The effortless customer experience has been the guiding mantra in customer service for the last decade. Yet, to meet rising expectations, companies are realizing that their biggest hurdle isn't the customer experience (CX) - it's the agent experience.

So what's holding companies back from providing an effortless agent experience? At Pier 1, where I manage the Customer Relations department, we faced a number of challenges. After re-launching our e-commerce site six years ago, we realized we didn't have a sustainable service strategy to keep up with increasing demands. Instead of scaling for growth, we expanded our service team by 200%. But our associates were frustrated.