Hiring new employees is a constant process within the contact center. This is partially because contact centers are very employee-heavy, but also because the type of workers needed can often be unreliable.
By some measures, turnover at contact centers can be as high as 60 percent. That’s definitely going to keep the contact center busy with hiring new people.
Part of the problem is bad hiring practices within the contact center. This is good news, because it means the issue of high turnover can be fixed to some degree.
The first adjustment many contact centers need to make is to better define the qualities they are looking for in a job candidate.
Of course it is easy to define a good candidate as one who shows up on time, has a good work history and has good people skills. But many good employees do not have the ideal resume when they walk in the door, and often the actual skills that make for the best employees are not immediately apparent.
It is worth the time of any contact center hiring manager to start by looking at the standout agents currently at their contact center and figure out what qualities make them great. It also is worthwhile to ask other employees within the company what qualities make for success. From this, a more accurate picture of what is needed from a candidate can emerge.
A second way to reduce turnover is by understanding the current gaps in the contact center. Is stress too high within the contact center? Are there not enough Spanish-language agents to appropriately deal with callers? Is staffing during peak times adequate? Often turnover has a reason within the company, so sleuthing out internal problems and addressing them can help reduce the volume of hiring.
A third adjustment is changing the pool of applicants that is being leveraged. If too many employees are leaving the company, it is important to change where new employees are found; if you do the same things, the saying goes, you will get the same outcome. So try different venues for discovering potential employees, including trade shows and different Web sites than are currently employed.
A fourth adjustment is focusing more on the onboarding process. An agent who has been properly trained and integrated in the contact center is a lot more likely to stay than one who is just dropped in the deep end. Although this can seem like a waste given high turnover rates, a lack of adequate training will definitely continue the high turnover rates!
Finally, it can help to use the latest technology to help get it right. Firms such as HireIQ deliver hiring software through the cloud that enables hiring managers to find the right employee. The algorithms and best practices developed by firms such as HireIQ can greatly improve on candidate selection; it is hard to argue with findings from more than a million digital interviews.
While contact center hiring will never go away completely, it can be reduced. These five adjustments can help make it happen.