Call Center Attrition

Are you managing a "Revolving Door" shop?

• Does your center have to run a training class of new hires each month?
• Are your overall performance numbers lower than expected due to a large number of new agents hitting the floor each month?
• Do you find that your top performers are leaving within the first year?
• Are you loosing people out of training or within the first 60 days?
• In exit interviews, are agents saying that they are leaving for money?

Unplanned or unwanted attrition is one of the most expensive components within the call center operations. Many may look at a call center and think that surely the cost of the building, the desks, the chairs, the computers, the telephone connections, conference rooms, computer systems, etc. must make up the majority of the costs. But in reality, people costs – salary, incentives, and benefits make up 70% or more of total call center costs.

Yes – that’s right. Your people are the most costly resource. Or stated in another way, your agents are your most valuable resource!

Let me explain just how “valuable” your agents are. Just the process of recruiting and training a phone agent – before they ever take their very first call - can cost companies anywhere from $1,000-4,000.00. And if the “lost” agent was part of a sales team or if your center is an outsource provider, you also have to add the lost revenue you experience due to not having that agent available to take calls. Each time you lose an agent, you’ve lost a very large investment.

Across the hundreds of call centers I’ve visited and worked with, I’ve seen annual attrition rates as low as 25% all the way up to 200% +. Can you imagine having a 100+ seat center in essence turning over its entire workforce two times across the year? It’s painful. So financially painful, many call center business units choose this as one of their main cost reduction focuses. But attrition is caused by many dynamics, and it can sometimes be difficult to identify and change the driving factors. Across the next several weeks we’ll be exploring the following areas of the call center and identifying how each can impact attrition:

• Planned vs. Unplanned Attrition
• Type of Call Center Work
• Recruiting the Right People
• Training and Transitioning to the Production Floor Environment
• Company Policies – Level of Front Line Authority
• Feedback, Motivation, Discipline, and Rewards
• Work-Life Balance
• Opportunity vs. Steady Employment
• Change Management – Controlling What and When Things Change and How It Is Communicated

Share your attrition reduction success stories with us!