Closing the CX Workforce Engagement Gap Through Better Manager Support

The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace report confirms what effective contact center leaders already know: the gap between average organizations (21% engagement) and best-in-class (70%) comes down to one thing — equipping managers to succeed. With global employee engagement dropping from 23% to 21% last year, primarily due to declining manager engagement, now is the perfect time to assess whether we're truly providing our frontline leaders with the support they need.

The headline takeaway is the decrease in global employee engagement from 23% in 2023 to 21% last year (2024).  The primary cause was a drop in manager engagement which fell from 30% to 27% while individual contributor engagement remained flat at 18%. Among two groups in particular, managers aged under 35, and female engagement fell by five and seven percentage points respectively.

At TouchPoint One , we value Gallup’s insights to help guide and clarify the Acuity vision and roadmap, ensuring the platform’s effectiveness as a reliable and potent CX performance tool is grounded in features and capabilities of the utmost impact to every category of Acuity user – frontline agent to CEO and everyone in between. When 70% of team engagement comes from managers, however, we are always laser-focused on equipping them with the proper tools to lead teams and drive results.
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When Aucera (now a ResultsCX company) implemented Acuity to equip their managers with the right tools, they achieved significant measurable results:

• 36.5% reduction in attrition
• 41.14% improvement in balanced performance across all KPIs
• 9% boost in First Call Resolution (from 79.76% to 86.95%)
• 5.7% improvement in Customer Satisfaction
• 7x platform ROI in year one
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These concrete outcomes demonstrate what's possible when managers receive proper support, particularly striking in an industry where many organizations struggle with high turnover and inconsistent performance.
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The core strategic capabilities of the Acuity platform include:

1. Complete Performance Visibility. This includes metrics tied to outcomes as well as those reflective of the perspectives, behaviors, and actions that produce the intended results – a performance spectrum far wider than what’s available via the CCaaS platform alone. Acuity maximizes the value of disparate systems data, conversations, and AI - and equips all contact center stakeholders - frontline to C-suite, with insight and foresight to understand, anticipate, and realize what’s possible in their contact centers and intelligently and confidently lead it to exceptional CX.
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2. Customized Coaching. Yes, digitized. Yes, AI-augmented. But custom-tailoring is key. In contact center coaching, there’s simply no one size fits all and the preferences, tolerances, and requirements specific to your business, industry, and operation must be integrated into the solution. According to Gallup, a paltry 44% of managers say they have received management training, and that manager disengagement can be cut in half by providing it.  Acuity coaching systems not only train, but continuously inform, guide, engage, and inspire contact center managers in accordance with your unique people-empowerment, skills development, and leadership methods and ideologies - making a 50% workforce disengagement reduction well within reach.
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3. Innovative Engagement. The Gallup report highlights that organizations with high engagement (70%) achieve dramatically better outcomes by creating environments where employees feel connected to leadership and purpose. Traditional engagement approaches are clearly falling short, with global engagement at just 21%. At TouchPoint One, we've developed engagement mechanisms that address this gap through objective, data-driven incentives and inspired gamification, integration of RPA (rules-based automation) and Agentic AI (autonomous decision-making), and contextual capture, analysis, and care of employee voice. These innovations create the natural pathways for connection that drive measurable performance improvements.

Effective coaching can be taught and, according to Gallup, boosts manager performance by 20 to 28% (employee well-being - even more). When combined with comprehensive performance visibility and innovative engagement mechanisms, the results are significant and measurable.

Survey responses from frontline managers using Acuity illustrate the real-world benefits of this integrated approach:
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"Love how I can see everything my team is doing right in Acuity. Makes coaching so much easier when we can look at the actual numbers together." – Team Lead

"Used to be hard keeping remote agents engaged but A-GAME gives us something to rally around and talk about besides just metrics." – Team Lead

"Acuity makes my life so much easier. No more waiting for and then digging through reports - everything I need for coaching is right there." – Team Lead

Acuity provides what struggling operations lack: holistic performance visibility, structured coaching systems, and engagement mechanisms that work.

Is your contact center performing at its maximum potential? If not, it may be time to reassess how you're supporting your frontline leaders. We invite you to explore how Acuity can enhance your manager experience and, by extension, your entire operation. Contact us today for a personalized demonstration of how our performance management platform addresses your specific challenges and opportunities.