I read countless articles on how to reduce stress in the call center and often wonder, “why is the contact center environment so traumatic?” Well, there are a few reasons for this. The first is quite obvious: Most call center horror stories feature an angry customer, venting their frustration about a faulty product or terrible service. Dealing with angry customers is difficult! Other causes of stress in the call center are less noticeable, ranging from a lack of social support, to feeling undervalued, to role conflict between employees.
Realistically, there are always going to be angry customers, but isn’t it interesting that all the other stress-inducing areas are internal to the contact center? What this means is that we can potentially solve these problems.
Every leading organization understands the importance of having happy people in their front-line staff. Here are some tips for call center managers to help agents survive the year, and ultimately reduce stress in the workplace.
Whether it’s a bad date, a bland meal, or a mean comment on social media, negative experiences tend to stand out in people’s minds; nearly to the point of entirely clouding out any of the good. This phenomenon is especially exacerbated when it comes to a negative experience with customer service. 
What does customer service mean to you? One might think the answer to that question is universal, but that’s not necessarily the case. People will define customer service in different ways. A retailer might think it means ensuring customers quickly find what they need online or in-store, and a financial institution might think it means ensuring that they respond to customers in a timely fashion. Since Fonolo is a solution built for the contact center space, I started to think about what customer service means to a call center agent. The first thing that came to mind was handling a difficult customer. For a CSR to be successful they have to understand how to deliver customer service in the most challenging of situations – with an irate customer.
