06/05/2026
Jess Jackson makes the case for something most CX leaders aren't talking about loudly enough: an emotional labor crisis unfolding on the frontlines of customer experience.
Jess brings a perspective that's rare in leadership circles. She started as an agent herself, worked her way up through the ranks, and understands the emotional reality of the role from the inside out, not just from a boardroom view. That firsthand experience shapes everything she shares here.
She defines emotional labor as the continuous, on-demand work of regulating your own emotions while managing someone else's — and explains why CX is one of the only professions where that work is required at scale, for eight hours a day, scripted, and measured. Unlike the emotional labor we put into personal relationships, agents are evaluated on QA scores, CSAT, and handle time. There's no room to opt out of empathy when the metrics are watching.
What makes this a crisis, Jess argues, isn't just the nature of the work — it's the confluence of forces making it harder. As AI and self-service strip out simpler, emotionally neutral interactions, the contacts that reach human agents are increasingly complex, high-stakes, and emotionally loaded. At the same time, economic pressure is pushing for higher volume per head, stricter metrics, and thinner staffing. The result: agents are being asked to do more emotionally demanding work with fewer resources and no adjustment to how that work is measured or supported.
The root problem, she says, is that most companies still treat emotional labor as an infinite and essentially free resource.
