It’s Saturday morning, and your customer has an issue. They pick up the remote—er, phone—and dial the number to your support line, expecting instant gratification.

There’s only one problem: Your customer might not get connected with the agent they expect. Will they be a knowledgeable one? Will they be understanding and empathetic? Or will they seem disconnected or uncaring? Either way, the customer-agent interaction has the power to be memorable—for better or worse.

Cartoons from your childhood are memorable, too. After all, they were your gold standard of entertainment. Your workforce should be the same, only the gold standard of customer service. And much like your workforce, cartoon characters sometimes embody the skills you want your contact centre agents to have—or, at least, develop—to achieve gold-standard service.

Read on to learn 7 agent soft skills you need and how to actively develop them across your workforce. Doing so will boost CX, increase agent engagement, and make your brand as memorable as the cartoon shows your customers grew up with.