Arianna Huffington’s Thrive And Tech Giant Genesys Partner To Empathetically Help The Employee Burnout Crisis

Customer service is mission critical to the success of a company. Call center agents are the hardworking, often overlooked, important link between the company and their customers and clients. They have to cheerfully respond to a wide array of difficult questions, and sometimes bear the brunt of angry people taking their frustrations out on a faceless voice behind a headset. 

A Salesforce survey of more than 1,000 service employees revealed “current tensions within the industry.” There is the risk of people quitting in the Great Resignation movement and a war for talent being waged. It’s one of the most in-demand jobs, but a “whopping 71% of service agents have considered leaving their job in the past six months and 69% are considering leaving customer service roles entirely.” 

The study also found that service leaders are experiencing this turbulence directly, with 50% claiming they have seen an increase in resignations in their department. If the people who are responsible for interacting with your best customers feel disengaged and unhappy, it’s reasonable to conclude that their attitude will have a negative impact on their clients’ experience.  

We’ve all experienced a disgruntled customer service person who has ruined your day with their lack of interest or abusive attitude. Consumers air their poor experience on social media, assert that they’ll never use the brand, service or product ever again and urge others to do the same, creating a public relations nightmare. 

Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, a leader in cloud customer experience orchestration, and Thrive, the behavior change technology company founded by Arianna Huffington, are partnering to improve this situation by empathetically empowering workers. The two well-experienced CEOs know that the best customer experiences start with happy employees who are shown appreciation and gratitude. Bates and Huffington recognize that employee mental health and overall emotional well-being are the most urgent workplace issues of our time.

Thrive and Genesys are turning toward technology to improve the quality of the worklife of people, starting with customer services professionals. They are keenly aware that while tech is helpful, it can’t be focused solely on business efficiency, as it would only lead to more feelings of frustration and burnout. 

To greatly improve and enhance the employee experience, Thrive and Genesys are jointly introducing a unique innovative solution that enables organizations to embed well-being tools directly in the workflow, so workers can de-stress, reset and recharge in real time. In a pilot program with a Fortune 10 retailer, the results showed improved employee well-being and increased customer satisfaction.

Stress, anxiety and burnout has hit record highs over the last two years of the pandemic. It’s now compounded, as many people begin their third year of remote or hybrid work. The blurring of the lines between work and home life has created an “always-on” culture that leaves no time to decompress. 

Employees are feeling the strain of the unrelenting workload and overall stress of living and working during a global virus outbreak. It’s made many people reevaluate their jobs. Millions of Americans have arrived at the conclusion that life is too short to waste on a job that they don’t like, where they are being mistreated, unappreciated and paid unfairly. This mindset led to multiple months of 4 million people quitting their jobs in the Great Resignation movement. 

Progressive CEOs, like Bates, CEO of Genesys, former head of Skype and GoPro and current board member of eBay and VMware, exemplify the new breed of empathetic leaders. Empathy is understanding what a person is going through and taking helpful action. Smart forward-looking business leaders in this new fast-growing digital economy recognize that providing empathy is a proven business strategy to empower and energize people.

Now is the time to highlight empathetic experiences that earn customer loyalty. Companies need to manage their businesses from the vantage point of two mission-critical assets of their business—the employees and their customers—putting empathy into action, resulting in becoming highly successful.

Genesys, the global leader in cloud customer experience and contact center solutions, previously gauged the sentiments of 5,000 adults across the world about their customer service experiences, and found the following: 

• While a majority (71%) believe that customer service has become more personalized in the last five years through the use of technology, nearly half (48%) still note a distinct lack of compassion in their treatment.
• Just 21% say their customer service experiences have become “much more” personalized. Fully half of those surveyed (50%) say their experiences are only “somewhat more” personalized, leaving a lot of room for improvement.
• When contacting a company to resolve a support issue, just over half (52%) of survey respondents feel they’re shown empathy when they need help. What’s worse, participants sense this lack of commiseration from companies with which they regularly do business.

With this data in mind, organizations should reinvent their relationship with employees by taking an empathy-first approach. That’s why Thrive and Genesys created a solution aimed at improving people’s overall well-being, helping them to achieve more clarity, balance and focus on the job. With Thrive Reset for Genesys, the customer experience industry now has an employer-initiated stress intervention solution for frontline workers that is science-backed and designed to focus on the root causes of burnout.

Customer service departments are a critical lifeline for consumers, who have required unprecedented levels of support to deal with challenges related to the pandemic, economic volatility and societal strain. At the same time, many contact center employees have been stretched thin, handling increasingly tense customers, while working virtually from an isolated environment for organizations that are short-staffed. 

According to a Cornell University study, nearly 90% of contact center operators report high or very high-stress levels. In addition, even before the pandemic the average attrition rate for contact center workers was two times that of other occupations.

Huffington said about this new game-changing initiative, “Thrive is on a mission to end burnout.” She continued, “It starts with reshaping the employee experience by giving employers tools to foster individual well-being. Together with Genesys, we’re embedding well-being experiences into everyday workflows, which is key for the sustained mental health and resilience of employees.”

Bates pointed out, “Many workplaces today are optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. That results in people feeling overworked and their contributions being undervalued.” Bates added, “With Thrive, we can shift the way businesses use technology to create personalized, empathetic employee experiences.”

To change the dynamics, Thrive Reset for Genesys promotes taking short breaks throughout the day. Neuroscience shows that even 60- to 90-second breaks are enough to break the cycle of cumulative stress. “In my research over the last 20 years, I’ve focused on finding the smallest thing that gives the biggest positive impact,” said BJ Fogg, Ph.D., founder and director of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab and Behavioral Science chair of Thrive’s Scientific Advisory Board. “That’s what I see in Thrive Reset. So easy. But yet so powerful. This wonderful offering will boost the health, well-being and happiness for people around the world.”

Businesses that deploy the platform to orchestrate their customer experiences have a proactive way to help their employees course-correct from stress in 60 seconds based on proven neuroscience methodology. With the new empathy-led offering from Genesys and Thrive, organizations can intervene in their employees’ workday by delivering well-being breaks straight to their desktops when they’re needed the most.

For example, imagine the stress an agent experiences during an intense interaction with a frustrated customer. Instead of another call being thrown into the queue, the employee is given a brief video-based break designed to reduce stress and help them reset. As a result, the next customer is dealt with by an employee who is recharged and better prepared to deliver great service, instead of one coming directly off a stressful experience. 

An early trial of the offering showed employees who experienced Thrive Resets received greater customer satisfaction ratings (+5%), higher productivity scores (+17%) and better overall satisfaction levels with their employer.

Organizations can download Thrive Reset for Genesys with a simple click and customize the timing of the breaks to address their employees’ needs. For example, Thrive Reset may be triggered due to long call durations, a certain number of calls handled or hours worked with no downtime. In the future, Genesys and Thrive plan to enable the automatic delivery of well-being breaks for employees during critical times using technologies like real-time, AI-based sentiment analysis, determined by key factors, including mood of the previous interaction, behavior and tone of voice.

Explaining the science behind Resets, Leanne Williams, Ph.D., director of the Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness, wrote, “Stress shapes how our brain changes and adapts and the brain sometimes gets stuck in cycles of negative thought patterns, especially when we experience stress that is outside our control. Strategies for boosting positive connections can help break this cycle. As we practice them, our brain can adapt and create new thought patterns.”

Thrive Reset for Genesys will be available in March to businesses via the Genesys AppFoundry, a dedicated customer and employee experience marketplace.