Customer Service Burnout: How to Avoid It?

Every company that cares about its reputation strives to retain every client in any way. At the same time, due to COVID-19, employees faced a wave of layoffs. All these factors forced the retained employees to get an increased workload. However, their earnings stayed small compared to the amount of work performed.

What should entrepreneurs do to deal with customer service burnout? What measures should be taken to prevent this? Further, we will show you how to balance the workload to keep your employees stress-resistant and motivated.

What Is Burnout in Customer Support?

The “burnout” term appeared in the business world not long ago, but it has already gotten a lot of attention. Burnout is understood as chronic stress in the workplace, impossible to cope with. Employees who face it become counterproductive, inactive, and want to quit.

Note that some jobs are initially considered more stressful than others (they are usually related to customer service and team management). For example, customer service agents may be constantly under the pressure of time limits and dealing with occasional discontent from disappointed customers.

How Does Burnout Harm the Employee’s Health?

If your employee ignores work-related problems, they run the risk of burnout, which entails a lot of negative consequences. In addition, these consequences affect both their health and mental state. Here are the consequences that burnout can entail:

• a feeling of anxiety and being in danger, which can grow into depression, personality disorder, and paranoid manifestations;
• loss of emotional stability, which negatively affects relations with other people and provokes conflicts;
• loss of energy, which can lead to a decrease in immunity, problems with the intestinal tract, and migraines;
• lack of motivation in professional activities and indifference to the results of work, which leads to a drop in productivity, a need for disciplinary actions, or dismissal.

6 Tips to Avoid Team Burnout for the Company Management

Now let’s talk about the methods of burnout prevention that we at Simply Contact practice. 

Provide feedback

Provide feedback during meetings with your subordinates to build a trusting relationship between the manager and employees. With remote workers, use video to talk face-to-face. Praise and constructive criticism also have a positive engagement effect. 

Also, try to have informal conversations with your team members as often as possible. Listen to their problems, ask them for their opinion, think about ways to improve the quality of service, etc.

Conduct stress resilience training

Provide your employees with a specialist who can help them deal with time management issues and offer useful and effective recommendations for stress resilience.

Prioritize wellness and mental health

Permit your employees to have time off. They may require different forms of support, in particular, you can provide them with opportunities for recovery, psychologist services, leisure (with the help of corporate events), etc.

Provide career growth and the opportunity to transition between projects

Owners and company managers should regularly hold one-on-one meetings with their subordinates to discuss their further career development and opportunities to expand their current qualifications. This additionally stimulates productivity increase and adds motivation.

Encourage participation in interesting projects

Your subordinates will be more passionate about their work if they really enjoy it. Therefore, you should give them the freedom to choose between tasks. Along with this, each employee still has some tasks that they don’t like, but which are still mandatory. Thus, changing priorities in an employee's task list according to their professional interests helps to avoid burnout.

Leave time for fun

To help your employees relieve stress, regularly scheduled team meetings and go out to lunch together. In general, do everything to bring more positive emotions into the everyday life of your employees. This helps them to stop thinking about work from time to time and just have fun.

5 Tips to Avoid Team Burnout for an Agent

Below we have 5 tips to help you avoid burnout if you are the one dealing with it.

Know when to turn off the computer

The good thing about customer support is that when you leave your workplace, you can forget about work for a while. Nevertheless, sometimes you may need to work overtime on some extra tasks - and this is where you are the one who knows the perfect moment to do that. For example, you might be more comfortable doing it the next morning with a refreshed mind.

On the other hand, outside of the office, it’s better to turn off all notifications and allow yourself a break.

Put aside some time for yourself, at work and at home

Customer support requires a constant emotional and mental presence throughout the day. This commitment to work can tire you out quickly, so make sure you take the time to be quiet and calm. Take breaks during the day, go for short walks, or just hang out with your coworkers.

After a day at work, allow yourself to relax. Read a book, watch your favorite TV show, or do something meaningless and fun.

Spend time with your coworkers off the clock

Try to get to know your colleagues better and spend time with them outside of working hours, because, in customer support service, they are actually your support system. Plus, friendship helps you feel more confident and more enthusiastic about your work. And, finally, friendship with colleagues satisfies the need for face-to-face communication in the workplace.

Reward yourself

Allow yourself some small pleasant things; pamper yourself no matter what your budget is. You have to take care of yourself, and if you keep denying yourself everything, then over time you may feel that you have achieved nothing.

Encouragement can also be spoken. Tell yourself that you are doing well, take notes of your successes, and attach sticky notes to your desk. This helps you maintain a positive attitude, regardless of recurring difficulties and setbacks.

Also, complimenting yourself and your teammates reassures you and your colleagues that you are all doing the right job.

Keep a record of every piece of positive feedback you get

Positive feedback is also important. Create a diary in which you write down all the satisfied customers’ comments, and words of encouragement from colleagues and managers.

Check this diary often and remind yourself that you are a truly valuable employee who can handle any task. It also reminds you that customers are people too, and you are just helping their business with your efforts.

On top of that, having a progress journal helps you in your career advancement and gauges your performance. Thanks to this, you no longer have to look for positive examples of your work in your database, since you already have everything at hand.

Conclusion

These are all the tips for avoiding customer service stress the Simply Contact team wanted to share with you. In conclusion, we would like to remind you that both managers and employees need to take care of themselves and their colleagues.

Always be responsive and take time to relax. After all, if employees begin to experience professional call center burnout, this harms both the team and the entire company.