Hybrid work or flexible work is likely here to stay, but many contact centers still struggle to support remote agents effectively. From unstable home networks to inconsistent tools, technology plays a critical role in whether agents succeed or fail. This article explores why CX observability is essential to delivering consistent, high-quality service in hybrid contact centers.
Right now, working from home is back in the headlines. Some employers are keen to call people in, but many of their offices aren’t even ready. Desks are limited, hot-desking is patchy, and basic setup support is lacking. However, even if those problems disappeared tomorrow, contact centres would still be grappling with something much harder to fix: variability.
Hybrid agents operate in fragmented environments, with varying degrees of reliability and support. The contrast becomes obvious when you track the same agent across locations. In the office, things are tightly controlled, enterprise-grade internet, standardised hardware, managed software, and instant access to IT. At home, it’s a patchwork. WiFi quality swings, devices differ, and support is slower. The same agent, on the same tools, can have a very different experience depending on where they’re working. So when performance suffers, is it down to personal setup, or are we looking at a broader, systemic issue? That’s the question leaders need to ask if they want hybrid models to truly work.
The future of hybrid work relies less on policy (unless that policy is to have CX Observability) and more on performance, and performance relies on being able to see if the right tech is working as needed.
When calls go wrong, customers blame the brand, and agents bear the stress. A delayed audio stream, a distorted voice, or an unexpected disconnect isn’t simply a technical glitch, it becomes a human frustration that is proven to erode trust.
The challenge is not simply where agents work, but how well they are supported to do their jobs. Success depends on understanding every layer of the agent’s environment and being able to identify what’s helping or hindering their ability to deliver great service. Then, empowering people (including agents) with actionable insights to be able to resolve identified issues before they impact the customer experience.
That means stepping back and observing technology, operations and experience data as one. From networks to headsets, browsers to routing paths, each component plays a role in shaping the quality of the interaction. To improve performance across hybrid environments, we need to understand the entire ecosystem surrounding the agent. From the quality of their home network to the devices they use and the software they rely on, every element plays a role in shaping customer and agent experience and the data tells the story.
To properly support hybrid agents, you need to look through three interconnected layers: technology, operations, and experience. Each one influences the others, and unless you're observing them together, you're only ever seeing part of the picture.
Hidden Variables in the Stack
Technically, hybrid agents operate without the guardrails of the office. At home, there’s no QoS (Quality of Service) on the network, no managed traffic shaping, and no SLA-backed enterprise connection. Instead, performance is dictated by variable upstream bandwidth, local network contention, and hardware capabilities, factors that can change throughout the day.
For voice over IP (VoIP), issues like high jitter, packet loss, or latency over 150ms start to degrade the experience. WebRTC, the protocol behind Amazon Connect’s CCP (Contact Control Panel), is particularly sensitive to these fluctuations. While adaptive jitter buffers can help, they aren’t a fix for unstable links or overloaded CPUs.
Browser-based softphones introduce another layer of risk. When agents have multiple tabs open, especially ones running media-heavy scripts like YouTube, Spotify, or collaboration tools like Teams. CPU cycles and memory are consumed, leading to stuttering audio or softphone lag. Browser throttling, garbage collection timing, and hardware acceleration support all play a part.
Using Amazon Connect as an example hybrid agents connect to regions via the public internet, therefore routing paths matter. Instances not optimized or configured for the region they are in can cause BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) anomalies, or it could be something as simple as an agent using the wrong softphone. This can add 100ms or more to round-trip times, enough to create crosstalk and unnatural pauses in live conversations.
Even the agent’s headset can introduce variability. In many hybrid setups, agents use their own equipment, including headsets, which may not be optimized for voice clarity. Personal, consumer-grade devices often lack consistent audio pickup or adequate noise cancellation. Without standardised, tested hardware such as USB headsets with noise-cancelling microphones, call quality issues can arise from the device itself, not the network. API-enabled headsets can offer added telemetry, such as background noise levels or microphone health, which is increasingly important for troubleshooting and maintaining audio quality across distributed teams.
Real Impact on Hybrid Agents
Let’s say your Amazon Connect instance is hosted in Sydney. An agent in Melbourne might still experience poor quality if BGP routes their traffic through Singapore due to a misconfigured or overloaded peering agreement. The result? A perfectly healthy machine and network still delivers a poor call experience.
And because BGP is external to your infrastructure, traditional IT monitoring won’t see it.
Without visibility into these technical indicators, WebRTC stats, device telemetry, browser performance, you’re left troubleshooting symptoms instead of root causes.
Infrastructure, Policy, and Real-World Constraints
From an operational standpoint, hybrid work introduces variability that centralised environments were designed to eliminate.
Start with ISP diversity. Unlike corporate networks, which are monitored, standardized, and prioritized for voice traffic, home agents might be on anything from Fibre (HFC) to ADSL or 5G. Some ISPs deprioritise upstream traffic, which impacts two-way voice. Others enforce CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT), which can interfere with session persistence for real-time protocols.
Then there’s the policy layer. Many organisations still rely on VPNs or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to provide secure access. While these solutions serve a purpose, they are not optimised for real-time media. VPNs often reroute media unnecessarily through corporate gateways, adding latency and jitter. VDI sessions, especially those without media offloading, introduce additional encoding-decoding cycles, increasing processing delay and degrading audio quality. Even split-tunnel VPN configurations, if misapplied, can fail to exempt UDP traffic from inspection.
On the device side, things like endpoint protection software, background processes, or MDM-enforced updates can spike CPU usage or interrupt softphone behaviour. Chrome-based CCPs may stall during high IO operations like syncs or scheduled backups.
Operational friction can also be introduced via support workflows. Hybrid agents experiencing call quality issues may not have an easy way to capture logs, reproduce faults, or escalate issues efficiently. Without end-to-end observability, IT and CX teams often work in silos, leading to slow time-to-resolution and agent frustration.
When Systems Strain, People Feel It
Experience data tells us what the metrics alone can’t. Every dropped packet, delayed response, or login failure translates to a moment of friction. When repeated, those moments change how agents feel and how customers respond.
Modern observability platforms now enable correlation between technical signals (like degraded WebRTC stats or high machine load) and experiential data, such as customer sentiment scores, agent mood tracking, or QA assessments. For example, you might detect that NPS or CSAT dips during times when packet loss exceeds 3%, or when CPU load on agent devices spikes above 90%.
Speech analytics can surface changes in tone or escalation patterns that correspond with technical disruptions. Acoustic interruptions, like robotic voices or double talk, can be matched with known jitter spikes. In parallel, agent feedback platforms can capture real-time mood indicators that, when analysed alongside performance data, offer insight into how stress accumulates due to unseen system issues.
Experience is often associated with emotion; however, it’s also about impact. Poor technical conditions lead to extended handle times, higher transfer rates, and repeat contacts. They reduce an agent’s sense of control, erode trust in systems and brand, and increase attrition risk.
True CX Observability means connecting these human outcomes with their technical and operational triggers and doing so fast enough to make a difference.
A New Approach
When things break, as they inevitably do, the ability to troubleshoot across all three layers, technical, operational, and experiential, is what separates responsive teams from reactive ones. Capturing interaction logs, correlating performance data, agent feedback and understanding the complete call journey enables quicker fixes, fewer repeat issues, and a smoother experience for everyone involved.
Troubleshooting needs to be fast, informed, and end-to-end. Agents working from home don’t have the luxury of tapping someone on the shoulder, so it’s important to give them the tools to self-fix, tools like AX CoPilot. Capturing the right logs from each interaction, measuring across every layer, and giving teams not only a clear view of the customer and agent experience but also the tools to fix issues means, faster fixes and fewer recurring issues and it make the world of difference to agents and the customers they are trying to serve.
So, before deciding who should work where, ask whether the environment is set up for success. A smooth, productive hybrid experience doesn’t come from chance. It comes from control.
CX Observability provides that control. It equips teams with the insights needed to spot friction early, understand where things go wrong, and take meaningful action. When you can see clearly, you can perform confidently, whether agents are in the office, at home, or anywhere in between.
The Wrap-Up
Hybrid work should be here to stay but for that to happen with success, we need to provide the right environment and support for it. At Operata, we work to make sure performance blind spots don’t stay hidden. Clear metrics help turn noise into action. We’ve broken down the key indicators that shape both customer and agent experience in this article. By capturing real-time data on browser versions, network behaviour, machine performance, and headset usage, we help contact centres move from reactive to proactive with precision. CX Observability helps identify root causes and correct them before they impact experience at scale, wherever your agents work from.
Until next time, and as always, hooroo.
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