Reduce Contact Center Turnover by Engaging your Agents -

We have all been there. We hire a customer service agent; spend time, money, and resources to train them. And in 8 weeks, that agent has gone across the street to another contact center for an extra $.25/ hour. Here, we will explore the formula to reduce contact center turnover by engaging your agents.

This is not only costly to our business and cost center, but it’s extremely frustrating and negatively impacts the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for the contact center.

So how do we reduce contact center turnover? The secret to reducing contact center turnover is to engage your agents.

Here is a formula for the best, and most engaging, job ever.

MONEY + FUN + GROWTH = BEST JOB EVER

A great job has all three. A good job has two. An okay job has one. A bad job has none. This is chess not checkers. If you build a framework, with these variables, you will reduce contact center turnover by engaging your agents.

Compensation and Money

We all know that our customer service agents will go across the street for a nickel. So it will be important to implement a variable compensation structure that keeps your agents engaged and focused on delivering excellent results.

Implementing a quarterly bonus and variable compensation structure has yielded some amazing results for our clients.

Review your company business objectives and create compensation structures that align with those objectives.

If your company objective is profitability, then we will bonus our agents on Efficiency metrics such as First-Call Resolution (FCR) and Average Handle Time (AHT).

Let’s say your company objective is growth, then we will bonus our agents on Revenue metrics such as cross-sell and up-sells, and higher Net Promoter Score (NPS).

If your company objective is to drive buzz and deliver a white-glove experience, then we will bonus our agents on Quality metrics such as higher (AHT) and Customer Effort (CE).

There is a ton of empirical evidence that states that flat compensation fosters mediocrity, and boredom. A quarterly bonus structure, that consistently changes is engaging and fun for your agents. However, the bonus structure and KPI’s must be attainable. If your bonus structure is unattainable, your agents will lose interest fast and the whole program will backfire.

*Variable compensation and engaging contests will help reduce contact center turnover*

If you build an engaging and attainable compensation structure, then you will reduce contact center turnover.

A Fun Work Environment

It’s not always about the money. To reduce contact center turnover, you must create a fun and engaging work environment. And what makes work fun? It’s usually the people you work with.

In an age where people are remote or hybrid, collaboration solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams are no-brainers. First, these collaboration solutions promote real-time communication among teams and encourage agents to seek help from team members in real time instead of a call transfer.

To make work fun, introduce contests and the ability to win prizes. Gamification does not have to start and end with the sales team. Customer Service can take advantage of Gamification as well.

Using the same structure as your bonus plans – you can leverage technology like Five9 Gamification or NICE Performance Management to build monthly or quarterly contests related to your organizations goals in and out of the contact center.

While a cash spiff is interesting, your agents will get excited at the opportunity to win a Louis Vuitton bag or PlayStation 5 just by doing a good job at work!

*A fun work environment will help reduce contact center turnover*

When you make work fun and engaging, you will reduce contact center turnover.

Learning, Growing, and Elevating your Career

Part of any great job is the opportunity for learning and growth. We know that when our people are learning and challenged in a healthy way, they typically stay.

So, how in a contact center do we foster learning and growth?

First – we must reduce the amount of monotonous and repetitive Cases that agents receive. If your call center experiences high call volume related to billing, shipping updates, or password resets, then we need to find a way to deflect those calls away from agents.

A great way to deflect calls is by launching a Community or Customer Portal. Salesforce Experience Cloud is the gold-standard for flexible Communities that drive self-service and higher CSAT scores. Enabling Chat, Chat Bots, or Genesys’ Voice Bots, and working with marketing to push notifications or educational material throughout the customer journey are all ways to reduce the monotonous call center volume.

Once the monotonous calls are deflected, your agents will be on their way to solving more complex Cases, enabling them to learn, grow, and elevate their careers.

If you can foster learning and growth, then you will reduce contact center turnover.

Conclusion:

An engaged agent will stay your agent, and as you can see there is a huge ROI related to engaging your agents. Reach out to info@techstackadvising.com or Get a Free Consultation if you would like to learn more about executing a plan to engage and retain your customer service agents.