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There is little that is more frustrating to call center managers than to see the attrition reports each month, and if they are also responsible for the finances, the annual review of this number with executive

leaders can be exasperating. In the call center space, it is common for attrition rates to reach around 30% annually. The cost to find, train and replace just one call center agent averages $4,000. Quickly doing the math: For a call center with 100 agents, with an annual attrition rate of 100%, employee-churn costs equate to a staggering $400,000 a year.

Those who have managed call centers know that reducing attrition is a common mantra that many companies focus on year after year. But the answers to agent retention are not simple, and there is no magic cure for these issues. If there were, companies wouldn’t be plagued by attrition challenges.

Often companies conduct exit interviews to try to find out why employees are leaving. However, the results from these interviews can be deceiving. This is because of the simple fact that employees don’t always provide the reason that prompted them to look for something else (i.e. lack of development, disagreements with leadership). Instead, they list the positive attributes of the job they are moving to (i.e.: promotion, more pay). This, of course, causes companies to focus on and make changes that aren’t really the root of the attrition issues. (Integral Talent Systems, “The Challenge of Retaining Top Talent: The Workforce Attrition Crisis” – Lynn Ware, PhD., and Bruce Fern)

Layered on top of all the traditional reasons that people tend to change jobs (i.e.: additional pay, proximity to their home, moving to another area, personal issues, etc.), there are new elements in the equation that come along with widespread entry of Generation Y into the workforce. Generation Y workers are very different from any generation before them. This is the first group to have grown up within the personal technology era. They don’t remember a time when people didn’t have cell phones or personal computers at home. Many spend more time on their computers and PDAs than watching TV.

All of this technology has changed how this generation thinks, reacts to their environment and deals with personal interactions. They tend to be less patient, as they are used to things being able to be done very quickly – just like they can through a computer. They also are very self-sufficient – turning to self-help options first, instead of requesting help from a person. And, they are accustomed to more frequent feedback and immediate gratification like they get during online interactions. (London Business School – “The Reflexive Generation: Young Professionals’ Perspective on Work, Career, and Gender,” 2009)

In addition to these characteristics listed, Generation Y also tend to be more self-confident, questioning of the status quo, very mobile, looking for self-development, high-performing and accepting of change as a given. They also demand work/life balance, and are willing to reinvent themselves as needed to move on to the next challenge. (USA Today “Generation Y: They’ve arrived at work with a new attitude” – Eileen Blass)

Being that most call centers are staffed by relatively young employees, and often it’s their first full-time job out of high school, to be successful, call center organizations have to learn how to engage with this new generation of workers. Like generations before, these employees are bright, sharp, eager to learn and high performers. But they are quick to leave if they are dissatisfied.

So how does a company adjust to this new, up-and-coming workforce? What does Generation Y expect from their employers? Is your call center leadership ready to work effectively with this group? Progressive leaders are seeking ways to adapt how work is done within their companies, so the desired end results can be obtained from this new workforce. This involves a stronger focus on the following four core elements:

1. Communication

2. Feedback and Coaching

3. Work/Life Balance

4. Development and Growth

Communication

Generation Y come from an environment of instant and constant communication. They are used to looking for, finding and knowing information very quickly. So how does this translate to the call center business?

Share information with agents on a regular basis about what’s going on with the business: what the goals are and how the business unit is doing in reaching those goals. And if the company isn’t hitting its targets, explain what needs to happen differently to reach the goals. If the business unit is struggling with certain areas, put the problem out on the table and ask for their ideas and feedback.

Unlike prior generations, Generation Y loves to voice their opinions and be actively engaged in coming up with solutions. (They’ve been coached to do this in their home lives, often being involved in family decisions, and so expect this same ability to voice their thoughts and ideas at work.)

Through these communication exchanges, employees become more engaged with the company. They begin to understand the bigger picture of how the world of business works and how their department fits into the company as a whole. They see how their work directly relates to the company’s success, and they tend to work harder as individuals to contribute to a winning team. They enjoy being part of something bigger, and knowing that their high performance is driving success. The company benefits by having employees who “get it.”

Beware though: Simply setting up a department “suggestion box” doesn’t satisfy the communication needs of this group. If they submit ideas regularly and these are not addressed, Generation Y members are quick to point out that the company is only pretending to listen, and soon they become disengaged employees and start looking for something new. Two-way communication is very important to this generation.

Example: A U.S.- based call center with 350 seats, supporting a consumer goods retail and catalog sales company, experienced a very challenging situation. At the end of September, just before the busy retail season for the holidays began, the call center implemented a new Customer Relationship Management system. The agents had attended training and were ready when the new system went live. But there ended up being problems with the newly implemented system that no amount of preparing by the call center could have mitigated. The new CRM system wasn’t properly sending and receiving data with the fulfillment and the billing system. Because of this, even though customer orders were being properly entered by the call center agents, their orders weren’t being shipped out – or worse – customers were being double billed for an order they never received.

Needless to say, the call volume more than doubled what was forecasted for that year, as customers called asking what had happened with their orders, venting anger and frustration about being improperly billed and expressing great dissatisfaction with the company. Agents couldn’t be hired and trained fast enough to keep up with the escalating volume, so working overtime became the norm well past the end of the year, as it took that long for all the system issues to be resolved and customer orders to be straightened out.

During an extremely stressful time like this, it is not unusual for the attrition rate to increase dramatically as agents become frustrated and overwhelmed with the amount of work. However, the call center leadership team had implemented several communication strategies prior to the system implementation, initially with the intent to just keep agents updated on the system implementation, thinking they could let it decrease after they went live. However, with the challenges they were seeing after the system went live, they found that they needed to communicate with their agents even more regularly – to explain what was happening and provide dialogue they could share with their customers. Instead of simply sharing information and providing updates once or twice a month, the leadership was providing updates several times a week. Updates were provided via emails, newsletters and team meetings. Agents were allowed to ask questions, vent their concerns and frustrations, make suggestions, role-play handling difficult calls and request additional pieces of information.

While historically the attrition rate had averaged 6% monthly prior to the new system go-live, post go-live the call center only lost one employee across a six-month period. When asked about this timeframe, agents would admit that many of them had thought about quitting, as they were very tired and frustrated. But when asked why they chose to stay, they claimed that even though it was a difficult time, they enjoyed being part of the solution and fixing the problem.

Remember, in the absence of information, employees will try to interpret what they see around them, and they will rarely give the company the benefit of the doubt. They will choose the worst scenario possible and react accordingly. So talk to employees. Even if their suggestions are something outrageous, don’t just ignore it. Explain why at this point the idea would be too costly, impractical, or due to whatever limitations, not possible.

Feedback and Coaching

For the first time, companies are working with a generation that is not only willing to accept feedback, but they expect and want it – frequently, and the more the better. This comes from Generation Y obtaining so much feedback from their online interactions, and from the coaching and mentoring they’ve received as they’ve grown up. They don’t mind being told if they aren’t measuring up, and actually will seek this information out.

This generally works well within the contact center world, as most are set up with fairly robust monitoring and coaching processes. Listening to calls and providing feedback is a very common practice. What call centers may not be currently practicing is the one-on-one coaching sessions that Generation Y prefers. It isn’t enough for them to have the feedback provided on a monitoring form and handed to them. They want to have a discussion. If they are failing in a certain area, they want a coach to help them know what they could or should be doing better or differently so they can succeed. Without this one-on-one discussion, they become frustrated, as they feel they are genuinely trying to do a good job, but that no one is willing to help them improve.

In addition to this coaching, Generation Y does better if they can view their statistics or their performance score across the day real-time. Almost like a video game, they can see if they are winning or losing at any given time. The ability for the agents to have access to real-time KPIs can have a great impact on the call center’s overall performance. Consider the two examples below:

Example: A small U.S.-based call center team of 45 agents supporting a company in the skin care industry struggled to ensure that they were consistently meeting their service level goals (speed to answer and abandon rates). Although the management team adjusted schedules and tried to enforce schedule adherence, the team kept missing the mark. Based on agent feedback, the decision was made to invest in technology that enabled the agents to not only see the team’s service levels in real-time, but also to see how many customers were in queue at any given time. With this information, the team self-regulated themselves. They would stay on the phones even if it pushed back their breaks and lunches a little to ensure they were available to help customers when they received a spike in calls, and then worked together to ensure everyone got their lunches and breaks as needed. Giving the agents access to this real-time information allowed them to adjust their own behavior to meet the company goals.

Example: Another group of 100 sales agents in Canada was struggling to meet their sales goals on a daily basis for a company in the consumer goods, retail and Internet sales industry. No matter what incentives, games or rewards were put in place, the group couldn’t seem to move the needle on their performance. Because of changes that were being made in other areas of reporting, there was an initiative to provide the leadership with more real-time reporting on the sales performance, and the request was made to take them down to the agent level. Now the system would display to each agent where their sales were real-time across the day, how this measured against their goals, and how they were doing compared to their peers. Virtually overnight, the change in sales performance was drastic. The agents not only started to meet their sales goals, but they also began to exceed their goals by 10% - 20% percent on a regular basis. The ability of these agents to see their performance real-time helped them to adjust their behavior and to enhance the profitability of the company.

Many members of Generation Y are technically savvy – and contact centers should use that ability to their advantage. As shown in the previous examples, call centers often have information that isn’t shared with their agents. Look at the company goals, look at what employees need (tools, skills, information, etc.) to meet those goals and see what small changes can be made to enable agents to help drive their own performance. This can be as simple as taking data such as customer feedback scores that traditionally have been only used for service levels or net promoter purposes, and utilizing it to employ developmental plans all the way down to the agent level.

Work/Life Balance

Where Generation X started to move in this direction – requesting more flexibility so they could attend to needs outside of work – Generation Y on the other hand have a tendency to demand it. The lines between work and home are less distinct and have begun to blur more as family or personal needs drive when, where and how much employees are willing to work – and even more so as people are telecommuting from home. Yet, the need to be flexible within a call center environment can be one of the most difficult challenges to manage, as most call centers struggle to simultaneously keep costs low, while being held to very high standards and performance metrics. Because of this, many call center groups create full-time schedules and simply expect their agents to adjust their lives so they can work these schedules as required. And if the agents are unable to do this, they are simply let go or leave voluntarily.

In today’s dynamic work environment, call centers are required to be open for extended business hours (up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) to assist customers. But the number of employees needed at any given time can vary greatly based on marketing activities, product releases, product issues (such as recalls) or other factors that impact the company’s normal relations with their customer (natural disasters, etc.). Smart call center leaders are finding that although it may be more expensive initially to recruit and train a higher percentage of part-time workers, it actually gives them the ability to be much more flexible when they need to staff up or down. And if they also expand to having their agents work from home, it can enable the company to more consistently meet their service levels, as agents aren’t hindered by weather or commuting issues on their way to work.

Moreover, part-time schedules don’t only enable the call center to meet its goals; they also are a great benefit to employees when managed correctly. When a company has a certain level of part-time workers (20% -50%), it becomes much easier for the workforce management team to “swap” agent schedules as needed to meet agents’ personal needs. As part-time agent schedules are adjusted – for example, from one day to another, or from four hours to six hours – it allows for many changes to occur without costing the company overtime, while also meeting employee needs. It becomes a win-win for the company and Generation Y.

Example: A 300-seat call center group in the time management products and business seminar industry had to ramp up to double its size every year to handle the retail busy season volumes (September through December). Instead of trying to hire and train an additional 300 agents for a four-month period every year, the management instead hired everyone as part-time agents, who knew that for four months of the year they would be required to work full-time hours. This model served them very well, as it promoted work/life balance and mitigated the majority of recruiting and training costs each year for agents who would only be working with the company for a very short period of time.

While there are challenges with running a workforce with a higher percentage of part-time workers, the benefits are worth exploring. For Generation Y, the flexibility it offers can mean the difference between staying where they are or moving to another company.

In keeping with the desire for work/life balance, many call centers are finding that it benefits both the company and their employees to enable their agents to work from home. Generation Y is typically very adept at being independent workers and appreciate being trusted to do what needs to be done without being micromanaged. They like being told what the goals are they need to meet, and being allowed to work to meet those goals. They are also very comfortable with learning through remote or virtual methods, and using the technology required to ensure their success.

All of these Generation Y attributes equate to successful work-at-home agents. However, as much as Generation Y can be very successful when working at home, there are a few technology tools and processes call center groups may need to invest in.

Example: The first is an internal group chat room. This is a place where all the work-at-home agents can go to ask each other questions, obtain advice and have interaction that they normally would experience face-to-face at the office. The benefit of this is that as one agent asks a question, everyone gets to read the answer, so they all grow and learn together.

The second is a phone or chat help line group. This is a group of senior agents who are very knowledgeable and can answer questions for new agents. This is an absolute must for work-at-home agents. They can’t turn and ask their neighbor or raise their hands to ask a supervisor like their colleagues onsite, so they need some way to quickly ask questions so they can assist their customers. Depending on the size of the call center and the attrition levels, this group can be relatively small, and if a chat line solution is elected versus a phone group, one senior agent can address and answer several agent questions at once.

Allowing agents to work at home is a growing trend across the call center industry and is very attractive to many employees, as they save personal time from getting ready and commuting to and from work, and save money because they don’t have to purchase business clothes. From a company standpoint, the call center can save money on office space, desktop computers and phones. Moreover, without all the typical office distractions, employees are often more efficient when working from home. And companies can now recruit the best talent from a much broader geography, as recruiters aren’t limited to find people only within the local area surrounding the call center’s location. But as stated previously, managers can’t forget their agents are out there – they still need coaching, mentoring, peer contact and growth opportunities.

Development and Growth

One of the most pronounced characteristics of Generation Y is their drive and desire for growth and learning. For older generations, this may appear simply as the ambition of youth; but for this group, it is much more than that. They know that job security doesn’t really exist, and to keep themselves employed, they have to be constantly learning new things and reinventing themselves so they can be the best candidate for the next position. Similar to Generation X, they are “working to live,” but they take it one step further as Generation Y are “working to learn.” (London Business School, “The Reflexive Generation: Young Professionals’ Perspective on Work, Career, and Gender,” 2009)

Often call centers focus all their learning or education within the new-hire training for their agents, and then simply expect their employees to perform as directed forever after. From a Generation Y perspective, this would not work for more than about six months. At that point they would be fully up to speed, meeting all their goals and starting to become bored. They would be ready for the next challenge, the next move. And if this next challenge isn’t offered within their organization, they will look elsewhere.

In a Contact Center Survey conducted by ManpowerGroup, 28% of respondents cited “burnout due to lack of opportunity” as the primary reason for agent dissatisfaction. (ManpowerGroup, “Contact Center Survey Summary, An Inside Look At Core Areas of Concentration,” 2011)

It doesn’t take much to set up additional learning and mentoring opportunities within an organization. There is always more work than there are people to do it, so allow willing agents to assist with doing additional, yet valuable assignments. This could include:

• Acting as the assisting team lead – filling in when a team lead is out of the office

• Helping to create new information handouts or PowerPoint slides

• Assisting the trainers to update product or service specific information within the training documentation

• Filling in on the “helpline” when one of the more senior agents is unable to work
 
• Being a mentor to new employees, helping them get oriented to the company and teaching them the ropes

All of this work needs to be done within a call center, but often managers limit themselves to thinking that the work has to be done by the various staff leaders who own the specific areas of responsibilities. However, this way of thinking doesn’t allow for any development of the next generation of leaders, nor does it give Generation Y the learning opportunities they are looking for.

By taking the time to develop career paths and learning opportunities within an organization, not only are employees kept actively engaged and the next level of leadership proactively developed, but it can also extend the amount of time these high-performance members of Generation Y stay within the organization.

Conclusion

This paper began with explaining the challenges and costs of employee churn, much of which could be simply attributed to misaligned recruiting practices or poor employee fit. However, as can now be seen, it is just as likely to be that a company’s internal practices, tools and traditional management styles are often not adapted to the expectations and requirements of our newest generation of employees. When organizations proactively adjust their environments to Generation Y, they will have great advantages over their competitors.

When employees are fully engaged, they enjoy their work and the environment they work within, and are much more productive. When information is shared and continuous feedback is provided, agents stay longer within their roles, as they are still learning and growing, and feel they are valued contributors to the company’s success. And as call center leaders are very aware, the more tenured their agents, the better quality and more consistent service they provide to their customers.

This enables call center leaders to focus less on employee management (as agents are managing themselves) and turn their attention to more strategic areas. Moreover, as companies continue to make internal improvements, employees share this with their peers, friends and families. As a result, these companies gain positive reputations within their communities and subsequently with their customers. And instead of struggling to find people to join a call center group, new recruits will be lining up to work within them. These companies then get the benefit of being more selective, able to choose only the best talent to work with them.

Although it is true that there will always be some level of attrition in call centers, it will slow down as agents think twice before looking for other opportunities outside these organizations. In addition, call center customers get the benefit of working with more tenured agents who are very knowledgeable, enjoy what they are doing and take care of customer needs in an efficient manner. These types of positive interactions increase customer satisfaction and loyalty levels with the company, as customers love doing business with companies who treat their employees well. Overall, call center companies benefit financially, both on the top and bottom lines, as they adapt their internal processes to engaging their Generation Y workforce.

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