How Call Center Employee Attrition Eats Away Your Profit

Faith Ocampo Published on May 30, 2016 Last updated on July 7, 2022

Sure, you can hire to replace resigning call center agents, but the truth is that employee attrition can cause deeper dents in your profit than you can imagine.

Call centers have started to deliver more value, especially as brands realized that what pulls in customers is good service. Call centers directly contribute to total business revenues, and they do so in huge chunks. As the frontline organization responsible for customer satisfaction and retention, the link between high-performing contact centers and rocketing profits is very much apparent.

employee attrition depiction call center agent resignation resigning leaving office with box

It’s also precisely why every company that provides outsourcing services must bolster their internal structure, particularly in terms of staffing. Staff engagement determines the customer experience.

When agents are happy, they make customers happy. But when they’re not, they’ll walk out the door. This leads to poor performance, lower productivity, and customer churn.

This is one of the crucial things most managers, particularly those new to the outsourcing sector, fail to anticipate when employee attrition shoots up without warning. They may think it’s easy to replace agents or that they’ll find more competent ones. In reality, however, this is not always the case.

The True Cost of Call Center Attrition

Data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that agents aged 20 to 24 stay in their company for an average of 1.1 years. Fifteen years ago, the estimate was 1.5 years. On the other hand, those in the 25 to 34-age bracket stay for about 2.7 years, compared with more than three years in the 1980s.

employee attrition depiction call center agent submitting giving handing in resignation letter

Call centers, in general, see a 30% to 45% employee attrition rate, while some are having a harder time, as they deal with three-digit churn rates.

These figures tell us that call centers almost never stop hiring, turning over tasks, and training new staff. In fact, 53% of contact centers believe that attrition barricades them from their goals.

But what’s alarming in this scenario is that the little, if not the total lack of, progress in the war against attrition has humongous costs. We could break these down into three categories.

  1. First, the Easily Quantifiable

    employee attrition depiction unused call center earphones

    When call centers deal with the horror that’s employee attrition, they do so pragmatically. The first-aid solution is to recruit new agents, train them, and proceed with turnover. All these are activities are accounted for in a call center’s operating budget.

    According to the Human Resource Institute, it costs $10,000 to $15,000 to replace a frontline call center agent.

    Not too alarming, you say? In a way, it’s something that most organizations don’t worry too much about. But you do need to invest more intensely on staff engagement if the outflow of agents is significantly greater than the inflow of new hires. Often, this happens as the reputation of your call center suffers because of successive resignations.

  2. Then, the Not-So-Obvious Ones

    employee attrition call center team resignation

    When a person joins your company, it’s not just a person walking in. It’s an employee capable of solving complex problems and hatching creative ideas. It’s someone who has trained for years to gain knowledge and professional skills—assets that are much more difficult to quantify, if at all quantifiable.

    And as they grow within your company, they amass organizational knowledge. They absorb and imbibe the culture of their workplace so they can operate more effectively within it. They gain new skills through your training programs so they can better reach out to customers

    The moment they leave, therefore, they’ve already become a more valuable asset than when they first came in. They take with them everything they’ve learned from your call center, as well as the unique experiences that allowed them to be efficient agents. These are intangible assets that are impossible to duplicate or re-create.

  3. And Last, the Biggest Trade-Offs

    employee attrition piggybank drowning

    This is where the figures escalate to insane amounts.

    Customer churn and dissatisfaction, missed opportunities for sales, unsolved problems, and staffing gaps may be classified as indirect costs of employee attrition and turnover.

    The impacts of these, however, are the most distressing. In fact, the costs may amount to hundreds of thousand, and even millions of dollars, depending on how many agents are leaving and what positions are being emptied.

 
The bottom line is that call center managers and brand owners need to stop attrition. By not implementing robust agent retention strategies, you’re allowing resignations to corrode the internal structure of the entire organization. Focusing on the happiness and growth of your employees will allow you to provide a much better customer service.

Open Access BPO’s various people-first policies and culture help ensure employees are taken care of, keeping out employee attrition rates low. These, along with our employee engagement programs and various skills and career development opportunities.

Call us today and we’ll build your program and cast highly capable agents to help your brand thrive.

 

Read More

Faith is a digital media enthusiast aiming to become an active part of the tech world by sharing her insights. She likes to blog about everything digimarketing, technology, and social media.
Join us on facebook
Open Access BPO 6 days ago
Aside from the location advantage, the 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 in Southeast Asia because of these Filipino qualities:
• neutral accent;
• multilingual proficiency;
• dedicated work ethics;
• resilience and adaptability; and
• close affinity with Western cultures.

Read: https://buff.ly/47sGAKD

----------
Partner with a #CallCenter with strong #CustomerExperience expertise: OpenAccessBPO.com/get-started

#WeSpeakYourLanguage
#CustomerSupport #CustomerService
#CustomerSatisfaction #CSat #CX
Open Access BPO 6 days ago
𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 is a valuable metric to determine the challenges your #CustomerSupport team will face.
It allows you to manage your team and distribute the workload accordingly, paving the way for an efficient operational output.

Read: https://buff.ly/3R0VCk2

----------
Effective employee and ops management ensure high #productivity for optimal 24/7 coverage.

So, only partner with an #outsourcing specialist with robust and foolproof ops strategies that will make your brand soar: OpenAccessBPO.com/get-started

#WeSpeakYourLanguage
#CustomerExperience #CustomerService
Open Access BPO 7 days ago
Creating culturally diverse teams in #CallCenters is not just a moral imperative but a strategic advantage.

Here are 6 more compelling reasons for ensuring #CulturalDiversity in the workplace: https://buff.ly/3MYaCO6

----------
Choose an #outsourcing partner with diverse teams and cultures:
OpenAccessBPO.com/get-started

#WeSpeakYourLanguage
#diversity #inclusitivity
Open Access BPO 7 days ago
This expansion is a strategic move that signifies a major milestone in 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗕𝗣𝗢's continuous growth and dedication to serving its expanding international clientele.

It enhances the company's capacity to manage additional programs, grow its teams, and create job opportunities for Davao-based

more via KRON 4 News
https://buff.ly/3sVKUD7
Open Access BPO 8 days ago
𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐦-𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 #𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬.

It's humans vs algorithm in this blog post! Read all about it now: https://buff.ly/3uybgeN

----------
Outsource content moderation and other business or knowledge process needs: buff.ly/3sJxKJl

#WeSpeakYourLanguage
Open Access BPO 8 days ago
#CallCenter Team Leaders drive progress and ensure exceptional #CustomerExperience.

Want to unlock the secrets to becoming an extraordinary leader for your team?

Here are the 5 biggest enemies of great leadership, along with a few tips on how to be a good leader: https://buff.ly/3G7P2Dc

----------
Partner with Open Access BPO. We have great call center agents and team leaders to guarantee your brand's growth: https://buff.ly/47MoEKX

#WeSpeakYourLanguage
Open Access BPO