How AI Training Agents Can Relieve Pressure for Frontline Staff
Retail workers have a wave of relief coming. Companies are recruiting tech solutions powered by artificial intelligence training agents (agentic AI) that are helping to relieve pressure for frontline staff by better preparing them for high-stress situations — e.g., demanding customers or difficult team dynamics — through immersive, simulated role-play training. With this relief comes a positive impact for the employer: lower employee stress, less turnover and improved performance.
State of Play
We know the market is trending in favor of customer experience, and frontline staff are at the helm of curating customer connections. According to Attensi's independent survey of over 2,000 employees in the U.S. and the UK, 75 percent of employees feel anxious about handling difficult workplace interactions. What’s more, nearly 40 percent would prefer to practice with AI instead of their manager. This tells us two things: one, we have to look for solutions to help alleviate that anxiety and, two, AI-powered tools can enable them to overcome that anxiety.
Where We’re Seeing the Difference
Not just a generative function, AI solutions can be powered by agentic systems that provide a hyperpersonalized learning experience. Where the conversation on AI has been predominantly focused on generative AI (GenAI), we’re seeing the difference that next-level agentic AI makes.
Think of agentic AI as an interconnected range of expert agents coming together to listen, learn and respond in hyper-realistic ways.
This sets agentic systems apart from static ChatGPT-type solutions. And it’s not just about “looking the part.” Simulated experiences that have hyper-realistic dialogues can cater to the needs of the learner, fortify the learning. Instead of a one-size-fits all training model, the user is steered towards a learning experience that upholds real business goals such as an excellent customer experience journey, product catalogs, and upselling mastery.
This is where traditional learning fails. It tries to prime the knowledge of the learner through unengaging PDFs and video and does little to help train employees on the real-life application of knowledge. Now, simulation training built on agentic AI offers the dynamics to train employees on difficult scenarios and build emotional connections to the customer and team through nuanced feedback and role-play. We know from impact data that the closer we get to a "real world" experience with the training, the more powerful it is for the learner in their real job roles. The ability to experience difficult customer interactions or peer conversations over and over through the training can effectively reduce anxiety and pressure when it comes to the real thing. That's extremely valuable when you consider that the frontline experiences 60-plus interactions an hour. How is your onboarding and training strategy supporting employee development in an engaging and effective way?
Frontline = Bottom Line
With the pressure to perform eased through more robust training, employees are more likely to stay and thrive. We’ve seen a massive reduction in churn for new hires and turnover for employees where they're being effectively supported through their onboarding journey. When we look at scale, these numbers add up quickly.
This alleviates another industry challenge: the leadership and manager-to-employee ratio.
It's well known that managers are spread too thinly with limited resources. We rely on management to reach customer service, sales, and team culture goals, and getting that one-to-one mentorship time is often sacrificed. We see the pressure that AI-powered simulations relieve here. Due to the ease and accessibility of these solutions, now and in the future, the ratio of managers to employees is no longer a barrier to in-the-moment training when staff need it. In an industry where we're constantly prioritizing customer spend, we need to balance that with what we’re willing to invest in our people.
Retail employees are finally getting the attention they deserve to support customer experience through immersive simulation training. The ability to connect with more engaging and impactful training is also proving to provide a better working environment that has significant returns. This mode of training offers a company personalized learning journeys that are on-brand, scalable and consistent in quality with benchmark scoring. It’s the perfect enterprise training solution to help reach business goals such as reduction in turnover, time to skills, and customer experience. That’s the bottom line.
Greg Hull is the senior vice president of commercial operations at Attensi, a mobile training app.
