After a tough selection period, you have found a great colleague for your contact department. The click is good, his qualities on the phone are impressive and he feels comfortable in the team.
Delicious!
After a nice familiarization period, your contact department is really up to speed.
Your KPIs are very much in the green and your customers are satisfied. What else could go wrong?
Well, that letter of resignation on your desk.
Your great employee is already leaving and the whole process starts all over again.
Staff turnover in call centers has many drawbacks and above all it is very expensive. Changing team compositions are bad for the working atmosphere and with a bit of bad luck you end up in a downward spiral.
There are several causes for employee turnover in call centers: education, training, outdated technology and lack of career opportunities top the list of reasons why agents throw in the towel.
Followed by dealing with angry customers on the phone .
In this blog, we list some of the causes of employee turnover in call centers and tell you how you can prevent it.
1. Prevent staff turnover in call centers with good training and coaching
When asked why agents leave a call center so quickly, the answer is always that they want to be empowered to help customers.
It is mentally very challenging to always be on the front line helping people.
We rely on agents to help with a wide variety of needs, including technology, healthcare, housing, finance, utilities, entertainment, travel, and Internet access.
But the world of agents has really become a lot more complex due to outdated technology, among other things.
Training is a major cost to the industry and CX leaders often face 40% agent churn.
51% of poorly trained agents are pessimistic about their careers – which can lead to poor performance, customer dissatisfaction and burnout.
On the other hand, 61% of officers who did receive proper training feel optimistic.
Companies are still too often looking for ways to reduce training time, but in the long run that will only cost you time and therefore money. Due to poor training, agents get low confidence and their competences are not the best, making them more likely to lose weight.
2. Provide good technology support
There is a strong correlation between the extent to which an agent finds the technology in his company satisfactory or adequate and how happy he is at work.
Investments in new technology are therefore important for employee turnover in call centers.
45% of agents believe technology progress in call centers is lagging behind.
37% say current technology doesn’t help them complete tasks faster or do what they want, and another 43% experience their systems crashing.
Nothing is more annoying than working inefficiently and wasting your time with tasks that you can also automate.
With customer contact software such as Steam-connect you ensure that your agents handle all their customer contact in one system.
Manual tasks are automated and endless searching for customer data is a thing of the past.
3. Make sure your customers don’t jump out of their skin
Annoyed customers have long been a topic in the industry and are certainly a major driver of employee turnover in call centers. Research shows that:
- 81% of agents have experienced verbal abuse
- 36% of agents have been threatened with violence
- 21% of female and 9% of male agents have been sexually harassed
How can you prevent this? Again through training. Teach your agents how to handle angry customers on the phone so that they are more confident on the phone.
And it’s an interaction: if your agents don’t feel comfortable at work, they radiate this to your customer. And then the circle is complete again.
Make sure you provide your agents with a good working environment and put them in (shared) first place.
4. Reduce the complexity of tasks and conversations
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Michener once said, “there are no unsolvable problems.
Only time-consuming.” 72% of agents are eager to solve simple customer problems, but wait times peaked during the pandemic.
The work became more complex, as the number of incoming calls increased enormously and agents were less available because not all systems are suitable for the home work environment.
Agents list four tasks that take the longest:
- Asking for information from a customer
- Find answers to customer questions in the company’s knowledge base
- Writing summary notes of the conversation
- Ask a manager for help
With smart technology you can take those tasks off your hands and ensure that your agents have more time to invest in in-depth customer contact.
Staff turnover in call centers: in summary
Today’s call center challenges are not just about technology and cost management. It’s also about brand, reputation and delivering a high-quality experience.
When companies engage customers and provide the right service anytime, anywhere, the customer experience can be a powerful voice for your brand. It is a core part of your strategy and value proposition and most importantly, the customer lifetime value.
