Understanding Call Center Turnover and How to Reduce It

Reducing Call Center Turnover by Improving Agent Experience

As unpleasant as it may be, turnover is a workplace reality no matter where you work. This is particularly true in call centers, which have become notorious for high rates of employee turnover. In this post, we’ll be diving into this concept to understand what it means for your call center.

What is Call Center Turnover?

Turnover is a type of attrition. Attrition refers to employees leaving a company. Turnover is a specific, particularly costly, type of attrition in which the leaving employees need to be replaced by new hires. Turnover can result from termination that is either voluntary (e.g. seeking another opportunity) or involuntary (e.g. poor performance).

Why is Turnover Specifically Relevant to Contact Centers?

Call centers have a bad reputation for high turnover rates and, the truth is, that reputation is deserved. Working as an inbound customer service representative (CSR) reliably ranks as one of the highest turnover jobs in the world. Depending on who you ask, call centers have a turnover rate of between 30 and 45 percent. By comparison, the 2013 average employee turnover rate for all industries in the United States was 15.1%.

The work of a CSR can be tough. They can deal with emotional customers, high call volumes and a variety of other stressful situations. It can be difficult for them to get breaks when the phone lines are busy. CSRs are also often entry-level workers, which means that their salaries tend to be on the lower end.

Why Should I Care About Call Center Turnover?

The obvious answer here is that there is a direct monetary cost to call center turnover. It costs money to find, hire and train new employees, money that would be better spent in other aspects of the business.

But there are also other implications. For one, customer satisfaction may wane as callers deal with representatives who are too new to know how to adequately handle problems. For another, call center turnover can create an unpleasant workplace culture, which fuels more turnover.

How Can Contact Center Turnover be Reduced?

No workplace is immune to turnover, but effective call centers need to recognize that their white blood cell count is particularly low. There are preventative steps that can be taken to help head off excessive call center turnover.

1. Hire the right agents

Don’t set your call center agents up for failure by hiring them for a job they cannot succeed in. A little extra time added to recruiting procedures can make a big difference in the long run.

2. Offer competitive pay and benefits

Being an agent is stressful. Make it worth your agent’s while by compensating them fairly.

3. Establish clear objectives

Call center agents may start to feel buried in work with no way to benchmark their performance. With clear goals, agents can get their head above water.