Customer experience (CX) gets most of the spotlight in conversations about loyalty, growth, and competitive advantage. That makes sense. Customer sentiment is often the clearest reflection of how a company performs. What gets less attention, though, is what powers every frontline interaction: the experience of the people delivering it.
Agent experience (AX) is not a "nice to have." It is a foundational driver of customer outcomes. When agents are equipped, supported, and understood, customers feel the difference. When agents are hamstrung by poor tools, disjointed information, and unclear expectations, customers feel that too. In today's complex experience economy, fixing CX without fixing AX is like painting the front of a car while ignoring what's under the hood.
In this post, we explore why agent experience matters so deeply, what the common barriers are, and how organisations can redesign environments where both agents and customers thrive.
Most customer interactions happen through people. Even with automation and artificial intelligence taking on routine tasks, human agents are central for complex conversations, emotional intelligence, and contextual decision-making. They are the human bridge between systems and people, direct feedback and resolution, empathy and resolution.
A disconnected agent experience often shows up as:
These outcomes directly impede CX metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES), but they are rooted upstream in the conditions of the agent experience itself.
Organisations often underestimate the factors that make or break AX. Here are the most frequent (and most improvable) barriers:
Agents frequently navigate multiple disconnected systems to support a single interaction. This slows response time, increases cognitive load, and forces workarounds that diminish both agent and customer experience. Research shows that 74% of agents say having access to more tools and data will give them more opportunities to personalize interactions.
Without a unified view of the customer journey, agents act with partial information. This limitation increases repeat contacts, unnecessary transfers, and inconsistent responses, making customers feel like they are starting over with every touchpoint. The frustration is real: 53% of consumers say they need to repeat their reason for calling to multiple agents, while only 15% say they rarely or never have to repeat themselves.
Agents thrive on feedback that helps them improve. When performance reviews focus only on numbers, or when learning opportunities are rare, agents feel stuck and undervalued. The consequences are severe: poor job training led to burnout for 51% of call center agents, which is directly linked to voluntary turnover. Continuous coaching that ties outcomes to behaviour raises both confidence and performance.
When agents are measured on speed over quality, what gets optimised is not the customer experience, it is a truncated version of it. Focusing exclusively on metrics like Average Handle Time (AHT) without balancing quality leads to shortcuts and poor outcomes.
Agents need environments in which they can speak up about friction points, errors in tools, or inconsistencies in process. Without psychological safety, issues remain buried until they become customer problems.
Improving agent experience is not just altruistic, it's strategic. A few of the ways AX improvements ripple outward include:
In other words, investing in agent experience invests directly in customer outcomes and long-term brand value.
Improving agent experience doesn't require perfection. It requires intention and structure. Here are key principles that organisations can adopt:
Agents should not spend their day toggling between systems or exporting data just to serve a customer. A unified interface or well‑integrated ecosystem reduces friction and cognitive burden.
Provide agents with a holistic view of the customer journey. When agents can see previous interactions, preferences, and outcomes, conversations become easier and more meaningful.
Quality matters as much as speed. A balanced scorecard that includes resolution quality, customer clarity, and empathy alongside efficiency metrics aligns behaviour with outcomes.
Routine feedback loops, learning pathways, and skills development help agents grow. This reinforces agent confidence and equips teams to handle more complex scenarios.
Agents see recurring patterns and operational gaps daily. When organisations invite feedback and act on it, systemic issues get fixed faster and morale improves.
When agent experience is prioritised, it shows up in subtle but powerful ways:
In organisations that elevate AX alongside CX, agents become advocates of the brand rather than intermediaries. They carry context, confidence, and continuity into every customer interaction.
You cannot fix customer experience without fixing agent experience because the two are inseparable. Customers don't interact with dashboards or omnichannel architectures, they interact with people. And the quality of those interactions depends on the conditions in which agents operate.
The data is conclusive: 59% of consumers feel businesses have lost touch with the human element of customer experience, and only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs. At the same time, 82% of U.S. consumers want more human interaction in the future.
When organisations invest in agent experience, they invest in a sustainable foundation for customer trust, loyalty, and operational excellence. Fixing AX is not a side project. It is the work that makes great CX possible.
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