Did you know that according to Gartner, agents represent up to 95% of contact center costs?
With stakes this high, every second of wasted time translates directly to your bottom line. Yet some of the biggest drains on contact center efficiency remain hidden in plain sight.
While most leaders focus on obvious metrics like handle time and call volume, three silent productivity killers are likely costing you millions: application switching, excessive after-call work, and process variations. These hidden costs don't show up clearly on your dashboard, but they're eating away at your margins every day.
Let's pull back the curtain on these costly issues and show you how to spot and solve them.
Application switching happens when your agents bounce between different software tools to handle a single customer interaction. Your agents likely use between 5-10 different applications daily - CRM systems, knowledge bases, billing platforms, messaging apps, and more.
This constant toggling creates mental fatigue. Each switch requires your agents to shift context, find information, and reorient themselves, adding seconds or minutes to every interaction.
What makes application switching so insidious is that most leaders vastly underestimate how much it happens. When contact centers finally measure it accurately, the results are shocking.
"I was convinced our new streamlined system was working well until we saw the actual data," says a contact center director at a major financial institution. "Our agents were switching between applications over 40 times during an average call. No wonder our handle times were so high."
This reaction is common. Nearly every organization that measures application switching for the first time is stunned by the results.
Most process improvement efforts simply can't see this problem because:
This is where process intelligence platforms like Skan AI make a critical difference. Unlike traditional approaches, Skan AI can observe every application agents use - both integrated systems AND non-integrated applications.
This comprehensive visibility reveals the true extent of application switching. Skan AI creates a complete picture of the application ecosystem and precisely tracks how agents navigate between tools.
The surprise factor is consistent: customers are often shocked when they see visualizations of how much application switching actually occurs. Many discover applications being regularly used that management wasn't even aware of.
Application switching directly impacts your most important metrics:
With the average handle time in contact centers sitting at 6 minutes and 10 seconds in 2025, even small reductions in application switching can yield significant savings.
Look for these warning signs that application switching may be a major hidden cost:
After-call work (ACW) is everything your agents do after they hang up but before they're ready for the next call — documenting the interaction, updating records, sending follow-ups, or entering data.
While some ACW is necessary, excessive time spent on these tasks is a massive hidden cost. For every minute your agents spend on ACW, that's a minute they're not available to help customers.
Industry best practices suggest that after-call work should be minimized to improve agent efficiency, yet in many contact centers, it accounts for a significant portion of total handle time.
The causes of excessive ACW often include:
The first step to addressing excessive ACW is measuring it accurately. This requires tracking not just when agents mark themselves as in "after-call" status, but what they're actually doing during that time.
Look for patterns in your ACW data:
Many contact centers have cut ACW time by streamlining processes, improving system integration, and implementing smart automation. Skan AI helps determine how and where to focus your efforts to solve these issues.
The third hidden cost comes from inconsistency when the same customer request can be handled in multiple ways, creating unpredictable costs and experiences.
Variation is natural — different agents develop different approaches to solving the same problem. But this variation comes at a price:
What's particularly interesting is that your top performers often follow completely different processes than your average agents. The question becomes: which process should be the standard?
Traditionally, identifying the best process required expensive time-motion studies or manual observations of a small sample of agents. These approaches were so costly and time-consuming that most contact centers simply lived with the variations.
Modern process intelligence platforms change this equation. By observing how all agents handle similar requests, these tools can automatically identify the most efficient paths — the "gold standard" processes your top performers follow.
Once identified, these optimized processes can be standardized, trained, and eventually automated, leading to consistent experiences and predictable costs.
These three issues — application switching, excessive ACW, and process variations — don't exist in isolation. They compound each other's negative impacts.
For example, excessive application switching often leads to longer ACW as agents struggle to document interactions across multiple systems. Meanwhile, process variations make both application switching and ACW more unpredictable and harder to optimize.
The result is a cascading effect on both customer satisfaction and agent retention. With contact center turnover rates exceeding 40% in some industries and costing upwards of $2,500 per lost agent, these hidden inefficiencies directly impact your bottom line.
Leading contact centers are addressing these hidden costs through process intelligence - technologies that provide complete visibility into how work actually happens.
A major insurance provider discovered that by reducing application switching, streamlining ACW, and standardizing key processes, they saved over $4 million annually while improving customer satisfaction scores by 15%.
The approach typically follows these steps:
If you're ready to uncover and address the hidden costs in your contact center, start with these steps:
Assess your current visibility: Can you see what's happening across all applications and processes? If not, consider tools that provide this complete view.
Focus on high-volume processes first: Target the customer journeys that represent the largest volume or cost to your center.
Look for quick wins: Often, simple changes to application layouts or process flows can yield immediate benefits. The same goes for eliminating non-value-added or redundant activities.
Involve your agents: They know where the friction points are - make them partners in improvement.
The contact centers that thrive in 2025 and beyond will be those that address these hidden costs head-on. As operational complexity continues to challenge 60% of contact center leaders, the ability to see and optimize the entire work process becomes a critical competitive advantage.
By tackling application switching, streamlining after-call work, and standardizing processes, you can reduce costs while improving both the customer and agent experience. The result? Lower handle times, higher first-contact resolution, improved CSAT scores, and ultimately, stronger business results.
Ready to discover how much contact center optimization is worth? Try our ROI calculator.