Tackling Call Center Turnover
Tutorial Series

Module 1 - Impacts of turnover in the call center

The Call Center Learning Center is proud to present a tutorial series focused on understanding and overcoming agent turnover. This three-part tutorial series will pull from Prosci's research-based toolkits and best practices reports. This module addresses how to determine what to measure in your center.  Module 2 will discuss methods of measuring turnover in your call center.  Module 3 will focus on how to improve your center's turnover rate.
 

Understanding turnover

It is sometimes difficult to put a price on the costs associated with the loss of valued employees.  There are the obvious costs to hire and train replacement workers.  But more than that, losing acquired knowledge of products and customers creates a significant disruption and loss of productivity in the call center.

Although no call center is immune to turnover, call centers are not helpless when it comes to battling turnover.  The first step is to understand what turnover is and how it affects call center operations, productivity and agents.  This module will address those critical components of conquering turnover.

In Prosci's benchmarking research with over 500 call centers around the world, call centers have reported as little as 4% and as much as 300% turnover in one year.  Figure 1 shows the benchmarking results from Prosci's latest study of 240 call centers¹.  The majority of companies, across industries, report turnover rates between 9% and 37%.
 

                Figure 1 - Estimated annual agent turnover

Impacts of agent turnover

Turnover rate measures the percentage of call center agents that leave the call center in a given time period.  Turnover can include resignations, terminations, retirements, transfers and promotions.  Agent turnover is also referred to as attrition, retention rate or agent churn.

Turnover is a critical metric for customer service centers because of its impact on customer satisfaction, budget and employee satisfaction.  Turnover should be tracked in order to control costs, improve customer satisfaction and raise employee morale.  Figure 2 illustrates the three significant components that are impacted by call center turnover. 

Figure 2 - Factors impacted by agent turnover

 

1.  Cost control

Turnover is closely tied to budget because of the high costs associated with maintaining a call center workforce.  Prosci's benchmarking research has revealed that 70% to 80% of a customer service center's budget is spent on labor costs.  This percentage includes money spent on training, payroll, and retaining agents, thus making turnover a crucial measurement.  The cost to replace an employee can approach 150% of an employees annual salary.

Supervisors confront a major challenge with turnover and cost control.  This challenge includes balancing the cost of new hires with the cost of retaining experienced agents.
 

2.  Customer satisfaction

A counterbalance to cost control is the issue of customer satisfaction.  Customer satisfaction suffers when a steady stream of inexperienced agents handle calls and when scheduling and forecasting does not account for unexpected shortages in staff due to turnover.  In the end, poor customer satisfaction will impact costs.  These costs can take the form of call escalations, repeat calls and the potential loss of valuable customers. 
 

3.  Employee morale

Turnover is also a good indicator of employee morale.  Although employee morale is difficult to quantify, it has consequences for customer service levels, productivity and overall performance.  Agents are your greatest asset in the call center and their outlook on the state of your call center is crucial to its success.

 

What can you do

As a call center manager or supervisor, you are not helpless when it comes to managing and controlling turnover.  Now that you have an awareness of how turnover can affect different aspects of your call center operations and productivity, you need to find the causes of the turnover problem in your center and look at how to address those issues.  Stay tuned for the remaining tutorials in this series for additional information on agent turnover and methods to battle it.

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¹Call Center Best Practices Report - Operations Edition, Prosci, 2004.