7 Steps to Reduce Attrition Rates & Enhance Agent Engagement
Companies in every industry are looking for ways to prioritize employee retention. Contact centers tend to have higher turnover rates due to employee attrition and a stressful work environment. Learning how to reduce attrition rates is key to keeping productive, fulfilled agents in your call center. While employee burnout can happen for several reasons, there are many ways employers can take the initiative to prevent the most common causes of attrition while also improving morale, efficiency, and engagement. Often, quality management and agent engagement overlap and can ensure a better experience for employees and customers.
How can I reduce attrition rates in my contact center?
Many steps can be taken in a contact center to lower attrition rates. A collective effort between hiring processes, ongoing training, and management is important to ensure employee happiness and loyalty. Fostering a positive environment and team relationship will help ensure better employee retention rates and a successful work environment. There are specific steps you can take to achieve better employee engagement and retention in your call center.
1. Streamline Your Hiring Process
It takes specific characteristics to thrive in a contact center environment, and your company’s hiring process should ensure that a qualified candidate meets those criteria before joining the team. There are systems in place for the recruitment, application, and interview processes that allow for full transparency of what is required for the role. This will help avoid any surprises that could lead to early turnover, improve attrition rates, and even include shadowing current employees before beginning.
2. Set Them Up For Success
Even experienced agents can become overwhelmed when starting at a new company, particularly if they lack the knowledge to work independently. Effective training can make the difference between a motivated employee and one already looking for the door. Training should not be a one-time phenomenon but a regular occurrence to ensure that the latest trends, technology, and processes are followed over time. Continuous training will keep your team motivated and reduce attrition rates and employee turnover.
3. Give Ample Feedback
One of the main reasons agents give for leaving is the lack of timely feedback regarding their performance (DMG Consulting 2022). Understanding expectations is essential to meeting and exceeding them, so exchanging feedback should be regular. Understanding how employees prefer to receive feedback and any subsequent coaching is a great way to ensure it is heard and taken into thoughtful consideration.
4. Gamify Performance and Rewards
There’s no question that we respond to monetary or symbolic rewards. Improving performance should be enjoyable, and creating a friendly competitive environment can increase employee satisfaction and improve performance simultaneously. Top performers can be recognized in many different categories so that everyone has the opportunity to feel involved.
5. Encourage Breaks
In any workspace, repetition can feel tedious and lead to discontent. Being able to vary tasks day to day, even slightly, can make a big difference. In contact centers, repeatedly hearing the same rejection to the same script can lead to a downtrodden agent. That’s why it’s so important to be able to take short breaks to shift gears and energize. Encourage your employees to bring thoughtful, mindful breaks to clear their heads before jumping back into action.
6. Invest in Technology
The future is digital, and it’s here. Whether you’re worried about attrition, agent engagement, quality management, or customer experience – the solution always involves having systems and platforms to make success as easy to achieve as possible for management and agents. Upgraded technology enables you to gather valuable data and turn it into meaningful insights to keep your employees fulfilled and fuel your company’s growth.
7. Don’t Skip the Exit Interview
Embrace good turnover when it means that your company can move forward with even better information on how to motivate agents from the very beginning. Candid feedback from an outgoing employee through an official channel can be incredibly valuable to your continued success.
Conclusion
Employee attrition is a problem for companies in every industry, and contact centers have an exceptionally high turnover rate. This can be due to the stressful work environment and the job demands. However, there are things you can do to reduce employee attrition and keep your call center running smoothly. Often, it’s not one single issue but a combination of factors that cause people to look for new opportunities.
Having systems for hiring, training, and quality management allows for open communication between managers and agents and helps identify issues before they become problems. Are you looking for ways to improve your retention rates? Schedule a demo with our team and learn how we can help.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding the reasons for employee attrition is the first step to reducing turnover at your company.
- Having systems for hiring, training, and quality management to allow for open communication is essential in reducing call center employee turnover.
- Staying updated on new call center technology lets you gather valuable data and turn it into meaningful insights to keep your employees fulfilled.
