Why You Should Encourage 'Good' Turnover in the Contact Center

Keeping employees is a problem for most contact centers. Let’s face it: call center jobs aren’t coveted by most people, and they are often a way to pay the bills. Call center workers are often young and inexperienced, and the high-pressure work sometimes doesn’t bring out the best in them. Whether it’s through voluntary separation or a firing, the contact center often has a revolving door of exiting and entering employees. Most contact centers would benefit from taking steps to keep this type of negative turnover low, since it costs companies money.

“Negative turnover,” of course, implies that the employee left abruptly due to a lack of satisfaction with the job, or performed poorly and was let go. So is there such a thing as “positive turnover”? Yes, according to Jeremy Watkin, Director of Customer Service at Phone.com (News - Alert), in a recent guest blog post for Melissa Kovacevic ‘s Contact Center and Retail Customer Experience Consulting and Training Web site.  Positive turnover occurs when a contact center is promoted from within, or accepts an outside job offer for a step up in career with another organization. In this case, it’s likely that the contact center position provided a positive foundation for a better career opportunity. These examples of positive turnover should be celebrated, wrote Watkin.

“At the end of the day, great leaders put their people in the best possible position to succeed given their unique skills and abilities,” he wrote. “If you’ve successfully done this, good turnover will be cause for celebration and an opportunity to lead their replacement toward their ultimate career goals!”

All this ties in to the idea of better employee engagement, which should involve a regular review of the employee’s personal career goals. Call center workers who feel they are being encouraged to better their careers are more likely to turn in positive performances and stick around longer. When they see call center agents promoted from within or leaving for promoted opportunities with other organizations, they see the call center as a place worth their time and energy. For this reason, it behooves the average call center manager to help his or her call center employees work toward better opportunities.

“In our contact centers we’re always aware of the ever-present need to get the calls answered and it is a challenge to give any agent time away from the phones,” wrote Watkin. “Whether it’s involving an employee in a meeting, brainstorming session or project that takes them off the phones, don’t underestimate the benefit of giving your employees a broad range of experiences.”

By giving call center workers more responsibility, trusting their judgment and offering them some leeway in how they handle customer contacts, you’re providing benefits both to the employee and the call center. While it means that you may ultimately lose that employee to positive turnover, the good work he or she performed while employed will far outweigh the drawbacks of having to fill the spot. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi