Call Center Retention Strategy: Break the rules by Rachel Brignoni
While there are several issues that typically revolve around a call center business, Turnover and Retention are among the top concerns. The standard call center turnover is 26% annually. Employees leave for a variety of reasons including, pay, hours/shift, the work itself, personal and family reasons, not to mention performance or attendance issues, which can increase turnover rates. Given a call center’s top priority is to pick up the phone, giving an employee time off the phone for development absolutely breaks the rules. But that is exactly what we, the local leaders and I, did.
The cycle of recruit, train and not retain continues year after year. The industry standard accepts a 26% turnover rate. Seems reasonable considering that time off the phone is a loss of productivity and bio breaks, lunches, personal time, after call work and all other minute to minute activity because our field is highly measured and every second counts. Data is abundant and the staff is aware of the day to day performance expectations. Call center staff experience high burnout and managers experience high turnover.
I will start by sharing that I was hired as a customer service rep in an inbound call center. Within the first few weeks I was questioning my decision. I asked myself, were the company benefits worth the feeling of having the life choked out of me day in and day out? Everything I did was watched and measured carefully by management. The high stress environment has little room for error and it felt suffocating. How would I manage to get through this? I needed the job and the benefits. Well, that was 16 years ago. Since then, I have continued working with the same Fortune 100 Company serving as a Human Resource Generalist for 300 employees in a variety of departments across the country during the past 13 years. So, as an entry level call center employee I was able to move up the ranks through 5 different positions throughout my career, so I know that it is possible.
Reflecting back, I can boil it down to 1 very important thing; my Manager’s commitment to my development. She gave honest and candid feedback while she coached and counseled me. But she also gave me opportunities to learn, develop and grow, even when it required me to be off of the phone. She was willing to let me take on additional projects, such as supporting the administrative assistant when she was short handed. It was clear she was invested in me and my career aspirations to get me to the next level. Without her giving me the chance and allowing me an opportunity to get off of the phone so that I could develop, I have no doubt, I would have been a turnover statistic.
Several years ago, my call center leader was experinecing fairly high turnover at about 15%. This is better than the industry average, but it wasn’t good enough from our perspective. We were reviewing exit interviews and tyring to analyze what was truly driving the departures. There were no specific trends we could identify, yielding inconclusive results. There must be a better way I thought. My business partner, the Call Center Director, was obviously committed to attracting and retaining talent. So, we set out a plan to change the statistic. We needed to engage the entire unit manger population who were already working hard to keep morale up and retain staff.
We determined it would be best to stop focusing on analyzing the exit interviews and turn our attention on the individuals who were still with the company. As a starting point, we conducted stay interviews for every employee who had been there 1 year or less. We selected this group because our highest percentage of departures left within 1 year of hire. We were not going to wait until they had already decided to leave the company, so came to conclusion that we needed to engage them earlier. We split up the assignment. The site director took half of the stack, and I took the other half in no particular order. We conducted over 30 interviews within a 2 month time frame. It was a significant time investment, but we needed the feedback.
The overall theme for employees was their desire to advance in their career and limited time off of the phones. Well, we knew that time off the phones was at a premium, but the lack of advancement opportunities was a shock. Given the size of our company, the number of departments that are within the building, we were somewhat perplexed. Given that was the driver for much of the dis-satisfaction that was currently within our environment, we needed to create a plan which included development and visibility of that success.
As a leadership team, we knew that there was an opportunity for advancement at our company. We had individuals over the years get promoted into other positions, and as a matter of fact, some of the managers were internally promoted, but the perception trumped our reality. This was a critical turning point for the leadership team. We started by creating a call center goal. We decided that we simply “will decrease our turnover to less than 10%, and become a destination organization.” So, with that goal in mind, we set out to build our vision by including the Unit Management team in helping create our action plan that would support this objective. We reviewed the cost of turnover and shared why it was so critical to retain our staff. We needed to develop the employees to a greater extent, which meant taking them off the phones, and ensuring they were prepared when positions were presented.
We decided on focusing our attention on 2 priorities: Employee Ownership of Individual Development Plans at every level, and the creation of an alumni DVD to share success stories of those who have moved up, versus out, of the organization.
The Individual Development plan needed to be revamped. Management needed to change the mindset from years past as a check-off list, to developing meaningful and realistic IDP’s. One of the most critical components of an effective IDP is that the employee is the one who owns it. They must take accountability for their future and their development. Managers are there to serve as excellent resources, supporting job shadowing, giving time off of the phones for development sessions, on-line learning modules, project participation, meeting facilitation and other learning/development opportunities to support the individual to learn, develop and grow. The success of their career will be determined by how well the employee handles their current job as well as their involvement, dedication, determination and focus on personal and professional development. This needed to become part of a living document that was reviewed and discussed many times throughout the year, versus the standard checkbox to say it is complete.
The Alumni DVD was the second approach to ensure visibility. Management needed to share what great opportunities were available and who in our organization had already captured them. They needed to create a tangible path for employees. So, a team was put together with a Unit Manger project lead and a group of Customer Service Rep’s. They met with individuals who had been promoted out of the call center over the past 10 years. They conducted interviews and put together the video for all employees to watch. The video was shared at team meetings, and managers discussed the importance of an IDP.
So, in tandem, an IDP training session along with visible representations of others who had gone before them successfully, helped jump-start the call center culture shift. It did not take long for me to notice a change in the leadership and employee engagement. Requests for job shadow opportunities, or mock interviews, became a part of the norm. It was obvious, managers were more connected to their employees and aware of their future desires. They were determined to give them opportunities to develop, along with sharing ideas and a committed to follow through. Employees were inspired to take ownership, worked hard, and participated in their development opportunities. They took advantage of job shadowing and asked for help with résumés and mock interviews. Employees owned their part and followed through on their development plans.
Since that time, our results year over year have improved. Our turnover has decreased well beyond our goal of less than 15% to 6.8% annualized turnover. The internal movement and promotions increased from less than 10% to over 25% year over year. We are going on our 3rd year of sustained retention and internal movement. We have an ongoing Strategy to leverage HR and Management commitment to Development.
So, if you want to change a culture, it is absolutely critical that your leaders embrace a development culture. They must formalize individual development plans, and commit to follow up with employees on a regular basis to ensure it is visible. This will not only improve the caliber of your current staff, but also increase engagement and decrease turnover significantly year over year. It will inspire your talent to become future leaders of your organizations.
Rachel Brignoni is currently an HR Executive for a Fortune 100 Company with over 10 years of experience in the call center industry. She is also a Certified Life Strategy Coach, Advocate for at Risk Youth as well as an Award Winning Author.