Call Centre Staff Retention
One of major ongoing costs in running a contact centre operation is dealing with staff "churn". It is not just the recruitment costs to replace the staff who have left, but also the incremental costs of training and loss of productivity. So if people are leaving your centre, then you really need to know why.
Unfortunately, there is a belief that high attrition in a call centre is the norm and therefore has to be accepted. This is very wrong. If it were right, then it will cost your centre enormous amounts of budget each year to just maintain the staffing level that you have. The knowledge and skills of the Agents will constantly be diluted, customer service will be impacted and therefore your bottom line will suffer. If a member of staff leave you because they are unhappy, then you have also potentially lost a customer and a lot of good will.
If you have high turnover and are constantly recruiting, then your company will also get a bad name for itself in the area which makes recruiting the right skills even harder.
That is all quite blunt, but unless you address the issue of why people leave, then it is effectively a downward spiral. Can you stop the rot? Yes you can, but it does require an honest appraisal of the situation and you may not see a real difference for 3 – 6 months. As a starter ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the average length of service of your Agents?
- How many Agents as a percentage have less than 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months or 2 years service?
- What does it cost you to recruit and train an Agent to enable them to take calls (not necessarily fully competent)?
- On average how long before an Agent becomes fully competent?
- After induction how many training days does an Agent receive in their first year?
- Are you a nursery for other organisations around you because you pay a lower salary?
These are just some of the questions that you will need to answer in order to get to the bottom of this challenge. Putting in place effective monitoring and exit interviewing are common practice but this is closing the door after bolted unless you do something about it.
If you need advice on how to deal with high staff turnover, then please Contact Us.
