A Call To Call Center Management

Call Center Agents: Most Prone to Getting Burned Out

If constant stress has you feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, you may be suffering from burnout. When you’re burned out, problems seem insurmountable, everything looks bleak, and it’s difficult to muster up the energy to care—let alone do something about your situation. But if you’re able to recognize the signs and symptoms of impending burnout, you can take steps to prevent it. Effective burnout-busting strategies include taking care of yourself emotionally and physically, asking for help when you need it, and staying connected to other people.

Recognizing Burnout

Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It can occur when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest or motivation that led you to take on a certain role in the first place. Burnout reduces your productivity and saps your energy, leaving you feeling increasingly hopeless, powerless, cynical, and resentful. The unhappiness burnout causes can eventually threaten your job, your relationships, and your health.

Because burnout doesn’t happen overnight — and it’s difficult to fight once you’re in the middle of it — it’s important to recognize the early signs of burnout and head it off. Burnout usually has its roots in stress, so the earlier you recognize the symptoms of stress and address them, the better chance you have of avoiding burnout.

So, what causes Burned Out Call Center Agent?

While some careers have higher rates of burnout, it’s present in every occupation. Those most at risk are employees who feel underpaid, underappreciated, or criticized for matters beyond their control. Service professionals who spend their work lives attending to the needs of others, especially if their work puts them in frequent contact with the dark or tragic side of human experience, are also at risk.

Other causes of job burnout include:

• Setting unrealistic goals for yourself or having them imposed upon you.
• Being expected to be too many things to too many people.
• Working under rules that seem unreasonably coercive or punitive.
• Doing work that frequently causes you to violate your personal values.
• Boredom from doing work that never changes or doesn’t challenge you.
• Feeling trapped for economic reasons by a job that fits any of the scenarios above.

Pasted from <http://www.helpguide.org/mental/burnout_signs_symptoms.htm>