A responsive agent is any company employee. The explosion of remote interaction across all industries and company sizes is changing the concept of contact center and agents. The responsive contact center requires a change in the “traditional” agent roles. Any employee can become a contact center agent in addition to their main duties.  

A couple of years ago I attended a conference on customer service and participated in a session where a speaker from Ecuador described how his contact center survived the earthquake that devastated his country in 2016. To be honest I don’t really remember the details anymore, but the pictures that he showed of the wreckage of the building where his contact center was located are still very vivid in my memory: the whole thing was just a mount of debris.