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July 1, 2026

Why Knowing What to Say Isn’t Enough in Today’s Call Centers
Submitted by Ulysses Learning

Dina Vance, Senior Vice President from Ulysses Learning, takes on our reader’s question this month. She offers several observations and best practices that are commonly overlooked in contact centers across the US. According to Dina, these are among the top of those best practices that can transform your contact center into a customer experience-focused operation that gets high marks. 

NOTE: We’re looking for more of your challenges. Email your contact center-related questions to: ChallengeSolved@ulysseslearning.com

Q: If Agents Know What to Say, Why Isn’t Performance Improving?

A: Knowing what to say isn’t the same as knowing how to think in the moment. Performance breaks down not from a lack of knowledge, but from a lack of confidence and capability to adapt, interpret, and decide in real time when conversations don’t go as planned.

If agents know what to say, why isn’t performance improving? It’s a question I hear often—and one that reveals a deeper issue inside most contact centers. On the surface, everything seems in place. Agents have been trained, they’ve memorized scripts, they understand products and policies, and in many cases, they can even demonstrate the “right” responses in coaching sessions or role plays. Yet despite all of this, escalations continue, customer experiences remain inconsistent, and performance metrics fluctuate. The disconnect isn’t in knowledge—it’s in execution.

I was reminded of this during a call review where an agent checked every box. They followed the quality expectations staying compliant throughout the interaction. By traditional standards, it was a strong call. But the customer still left frustrated. What stood out wasn’t what the agent said but it was what they didn’t pick up on. A moment of hesitation from the customer went unaddressed. A subtle shift in tone signaled rising confusion, but the agent pushed forward with the call. And when the conversation veered off its expected path, the agent struggled to recover. It became clear that this wasn’t a gap in knowledge. It was a gap in situational thinking.

Scripts Don’t Carry Conversations—People Do

For years, many organizations (including my own at one point) have operated under the belief that better scripts, clearer processes, and more structured guidance will naturally lead to better performance. And to be fair, that approach does work in controlled environments. It works in training rooms, in role plays, and in predictable scenarios where conversations unfold exactly as expected. But real customer interactions are anything but predictable. Customers bring emotion and nuance into every call. They don’t always articulate their needs clearly or they don’t follow a linear path. 

In those moments, agents aren’t simply recalling information but needing to make decisions. They’re interpreting what they hear, reading between the lines, adjusting their approach, and choosing how to respond in real time. That’s where performance either elevates or breaks down. Because while knowledge is static, execution is dynamic. Knowing what to say doesn’t automatically translate into knowing when to say it, why it matters in that moment, or how to pivot when the situation changes.

Without that deeper capability, agents tend to fall into predictable patterns. They lean heavily on their self-imposed scripts (possibly based on how they receive credit through QA), even when those scripts no longer fit the conversation. They hesitate when something unexpected arises, unsure of how to move forward. Often another impact is increased escalations when not necessarily because they need to, but because they lack the confidence to make a decision independently. Over time, this creates inconsistency because they haven’t been fully equipped to think through the moment.

The Question I Ask Leaders Now

This is also where leadership mindset plays a critical role. I often ask leaders a simple but revealing question: if your supervisors stepped away today, what would happen to performance? Would your team continue to operate at the same level, or would there be an immediate drop-off? If performance depends on real-time intervention—someone stepping in to guide, correct, or reinforce—then the capability isn’t truly embedded. It’s being managed. And managing performance is very different from building it. Management creates dependency; development creates sustainability.

What I Had to Rethink

This realization forced me to rethink our approach. Like many others, I spent years focusing on ensuring agents had access to the right information. But over time, it became clear that information wasn’t the differentiator. The real gap showed up in how agents responded when things got messy and when conversations became unpredictable. That’s when I shifted the focus from “What did you say?” to “What were you thinking in that moment?” Because that’s where true performance lives.

When you begin to develop how agents think, you see a fundamental shift. Conversations become more authentic and less robotic. Agents are better able to read cues, and respond in a genuine way to let the customer’s know we care. They don’t freeze when something unexpected happens, and they don’t immediately default to escalation. Instead, they work through the situation with confidence and ownership. You can actually hear the difference in how they engage.

Coaching evolves as well. It moves beyond correcting errors after the fact and becomes a conversation about decision-making in the moment. As leaders, we have to elevate our own performance to ensure we are developing the judgement and critical thinking skills along with the knowledge through consistent coaching. This is where real growth happens, and ultimately, that’s what drives consistent performance.

The Shift That Matters Most

The shift that matters most is moving beyond providing better knowledge or quality training and instead couple this with developing better decision-makers. It’s about investing in how agents think under pressure, how they navigate ambiguity, and how they adapt in the moment that matters. Because at the end of the day, customers don’t experience our training programs or our quality standards. They experience the decisions our agents make in real time. And that’s what ultimately defines performance.

About Dina Vance