How to Keep Quality Employees

If you had to examine your current call center and point to the biggest drains on resources, would turnover make the list? It’s not uncommon for call center management to highlight turnover as a key problem to maintaining productivity and controlling costs. It’s expensive to train an agent who leaves a short time later for greener pastures. How can you leverage your workforce management tools and internal assets to reduce this impact?

This is a common question among call center leaders who want to hit their performance goals, yet spend too much time trying to replace quality agents who decide to go somewhere else. Sometimes it’s a matter of money; or the agent simply isn’t cut out for call center work; and still other times it’s a lack of loyalty. Is it possible to change these outcomes before the agent is even hired?

The reality is you can offer competitive rates if your business plan allows for it. If it does not, you may not be able to significantly reduce your turnover rates. This is a bigger issue that needs to be taken up with those in the executive suite. As for hiring those who aren’t cut out for the work, this is an issue for human resources. There are tools available to help identify those best suited for this challenging position and those likely to jump ship as soon as the pressure is on.

Where you have the most control is in building loyalty to you and your company. When you effectively increase employee loyalty, you drive down turnover and can focus your time on hitting those performance numbers. How do you increase loyalty? A recent Telecom Reseller (News - Alert) post offers three secrets. Let’s bust them open and see if they could work in your environment.

Fight Boredom

Let’s face it, no one likes a job where they aren’t challenged and easily get bored. It not only makes the workday go very slowly, it can also lead to fatigue and poor performance. Agents need excitement and stimulation, and even a change of scenery every so often. Others may prefer the stability and comfort of knowing what to expect. When you understand temperaments, you can stimulate and engage as appropriate for different employees.

Play Fair on Payday

Employees, regardless of their temperament, want to feel like they are being treated fairly. Remember what was mentioned earlier – if you want to pay bottom price for agents, expect to get bottom price agents. If you want quality agents who are more likely to stick around, pay them fairly for the work completed. In doing so, they will be less concerned with their paycheck and more concerned with their performance.

Remember Respect

If your only focus is to make customers happy, regardless of how they treat your employees, you’re likely to lose your employees and keep those customers. This isn’t the most profitable way to do business. Customers who get a kick out of mistreating employees end up costing you far more than the value they bring. Focus on the customers bringing value and treat them and your agents with respect. In doing so, you’ll quickly boost that bottom line.

Workforce management can go a long way toward helping you to forecast and scheduling for upcoming activity, but you have to apply some basic common sense when it comes to keeping quality employees. Doing so will not only improve customer satisfaction, but also morale.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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