and improve customer outcomes. The majority of agents now view AI positively when it enhances their daily experience.
AI that feels punitive or threatening can worsen stress. AI that acts as a support system helping agents succeed, learn faster, and reduce frustration tends to improve morale and engagement.
That said, AI can contribute to burnout when organizations fail to provide adequate training, communication, or change management.
There’s a repeated theme here – many companies focus too heavily on cost reduction while overlooking the employee experience. Agents may become resistant when AI feels like a surveillance tool instead of a support tool.
To position AI as a “friend, not foe,” organizations should:
- Involve agents early in AI adoption discussions.
- Gather ongoing voice-of-employee feedback on AI processes.
- Use AI to reduce friction and repetitive work.
- Deliver real-time support and knowledge guidance as well as continuous training and coaching.
- Focus on empowerment instead of surveillance.
The reality is, the future of the contact center is a blended “agentic and human CX” environment, where automation and human agents work together rather than compete against one another.
The most successful organizations will likely be the ones that use AI to elevate the human experience, both for customers and employees.
Can Job Description/Work Mismatches Cause Burnout?
We’ve all been there: hearing about and seeing an advertisement for a job, applying and interviewing for it, being given the offer, but then finding out that the work you’re performing was not what you were expecting and/or sold on.
You press on and try your best, hoping things will get better. But you find that they don’t. Gradually you begin to feel burned out.
So, I asked Dave Rennyson, “Is one of the causes of contact center agent burnout mismatches between the advertising and applicant expectations of the positions and the realities of them?”
“This is a really interesting question,” says Dave. “Companies are increasingly trying to attract agents to a difficult job by spinning it in a way that doesn’t sound so bad. This mismatch can cause immediate and ongoing issues for agents.
“Many applicants may still envision contact center work as relatively straightforward customer service, but the reality today is much more demanding.
“Agents are expected to manage emotionally escalated conversations, navigate multiple systems simultaneously, support omnichannel interactions, and often identify upsell or cross-sell opportunities while maintaining empathy and compliance. And do it as quickly as possible, with little to no downtime between calls.
“In many cases, the actual complexity and emotional intensity of the role exceed what candidates anticipated when applying.
“The challenge becomes even greater because self-service systems now absorb many simple inquiries. That was by design. However, the calls that aren’t automated and reach live agents are often more complicated and emotionally charged.
“New agents experience the highest anxiety during their first days and weeks on the job. Success often depends on whether organizations provide the right coaching, tools, and confidence-building support during onboarding.
“This is where organizations have an opportunity to improve alignment between recruiting expectations and operational reality.
“Companies that clearly communicate job expectations, while simultaneously investing in AI-assisted coaching, personalized training, and real-time support systems, are better positioned to reduce early burnout and attrition.”
Q. What can be done to prevent and mitigate burnout?
Organizations need to move from reactive management to proactive workforce engagement. The best-performing contact centers are increasingly treating AX as a strategic business priority rather than simply an HR concern.
Telltale signs of burnout and how they can be detected early
Some early indicators include:
- Declining customer sentiment.
- Reduced empathy during interactions.
- Increased absenteeism.
- Repetitive policy violations.
- Lower engagement scores.
- Higher attrition risk.
- Signs of emotional fatigue during conversations.
You may be tracking all of this, but do you have all the data you need, and can you make improvements based on it?
“Burnout is not simply about workload. It is increasingly tied to whether agents feel empowered, supported, informed, and successful in their roles.”
Traditional quality management (QM) approaches often miss these warning signs because they only evaluate a tiny percentage (3%) of calls, as it has historically been cost and time prohibitive to QA more than that.
Older QM programs created distrust because supervisors were making judgments based on extremely limited samples.
What are the best methods and tools to respond?
There’s no silver bullet. One method, one tool, will not help. You have to implement multiple techniques to improve outcomes. They don’t need to happen all at once – that’s very difficult and time-intensive to do.
Here are several areas to poke at:
- Deliver personalized coaching rather than generic feedback.
- Provide better real-time agent assistance during interactions.
- Support flexible scheduling and intraday workforce management (WFM).
- Create better knowledge management systems.
- Enable voice-of-employee programs.
- Assess more with AI-assisted QM.
This last one is important and could be a game-changer. Organizations should use AI not only to monitor agents but to understand the operational environment as a whole, including emerging customer issues, process problems, and training deficiencies; it’s not always the agent.
There are plenty of organizational issues that could be leading to emotionally charged, difficult conversations with little hope of a positive resolution. Agents want to help. Humans feel a sense of worth when they are able to accomplish their jobs. But struggling from call to call to help others can be draining.
“Organizations that successfully combine AI-powered operational tools with empathy, coaching, flexibility, and empowerment will be best positioned to retain agents and deliver exceptional CXs.”
With AI-powered QM and conversation analytics with solutions like SuccessKPI, companies can review 100% of interactions instead of that small sample, allowing organizations to identify patterns, coaching needs, and emerging compliance risks in near real time.
More data leads to a greater understanding of customer and agent needs, which leads to improved training and coaching, ultimately benefiting both the agent and customer.
Q. What are your best practices recommendations to contact center leaders to ensure a productive, engaged, empowered, and loyal agent workforce, especially in the age of AI?
Treat AX as a strategic KPI
Organizations should begin measuring and managing AX with the same seriousness traditionally applied to CX metrics.
Invest in coaching and personalized development
Generic coaching is becoming obsolete. AI now enables more individualized training, contextual feedback, and targeted performance improvement plans. If it’s helpful, AI or not, agents will accept it.
Listen to the voice of the employee
Agents often know exactly where operational friction exists. Successful organizations actively incorporate agent feedback into technology deployment and process design.
Automate intelligently, not aggressively
Not every interaction should be automated. Organizations must carefully determine which tasks are appropriate for AI and where human empathy remains essential.
Use AI to augment, not replace
The most effective AI deployments reduce cognitive overload, eliminate repetitive work, surface knowledge faster, and provide real-time guidance. AI should help agents feel more confident and capable.
Modernize QM
AI-driven QM allows organizations to evaluate all customer interactions instead of relying on tiny samples. This creates more accurate coaching, better operational visibility, and greater trust between agents and leadership.
Pace change carefully
Don’t overwhelm employees with too much information or too many simultaneous changes. AI adoption works best when companies introduce improvements incrementally and support employees throughout the transition.
Ultimately, the future contact center will depend on a careful balance between advanced automation and human-centered management.
Organizations that successfully combine AI-powered operational tools with empathy, coaching, flexibility, and empowerment will be best positioned to retain agents and deliver exceptional CXs.