Ten Ways to Fix Contact Center Turnover

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Attrition is the biggest contact center challenge in 2016.

That’s according to this research from Strategic Contact that outlined the top contact center challenges for 2016 . You could probably change the year and the result would be the same. High turnover is always a problem in contact centers.

This post outlines ten proven ways to improve contact center attrition rates. But first, check here to run your turnover numbers and see if you really have a problem. 

You should know the answer to three questions:

  • How much does turnover cost?
  • What’s your annual bad turnover rate?
  • What’s a reasonable target rate for bad turnover?

These numbers will tell you how much your contact center can gain from improving turnover. They’re probably the first thing your CEO or CFO will look at if you want to invest in fixing this problem.

1. Conduct Stay Interviews

Don’t wait until your best agents give notice. 

Schedule stay interviews with your top employees. Consider conducting stay interviews with a cross-section of other employees too. These are interviews designed to find out what keeps your employees from leaving. (Here’s a great overview from Inc. Magazine.)

The goal is to learn exactly what factors prompt these agents to stick around so you can keep doing those things. You also want to learn what might cause them to leave.

2. Raise Wages

A client of mine was notoriously tight fisted when it came to employee wages. He quickly changed his mind when I showed him this chart:

It showed the $12 per hour average wage he was paying his contact center agents was at the bottom end of the pay scale compared to the range for similar jobs in the area. Paying at the bottom of the pay scale created two problems:

  • His company couldn’t attract talented employees at that wage.
  • Any talented employees he developed quickly left for an easy raise.

In my client’s case, raising wages to $14 per hour quickly paid for itself in three ways:

  • He recruited better employees who needed less training.
  • He recruited better employees who were more productive.
  • Employees stayed longer because they were more satisfied with their pay.

3. Hire For Culture Fit

Let’s face it – not every person will love working for your contact center.

The trick is finding, and hiring, the people who will. This might be a problem if you tend to lose a lot of agents within their first six months. 

One tool that can help you do this is called an Ideal Candidate Profile. This describes both the skills and cultural attributes that an employee must have to fit in with your contact center.

You can use this worksheet to create your own Ideal Candidate Profile.

4. Improve Training

Great hiring won’t help you keep employees if they don’t get sufficient training. Poor training programs can create turnover in a number of ways:

  • Agents never get the confidence to do their jobs correctly.
  • Agents never get the skills to do their jobs correctly.
  • The training is so bad that agents quit before finishing.

Many contact centers can reduce their new hire training time by 20 – 50 percent while getting better results if they simply adopted more modern techniques.

Toister Performance Solutions helps clients design new hire training programs, but you can also make many improvements on your own. The starting point is setting good learning objectives.

You can also read my article, 5 Ways to Train Contact Center Agents Faster.

5. Create Career Ladders

Many contact center agents don’t view their job as a career.

It’s often seen as a stepping stone to something else, or perhaps a good way to earn some money for a short period of time.

A career ladder is a defined path that spells out ways for employees to grow within your organization. For example, many contact centers have different agent tiers. A new agent can earn progressive responsibility and pay by getting promoted into higher tiers.

In other companies, agents are actively recruited into other departments. 

Whatever the case may be in your organization, creating opportunities for your agents may entice your most talented people to stay longer.

6. Identify Toxic Leaders

Take a close look at your turnover rate by leader. Are agents quitting certain leaders or teams at a much faster rate than others?

An abnormally high turnover rate could signal a toxic leadership style. That individual leader may benefit from additional coaching or training. Or, they might not be cut out to lead people in your company.

The flip side is also helpful. Take time to study leaders whose agents rarely leave or frequently get promoted and see if you can identify what they do differently.

7. Focus on Short Commutes

The length of your employees’ commutes might have an impact on how long they stay.

This fascinating post suggests that 30 minutes is the maximum time contact center employees are willing to commute. The post also cited research showing that employees with a commute of 10 minutes or less are 20 percent more likely to stay with your contact center six months or longer.

There seems to be a little more tolerance for longer commutes if employees are taking public transportation.

This data suggests that contact centers should employ a hyper-local recruiting strategy, embrace more work at home options, or both. 

8. Empower Your Agents

ICMI released a study last year revealing that 86 percent of contact centers don’t fully empower their agents.

Empowerment is closely connected to attrition. One of the things agents consistently say they dislike about their jobs is the inability to do what’s necessary to help their customers.

Employee empowerment isn’t easy, but you can use this guide to get started.

9. Stop Demotivating Agents

Contact center leaders have focused on motivating their agents for as long as I can remember. 

They try incentives, slogans, and snazzy banners. Gamification is the latest agent motivation fad. None of it seems to really work.

That’s because agents don’t have a motivation problem. The issue is demotivation. Agents become steadily demotivated the longer they’re on the job.

Take a look at this data from Benchmark Portal:

Good agents fundamentally want to help people. Make it easy for them to do that, and they’re more likely to stay. Make it hard for them to help customers, and they’ll probably quit.

Here’s some more compelling data about why agents don’t need to be motivated.

10. Do A Real Engagement Assessment

Many contact centers do an annual employee engagement survey. 

Contact centers do these surveys because they understand the link between employee engagement and retention. Unfortunately, most of those surveys are a waste of time

The way these surveys are designed, they rarely lead to actionable changes that can take a meaningful bite out of agent attrition.

I’ve had success with a counter-intuitive approach that doesn’t rely on employee opinion. It instead takes a hard look at the underlying processes that drive engagement.

One client used this assessment to cut their turnover by 50 percent and save $150,000.

You can do the conversation starter assessment yourself. Or, let’s talk about a more comprehensive version.

What About Culture?

You might be wondering why I didn’t suggest improving your contact center’s culture.

The trick with culture is it’s a pretty squishy concept. However, if you look carefully at my recommendations, you’ll see that they all contribute to a strong culture.

In other words, follow these suggestions and you’ll be on your way towards building the type of culture that attracts and retains talented agents.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Having worked with contact centers, large and small, I suggest the article misses the most powerful way of engaging employees and consequently reducing turnover as well as increasing profits: economic transparency. Treating employees like adults, involving them in the economics of the business, helping them to think and act like business partners, consistently driving profitable growth. The information engages their minds, and the trust engages their hearts. For 20+ years, over 400 clients of mine have consistently improved profits and the lives of the employees who drive those profits. Often referred to as Open-Book Management, this 3 minute video provides more background:
    Carlson Travel call center video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJAEHPOxPQ
    These two articles provide more background:
    https://hbr.org/2015/12/treat-employees-like-business-owners
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2015/07/20/introducing-a-blog-about-companies-that-engage-their-employees-by-opening-the-books/
    More information is available at our website: http://www.openbookcoaching.com
    Are you familiar with OBM and if so, are you a fan?

  2. Hi Bill! I see what you’re doing there…

    Nonetheless, open book management is a good add to the list. I’m definitely a fan of the concept and know of a few companies doing it well.

  3. I have been working with call centers for the past 20 years. Many have forgotten that there is still Human element involved here. All individuals want to know that they can and are making a real difference. Sure proper effective training plays a part, concurrent training plays a part (if you actually really do it)(most do not). Yes you can slow down attrition a little by having a better base pay. But if you do not acknowledge them as contributors to success they will not feel connected and they will leave. Step back a second and Pay attention to some of the basic human nature attributes and you then you will be able to see the path you will need to take slow down that revolving door

  4. Thanks, Brian. I agree with you that it’s important to recognize agents’ contributions, and included a couple of items on my list that align with that: (1) conduct stay interviews (8) empower your agents and (9) stop demotivating your agents by making it difficult for them to contribute.

    This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list. Do you have other suggestions you’d add from your experience?

  5. Jeff

    Really good article. Thanks for taking the time to share your valuable and very useful feedback.

    Bill – I imagine everyone could see what you were doing there. Not very sporting!

    Jeff clearly states at the start of the article that this post outlines ten proven ways to improve contact centre attrition. It didn’t say that it covers them all.

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