How to decrease turnover in your contact center!

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It’s not unusual to see attrition rates between 30% and 45% in contact centers, typically much higher than in most departments of an organization.

These high rates can have a negative influence on:

  • Employee engagement and the company’s reputation.
  • Customer experience and the relationships with them
  • Financial results

Death sentence or incredible opportunity for the contact centers?

We often believe that these attrition rates are inevitable in the contact center environment.

However, in 2004. Cornell University conducted a study on 470 contact centers in the United States that painted quite a different portrait.

The study compared the turnover rate of contact centers who were organized according to two different models:

  • The first model, inspired by the mass production that involved standardizing and controlling the work;
  • The other model took a more people centered approach that involved the employees taking decisions in the day to day (ex: discussion groups to problem solve, ability to organize parts of their workflows and the ability to make decisions in regard to customer interactions)

The results of their analysis are telling: the attrition rate in the model where employees are involved is almost HALF that of the other one!

Attrition rate according to style of management of the contact center

3 benefits of a low contact center turn-over

This opportunity to reduce your turn-over in your contact centers also brings:

  • a better reputation as a great employer;
  • a better customer experience; and
  • lower operational costs.

Did you know? Estimates on the cost of attrition to your organization including recruitment, training and the integration of new hires represent between 25% and 400% of the annual salary for the position! If we apply the lowest part of the scale at 25% to a call center of approximately 100 seats, we are talking about a difference of 250 000$ per year

4 questions to ask yourself to see if it is possible for your contact center

Knowing it is possible is one thing. Reaping the benefits from a successful change is quite another.

The first step is to build a business case to answer the important question: Why change?

Your analysis should answer these 4 questions:

  1. What is the problem and what are the root causes?
  2. Do we really need to change?
  3. What are the costs and inconveniences of the current situation?
  4. What are the advantages and benefits of the change?

By offering a clear answer to these questions, the analysis allows you to:

  • bring the problem out into the open, so that everyone can be on the same page
  • increase the sense of urgency to act,
  • mobilize your work groups and stimulate their creativity.

In addition to the benefits we’ve looked at here today we know that influencing this metric will bring many other impacts like higher engagement, lower absence rates, overall job satisfaction and an increase in revenue or reductions on costs.

Our team specialises in these domains to help contact centers reach their objectives and find the balance between customer experience and employee experience.

Our belief is that we can empower and support the leaders of contact centers to discover and realize the potential in their teams to develop profitable and sustainable client relationships.

Guillaume Delroeux
Guillaume is the President and founder of Promethee Consultants. Specializing in Omnichannel customer relationship and employee experience consulting services in contact centers. Guillaume is a strategic partner by helping to realize his clients objectives, Customer Relationship practice Leader, and believer in the power of authentic and human connections, Guillaume brings serenity and confidence amidst change.

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