Call Center Management Feature Article

September 08, 2011

Curbing Agent Turnover In The Call Center

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

Ask any call center manager: one of the biggest challenges of running a call center (besides broken headsets) is agent turnover. Turnover, of course, is the rate at which agents leave and must be replaced. There are nightmare tales of some call centers that experience annual turnover rates of 100 percent or higher: meaning that no agents stay in the call center for longer than a year. Most call centers report turnover rates more in the area of 30 percent, which is still way too high.

Why?

Because turnover is incredibly expensive for a call center. Recruiting, hiring and training agents costs a great deal of both money and time, and once you've invested effort into creating a new agent, it's maddening to have that agent leave only to find yourself in the position of having to start all over again. If you're not a huge call center, chances are recruiting, hiring and training are not your primary duties: you need to fit these activities in around your other job tasks.

So for these reasons it's critical that a successful call center keep its agent turnover as low as possible. While it's not easy, there are some steps you can take to make sure you hire the right people...and keep them, says workforce management company Monet Software in a blog post.

Monet Software recommends several steps to help call centers curb their turnover and keep their agents in place, including:

•       Hiring the “right” people in the first place, which requires that you understand the needs of your call center and know how to match people to those needs.

•       Engaging agents by making them part of the team by listening and encouraging them to make improvements.

•       Offering agents more flexible work schedules.

•       Using an effective workforce management solution that will create accurate forecasts and optimal schedules to avoid “burning out” agents.

•       Making sure adherence remains high.

•       Creating a positive work environment.

With a little luck (and an effective workforce management schedule properly tailored to your needs), in the future you can actually spend your time running the call center instead of manning the revolving door of agents.

Read more: here 

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