Supporting Agents Post-Angry Call: A Guide to Nurturing Resilience

Empowering Your Team Through Understanding and Compassion

Handling angry calls is an inevitable part of working in a contact centre, but the aftermath can significantly impact an agent’s confidence, morale, and mental health. Supporting agents post-angry call is crucial to maintain a positive work environment and ensure the continued delivery of excellent customer service. Here’s how to provide the right support to agents following a challenging call.

Recognize and Validate Feelings

Acknowledge Their Experience: Immediately recognize the difficulty of the situation. Acknowledging that dealing with angry customers is challenging validates the agent’s feelings and helps them feel understood.

Provide a Safe Space to Debrief: Offer a private, supportive environment where agents can express their feelings and frustrations about the call without judgment. This can be a physical space or a scheduled time to talk it through.

Offer Constructive Feedback and Guidance

Review the Call Together: If possible, review the call together, focusing on what the agent handled well and identifying opportunities for improvement. Constructive feedback helps in learning and development.

Share De-escalation Techniques: Equip your agents with effective de-escalation techniques and communication strategies to manage future challenging calls better.

Encourage Peer Support and Shared Learning

Promote Peer Discussions: Encourage agents to share their experiences and coping strategies with each other. Peer support can offer new perspectives and tips on handling difficult calls.

Create a Culture of Openness: Foster an environment where agents feel comfortable discussing challenging calls. This can lead to shared learning and collective improvement in handling such situations.

Implement Stress-Relief and Wellness Activities

Encourage Short Breaks: Encourage agents to take a short break after a difficult call to reset and decompress before taking the next call.

Provide Access to Wellness Resources: Offer resources such as stress management workshops, mindfulness sessions, or access to counseling services to support agents’ mental health.

Reinforce Positive Reinforcement

Recognize Resilience: Publicly acknowledge and commend agents for handling tough situations well. Recognition can boost morale and encourage positive behavior.

Personalized Encouragement: Offer personalized words of encouragement to remind agents of their strengths and the value they bring to the team.

Foster Continuous Learning and Development

Role-play and Training Sessions: Regularly conduct role-play sessions or training workshops focusing on managing difficult calls. This prepares agents for a range of scenarios and builds confidence.

Develop a Resilience Training Program: Implement a program focused on building emotional resilience and coping strategies for stress, enhancing overall agent wellbeing.

Promote a Positive Work Environment

Maintain an Optimistic Tone: Lead by example by maintaining a positive and optimistic outlook, even in challenging situations. This sets the tone for the entire team.

Encourage Work-Life Balance: Promote a healthy work-life balance to ensure agents have enough time to recharge outside of work, contributing to their overall wellbeing and job satisfaction.

Prioritize Agent Support

Supporting agents post-angry call is not just about addressing the immediate aftermath but about building a resilient, empowered, and supportive team culture.

Implementing these strategies enables your agents to confidently tackle customer service challenges, preserve their well-being, and consistently deliver outstanding service. Contact us for further support or inquiries.