One of the more challenging aspects of managing a contact center is the problem of turnover among the agents. This can be a significant and on-going problem for many contact centers. The challenge for those who manage these centers is two-fold: 1) What is the cause of the turnover and 2) what can managers do to retain employees? Let’s take a closer look at both questions.
CAUSES & SOLUTIONS
High turnover in the call center is a signal to any manager that there are problems and it is up to the manager to determine the cause or causes of the high turnover. What are some possible reasons for call center turnover? Here are a few that we’ve encountered over the years:
- Agents feel over worked and under-staffed: This is a particularly common occurrence for in-house call centers especially during peak seasons, such as the holiday rush. However, an over-worked staff can also be the result of getting bogged down in too many tasks that interfere with servicing the customer. In both cases, the best solution for this is to outsource to a near-shore contact center such as One of the primary benefits of hiring a third party contact center, like Centris, is the additional support they can provide by taking over a variety of back-office processes such as data entry, claims processing, payment processes and many more. In addition to this, a third-party contact center also becomes additional staff during busier times of year. If more agents are needed to handle a busier season, a third-party contact center can easily help your organization scale up by adding their agents to help with the extra workload.
- Agents feel bored due to not being challenged and rewarded in their jobs: This issue is not specific to the call center but is common in any business organization. Happy employees tend to stick around and one of the best incentives for any employee is growth in the workplace. If this is the cause of turnover in your contact center, know that it can be resolved but it does require a commitment on the part of management to invest in your employees. Take the time to implement a training program that enables agents to expand their skills such as training them to be supervisors during their shift. If employees can see a future that includes job growth and development, they will be far less likely to leave.
- Agents feel they do not have the proper training to handle certain problems: This is a critical issue that can be solved by providing training for your agents. At Centris, we prioritize training our agents, particularly when we bring on a new client. Part of the service that we provide our clients is to customize our contact center solutions to their specific needs. This involves a period of training our agents to understand their particular business or industry before we move forward with their contact center support. This is a critical part of our service to our customers because it allows our agents to ask questions and gain a clear understanding of their duties before our support services begin; once we do begin supporting this new client, our agents are confident in their knowledge of the client, their products, services, and expectations.
- Agents feel they do not have the freedom to make certain decisions when dealing with customers: This is likely one of the most common struggles in the contact center. Again, this requires an investment of time from the management to train employees to know how to handle a variety of customer situations. It also requires that the manager is willing to “give up” a certain amount of authority in order to more quickly and efficiently serve the customer. When agents know that their managers trust them enough to back away and let them perform their customer service duties, this is a huge morale builder and makes for a healthy and stable organization.
Here at Centris, we have been in the call center business for more than 20 years and our contact centers have always benefitted from a very satisfied and stable team of agents. A big part of our success is due to the time we take to invest in and train our agents to know their duties, understand the industries they support and then trust them. This has proven to bring success to our company as well as those we serve. If you are looking for a near-shore contact center that offers a knowledgeable and consistent staff of agents who can provide excellent customer service for your organization, contact us.
