Improving agent performance isn’t optional – it’s essential. Every customer interaction shapes perception, loyalty, and bottom-line results. This article breaks down why agent performance matters, the challenges that stand in the way, and the strategies proven to drive stronger outcomes across your contact center.

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In this article:

• Why agent performance matters
• Common challenges in agent performance
• Top strategies to enhance agent performance
• Final thoughts
• Frequently asked questions

Why agent performance matters

Every customer interaction impacts customer perceptions, efficiency, and revenue. Here’s why strong agent performance matters across key areas of your business.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty

Agent performance is directly tied to customer experience. Top performers quickly solve problems, build personal connections, and leave callers feeling valued.

On the other hand, poor performance leads to slow, frustrating experiences and eventual churn. Excellent agents reduce repeat calls and complaints, which are leading indicators of dissatisfaction.

Brand reputation

Every conversation reflects on your brand. A single bad call can spread like wildfire or spur a damaging review. However, top performers have a consistent, on-brand experience. Strong performance helps to protect your brand in crisis situations (e.g., during an outage or billing issue).

Operational costs and efficiency

Underperforming agents increase handle times, drive more transfers, and increase repeat calls. They also increase your staffing requirements and operating costs. In fact, Qualtrics XM reports that businesses risk losing up to 8% of their revenue due to poor customer experiences.

In contrast, top performers solve problems the first time and keep handle times low. Better performance also reduces the need for supervisor escalations and coaching.

Sales outcomes

In revenue-generating roles, performance is everything. Top agents identify upsell opportunities, guide hesitant buyers, and close faster. Poor performers leave money on the table by misreading signals, missing cues, or failing to follow scripts. Sales success isn’t just about having offers but about having the right people to deliver them.

Common challenges in agent performance

Even the best agents can’t reach their full potential when the environment sabotages them. These common barriers – many systemic – stifle performance and create conflict throughout the contact center.

Burnout

Agents face relentless queues, process difficult calls, and try to meet call volume targets. With little support, they grow exhausted and apathetic. Burned-out agents become unfocused, make mistakes, and lose patience with customers.

High turnover

Consistent turnover depletes teams, drains training resources, and diminishes stability. New hires have to be brought up to speed, while experienced reps leave with their expertise and know-how.

Information overload

Agents are flooded with data from scripts, policies, product updates, and more—often during live calls. When information isn’t easy to access or digest, errors happen. It slows response times and frustrates both agents and customers.

Lack of coaching or feedback

Most agents are flying blind, not knowing what’s working and what needs improvement. Generic feedback or one-size-fits-all training is not enough. Without individualized coaching, performance grinds to a halt.

Outdated tools or processes

Clunky systems, slow interfaces, and manual workarounds kill efficiency. When agents have to fight their tools, they can’t focus on the customer. It drags down productivity and morale.

Overcoming these challenges starts with intention and the right approach. To build a high-performing team, you need strategies that support agents, streamline their work, and drive consistent improvement.

Top strategies to enhance agent performance

1. Leverage real-time agent guidance. “When agents are in the middle of a customer interaction, delayed support is ineffective. Supervisors use real-time AI tools to track active discussions, identify potential risks, and intervene when necessary. Agents receive prompt assistance, which enables them to solve customer issues faster and avoid increasing the severity of problems.”

- Enhancing agent effectiveness with AI tools, CallMiner; X: @CallMiner

2. Staff your team with the right number of qualified agents. “Sometimes your agents are held back from providing a great customer experience because there’s simply not enough of them to handle the backlog. Adding new, trained members to your customer service department can help keep blocked or abandoned call rates low and alleviate pressure on call center agents, who can then focus on providing excellent customer experiences.”

- How to calculate, measure and improve agent productivity, Qualtrics XM; X: @Qualtrics

3. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs). “When you have standard operating procedures for every situation, agents can handle customer issues confidently and quickly.

“Create SOPs for everything you can:

• General call flow: How to greet callers, ask probing questions, gather information, resolve the inquiry, and close out the call.
• Standard workflows: Cover things like how to create a new account, how to reset passwords, how to refund customers,
• Troubleshooting: Create quick reference guides and cheat sheets that agents can rely on for common problems, and tailor them to every product and feature.
• Escalation: Decide under what scenarios agents should get a supervisor involved. Give agents as much leeway as you can for resolving issues on their own.
• Compliance: Some customers are wary of handing over sensitive data. Make sure your agents understand compliance standards for data protection, as well as disclosures and legal disclaimers that need to be verbalized.

“Since your products and features change regularly, your processes will too. Come back to your workflows and processes regularly to update and simplify them. Incorporate automation where possible to take repetitive work like data entry off of your agents’ plates.”

- Ryan Kane, Six Strategies To Improve Agent Performance in Call Centers, The CX Lead; X: @CxLead

4. Provide continuous training. “Another essential way to improve your call center’s performance is to prioritize call center training. This means ensuring that your agents are adequately trained and that they have the necessary skills to do their job effectively.

“There are a few key things you should keep in mind when training your agents, including:

“Providing adequate training: Ensure your agents receive enough training to feel confident in their abilities.

“Making training relevant: Be sure to tailor your training for your call center. This way, your agents will be better prepared to handle the calls they’re likely to receive.

“Focusing on specific skills: In addition to general training, you should also focus on specific skills that your agents will need, such as product knowledge or troubleshooting skills.”

- 15 Ideas for Improving Call Center Performance, Call Center Mavericks

5. Provide consistent feedback. “The most effective agent performance improvement programs provide continuous and encouraging feedback to motivate agents. When an agent struggles to perform, it's important for managers to recognize and praise incremental improvement.

“Managers should conduct routine evaluations of the agent's contacts and provide timely feedback. Provide additional targeted coaching sessions to address the agent's specific needs to reinforce what they're doing right. These actions will improve overall contact center performance and create a better customer experience.”

- Sarah Amsler, 10 strategies to improve contact center agent performance, TechTarget; X: @TechTargetNews

6. Monitor agent performance metrics. “Using metrics to monitor and measure agent performance ensures that supervisors and agents alike remain focused on enhancing productivity and delivering high-quality, efficient service.

“These metrics also provide a foundation for setting clear goals, tracking progress, and implementing targeted strategies to enhance both the customer experience and operational outcomes.”

- How to Improve Agent Performance in 2025: A Guide for Agents & Supervisors, Talkative; X: @TalkativeUK

7. Promote peer mentoring. “Experienced support agents can fast track new team members by sharing best practices, troubleshooting techniques and time saving tips. Getting more knowledgeable support agents involved creates a support system within the team and gets new agents productive faster.”

- Alina Fesenko, 11 Proven Ways To Improve Agent Productivity And Performance, HelpCrunch; X: @HelpCrunchCom

8. Align KPIs with customer satisfaction goals. “Instead of only rewarding sales volume, businesses should reward customer experience metrics like CSAT and FCR. This shift in focus encourages agents to prioritize customer satisfaction, ensuring that every interaction is meaningful and contributes to long-term customer loyalty. By aligning key performance indicators with customer satisfaction goals, businesses can create a more holistic approach to performance management that emphasizes quality over quantity.”

- Understanding Agent Performance and Customer Needs: A Practical Guide, Spinify; X: @SpinifyApp

9. Recognize agent success. “While exact motivations can vary from agent to agent, evidence shows that recognizing your employees’ good work and celebrating their successes can positively impact customer service agent productivity.

“According to Nectar, 77.9 percent of employees said they would be more productive if their organization recognized them more frequently.

“You can celebrate agent success in many ways, including giving them a shout-out in your team chat, taking them to lunch, or offering other incentives. With these small but impactful gestures, agents are encouraged to keep up the good work knowing their efforts will be rewarded. Additionally, recognizing your agents can help them feel appreciated and create a supportive environment.”

- Maddy Storck, 11 tips to improve agent productivity and efficiency, Zendesk; X: @Zendesk

10. Encourage adoption of technology and provide training on new tools. “The highest quality AI systems become ineffective when agents choose not to engage with them. Teams should gain insight into how the system provides assistance rather than simply learning operational functions.

“Effective training programs must establish trust by demonstrating how AI systems enhance agent workflows and reduce cognitive burden while assisting them to achieve success. Without buy-in, automation becomes noise.”

- Enhancing agent effectiveness with AI tools, CallMiner; X: @CallMiner

11. Foster a collaborative environment. “A supportive team culture encourages sharing ideas and strategies, which can enhance overall productivity. Regular team meetings can facilitate open discussions about challenges and successes.”

- Nitin Saxena, How to Measure & Improve Agent Productivity, Knowmax; X: @knowmaxai

12. Implement a knowledge base. “Implementing a customer service knowledge base benefits customers and agents. An external, or public-facing, knowledge base enables customers to find answers to basic questions without the need for human assistance, which can increase customer satisfaction. In return, it eliminates unnecessary customer contacts and frees up agents for more important customer issues.”

- Sarah Amsler, 10 strategies to improve contact center agent performance, TechTarget; X: @TechTargetNews

13. Use sentiment analysis and dynamic scripting. “Sentiment analysis tracks the emotional tone of customer conversations, providing agents with insights into customer satisfaction and mood. This data enables agents to adjust their strategies, ensuring empathetic or assertive responses as situations demand. By leveraging tools like those available on the CallMiner Eureka platform, companies can improve not only problem resolution but also the overall quality of customer interactions.”

- Optimize agent performance with AI and real-time assist tools, CallMiner; X: @CallMiner

14. Look at both individual agent performance and overall contact center performance. “Contact or call center productivity is the sum of all your agents’ performance, as well as the performance of any technology or resource you use to service customers’ needs. How many customers are you able to serve well, not just quickly? Your agents can only perform as well as your center software and resources allow.”

- How to calculate, measure and improve agent productivity, Qualtrics XM; X: @Qualtrics

15. Monitor agent effort score (AES). “Agent effort score reflects your agents’ level of effort to meet customer needs, resolve issues, and conduct their work. It measures how easy or difficult agents find their day-to-day tasks and handle customer interactions.

“A low AES means that agents have the necessary tools, resources, and support to be efficient in their roles, while a high AES means they face challenges that affect their performance or ability to help customers through their queries.

“AES helps you spot areas where agents need more support or training. Keep in mind that high effort often leads to burnout, which in turn impacts productivity and retention.

“Tip to improve AES: Regularly gather agent feedback to pinpoint workflow obstacles and dig into common hurdles.”

- 31 must-know call center metrics and KPIs for 2025, Zoom; X: @Zoom

16. Create a structured schedule. “A well-structured schedule helps agents prioritize their tasks effectively. Encourage them to allocate specific time slots for calls, meetings, and follow-ups to ensure they remain focused. This approach plays a key role in managing employee productivity by promoting better time management and task ownership.

“Techniques like time blocking can minimize distractions and enhance productivity. Review their schedules regularly to identify any necessary adjustments or improvements.”

- Nitin Saxena, How to Measure & Improve Agent Productivity, Knowmax; X: @knowmaxai

17. Streamline call center agent workflows. “Disjointed processes, excessive steps, or outdated systems can frustrate agents and slow down their ability to resolve customer issues.

“Streamlining means eliminating redundancies, automating repetitive tasks, integrating different aspects of your call center software, and organizing tools and information so they’re easily accessible.

“Even ‘simple’ integrations like interactive voice response (IVR) and skill-based routing can be huge if you’re trying to find out how to improve call center agent performance. Smoothing out cumbersome, tedious parts of the job can help staff focus on more meaningful work (and get it done faster).”

- David McGeough, How to Improve Call Center Agent Performance: 15 Tips, Scorebuddy; X: @score_buddy

18. Foster agent job satisfaction. “Job satisfaction is important for a number of reasons, including:

• Improving retention
• Reducing absenteeism
• Improving productivity

“There are a few key things you can do to help your call center agents achieve job satisfaction, including offering training and development opportunities.

“Providing a positive work environment: Another way to improve job satisfaction is to provide a positive work environment. This means creating an environment that is conducive to learning and growth.

“Giving employees recognition: Finally, another way to improve job satisfaction is to give employees recognition. This can be in the form of verbal praise, written acknowledgment, or even financial rewards.”

- 15 Ideas for Improving Call Center Performance, Call Center Mavericks

19. Encourage peer recognition. “In its most recent Global Culture Report, O.C. Tanner found a direct link between peer recognition and a feeling of connection: When an employee gave recognition to a peer, the connection between the two became 55% stronger. Peer recognition can contribute to a stronger community, which, as we know, makes it more likely that an employee will stick around.

“So how can you enhance peer recognition? One way is to have a ‘shoutouts’ segment during your team huddle, where employees can announce their gratitude for a peer’s help.”

- Amy Rigby, Call Center Management: 10 Tips to Boost Agent Performance, Krisp

20. Hold effective team huddles. “Huddles are moments set aside during the workday to encourage frequent peer-to-peer discussions among contact-center agents and supervisors. These regular interactions can effectively promote certain frontline behaviors, reinforce key messages, and increase agent engagement.

“...Effective huddles allow for time to facilitate sharing of best practices, clarify and reinforce employee expectations, set fun team goals, celebrate peer performance, and emphasize the critical roles that agents play. If structured properly and held consistently, huddles typically improve both agent happiness and performance significantly (especially among lower-performing employees), which in turn can enhance customer experience.”

- Whitney Gretz and Raelyn Jacobson, Boosting contact-center performance through employee engagement, McKinsey & Company; X: @McKinsey

21. Have regular coaching sessions. “Behavioural science tells us that coaching sessions need to have ‘immediate and certain’ consequences. It’s the reason why it is so important for a team leader to praise an agent when they do something well, as this is positive ‘in the moment’ feedback.

“Agents need also to understand the behaviours that lead to improved results. And when that certainty is lost, there is nothing new or additional to compel that behaviour any longer.

“The scientists tell us that the absence of continual immediate feedback is usually the first and the biggest breakdown in an employee’s self-motivating behaviour.

“When it comes to the messaging, team leaders who communicate specific inputs (e.g. promote a specific product with every customer in this scenario) rather than communicating output-related targets (e.g. just increase your sales conversion by 5%) will be more effective.

“Continuous meaningful feedback – in small relevant bites – helps condition the heart and minds of staff.”

- Paul Weald, 6 Key Steps to Deliver a Measurable Improvement in Contact Centre Performance, Call Centre Helper; X: @callcentrehelp

22. Support socialization to promote camaraderie. “Companies can support socialization by seeking to free agents from time-consuming obligations that do not add significant value. For example, contactcenter managers could reevaluate compulsory meetings and periodically replace them with more engaging opportunities (for example, social events such as in-office tournaments) where agents could build comradery.

“Other tactics geared to performance, such as peer-to-peer coaching where a top-quartile performer is paired with a lower performer, not only serve to increase lower-quartile performance but also instill a sense of community and promote socialization. This rapport allows agents to observe specific behavior (such as time-saving shortcuts) and get answers to questions they may be embarrassed to ask their supervisor.”

- Whitney Gretz and Raelyn Jacobson, Boosting contact-center performance through employee engagement, McKinsey & Company; X: @McKinsey

23. Measure occupancy rate to gauge call time vs. idle time. “How long are your agents spending on customer calls during their working day and how much time is spent waiting? Occupancy rate measures the percentage of time that agents spend handling customer contacts against their idle time. A high occupancy rate means agent productivity is high, as there is little time wasted.”

- How to calculate, measure and improve agent productivity, Qualtrics XM; X: @Qualtrics

24. Leverage gamification. “Gamification techniques can help to turn routine activities into more personal experiences that keep agents engaged with continuous improvement.

“...From getting a quick ‘like’ from your leader, to being the best improver in a team peer group, [gamification techniques] all add up and help to reinforce an agent’s achievements.

“What gamification is producing is some peer group competition. Everyone can see what their colleagues are achieving – becoming more consciously aware – thereby creating healthy competition between staff and motivating agents to improve their individual performance.”

- Paul Weald, 6 Key Steps to Deliver a Measurable Improvement in Contact Centre Performance, Call Centre Helper; X: @callcentrehelp

25. Create a positive agent experience. “Metrics focusing on the customer experience (CX) have been the increasing focus for years now. Why? CSAT, FCR, and loyal customers add much more to the bottom line than shaving time off of call duration or reducing transfer rate. This trend is well established, but guess what? It works on agents as well.

“One example: provide a picture of a career path that comes with good performance. This will change the agent’s mindset. They’ll start to think of themselves as a vital team member, not just another body in a cube. Reinforce the message over time in different ways.

“Also, be flexible on AHT, cost per contact (CPC), and other traditional metrics. If the agent is scoring high marks for customer satisfaction, ask them personally what they’re doing differently and why it matters. The recognition motivates them, and you might learn a new approach.”

- Andrew Neff, 6 Actions Proven to Boost Agent Morale and Performance, ICMI; X: @CallCenterICMI

Final thoughts

We’re making it easier to turn customer interaction data into actionable insights.

The latest CallMiner AI Assist updates empower organizations to use natural language to easily uncover customer challenges, motivators and patterns, accelerate workflows, improve #CX, and more.

— CallMiner, Inc. (@CallMiner) May 7, 2025

Agent performance improves with data, visibility, and action. That’s where CallMiner Eureka makes the difference.

CallMiner helps you move beyond surface-level metrics with deep insight into every conversation. Our platform captures and analyzes 100% of interactions, so you can identify what’s working, where agents struggle, and how to fix it—fast. With real-time guidance, personalized coaching insights, conversation intelligence, and automated quality assurance, CallMiner helps your agents show up better on every call. Request a demo to learn more.

Frequently asked questions

Why is agent performance so important in a contact center?

Agent performance directly impacts customer satisfaction, brand reputation, operational efficiency, and revenue. High-performing agents resolve issues faster, reduce repeat calls, and improve customer loyalty, while poor performance leads to frustration, churn, and increased costs.

What are the biggest challenges affecting agent performance?

• Common challenges include:
• Burnout from high call volumes and stressful interactions
• High turnover, leading to constant retraining and instability
• Information overload from complex policies and tools
• Lack of coaching or personalized feedback
• Outdated technology that slows down workflows

How can real-time AI tools improve agent performance?

AI-powered tools like real-time agent guidance monitor conversations, detect risks, and provide instant suggestions to agents. This helps them resolve issues faster, follow compliance protocols, and improve first-call resolution (FCR).

How can I reduce agent burnout and turnover?

Some of the most effective ways to reduce agent burnout and turnover are:

• Optimize scheduling to prevent overwork.
• Recognize and reward top performers.
• Encourage breaks and work-life balance.
• Provide career growth opportunities (e.g., promotions, skill development).
• Foster a positive work culture with team-building activities.

How can I align KPIs with customer satisfaction goals?

Instead of focusing solely on call volume or speed, prioritize metrics like CSAT, FCR, and NPS. Reward agents for quality interactions rather than just quantity.