Agent Attrition

The True Costs of Attrition

While it is obvious that reducing agent turnover is critical, for most companies it is much easier said than done. inContact® can help you identify, hire and retain the best agents.

According to a recent BenchmarkPortal report, service levels effect whether your customer will buy again. When done poorly, there is a significant drop in probability of repurchase (32 percent). Surprisingly, however, when a service issue is handled well, the repurchase probability is greater (89 percent) than if there were no service issues at all (78 percent). Attrition rates have been linked directly to customer satisfaction levels, and subsequently bottom-line revenues.

According to widely reported industry attrition rates, one out of every three agents answering the phone at any time is new, and typically less than proficient. In research conducted by inContact and Knowlagent during 2006 and 2007, call center leaders indicated they are aware of the problems this phenomenon causes. When asked to indicate the obstacles to achieving their key goals, 53 percent of respondents selected attrition, outranking all other choices.

The Hard Costs

The hard costs of agent attrition are well-known and are accounted for in almost any call center's operating budget. Typically accepted as a fact of life, attrition is dealt with in a pragmatic fashion. Acceptance of the high costs associated with attrition such as recruiting and hiring, new hire training and productivity losses have become ingrained in the call center culture. The figure below illustrates these costs at different points toward reaching proficiency.

The Hidden Costs

While the hard costs of attrition provide reason enough to invest in retention programs, the hidden costs can provide even more business incentive. Most people would agree that new agents do not provide the same level of service as experienced agents. With the large percentage of customers who churn solely based on customer service, the impact of less than proficient agents is enormous. The chart above adds these hidden costs to the hard costs of agent attrition to show the true costs of reaching proficiency.

Ineffective Methods

The research also indicates that there was no single "silver bullet" solution to combat agent attrition. Increased salaries, mentoring programs, ongoing training, and improved hiring tools by themselves have not shown to reduce attrition by any noticable percentage. The call center manager or operational decision maker must therefore focus on a combination of solutions, working closely together, to significantly improve agent attrition levels.

A Holistic Solution

inContact presents a powerful and unique solution to the agent attrition problem by providing a set of integrated tools for the call center director and for the agents themselves. inContact Hiring is an innovative on-demand (web based) application that allows the call center manager to profile metrics for measurement. It also presents applicants with scenarios and quick tests to measure their skills and personality attributes. The applicant gets a clear picture of the job requirements quickly, and has the ability to opt out of the application process, saving both their time and the hiring manager's time.

Once the right applicants are hired, inContact's eLearning and communications solution allows critical training modules, skills tests, important reminders and messages to be delivered to the agent desktop dynamically when call volumes drop below a specified level. This keeps agents up-to-date and confident in their skills, while eliminating or reducing the need to hold call-center-wide or team-wide training sessions.

inContact also measures customer feedback after each interaction, delivering the results to the agent and to the manager dynamically. Agents can respond to the voice of the customer to improve their service levels in real time. Most importantly, because inContact is delivered via a Software-as-a-Service model (no hardware for you to buy or install), these agent improvement solutions can be utilized to hire, train and retain agents regardless of their location. With inContact, you can effectively hire and manage agents you can't see.

The Desired Result

inContact empowers you to significantly reduce attrition in your contact center, through a complete solutions set including hiring, training, managing, and collecting customer feedback, on a platform with the flexibility to allow your agents to work from any location.