It’s no secret, agent turnover at call centers has been on the rise since 2020 and the great resignation movement that swept the U.S. hasn’t seen as much of an improvement as we’d like.
While this isn’t what we like to hear, it’s important to acknowledge what is happening in the workplace. After all, we can’t address an issue until we’ve identified the problem. That’s why we’re sharing 15 employee retention stats so you can come up with the right solutions for your call center.
If employee turnover is what you want to avoid, you’re looking for ways to retain employees. That means you’re trying to keep employees around for the long haul, helping to minimize the knowledge gap, develop a culture within the organization, and save money!
You can calculate your employee retention rate by setting your timeline (start date and end date) and using the formula below where EE represents employee count.
Employee retention rate is: Employee count on last day / Employee count on first day x 100 Image source
Why is employee retention important though? Well aside from the benefits we mentioned earlier (knowledge, culture, and saving money), TechTarget found a positive employee retention led to six key business benefits.
Some of these benefits are more tangible than others but the benefits are long term and trackable. Plus, employee retention means a positive reputation for your business.
We’ve broken these statistics into three categories: saving money, trends, and stats that point to ways you can improve your employee retention. Note that some of these stats are presented in terms of employee turnover, which is the inverse of employee retention.
You see it everywhere, but we have the numbers to back it up. Being able to keep your employees, or even keeping current employees and adding new ones, is less expensive than having to replace employees. And if you’re losing more employees than you’re keeping or gaining…well, let’s hope that’s not the case. Here’s how you can justify keeping your team to save money:
In some cases, retaining employees can even earn you money. In a Zippia call center report, it was found that 96% of customers said customer service was an essential part of their decision making. To that end, a positive experience increases the likelihood of a purchase by 140%, meaning you want to keep your high performing agents.
Employee turnover and employee retention go hand-in-hand so it’s important to understand what leads to voluntary turnover and retention factors. To help shed light on the these elements, we’ve compiled some trending stats for you:
Your call center tools are another factor to consider when looking at employee experience. The right tools can help reduce employee burnout and voluntary turnover.
Speaking of tools, 36% of call centers have implemented cloud technology in some form or fashion. Those that are making use of cloud-based technology also reported a 27% reduction in downtime. Meaning these call centers were able to cash in on more opportunities than call centers not utilizing the cloud.
We’ve gone over the costs of not retaining employees, and we’ve gone over the trends of turnover vs retention—but what about stats for those who’ve managed to retain their employees? A number of strategies to retain employees have been tried and tested, here are some numbers so you can quantify their effectiveness:
The McKinsey & Company report highlights the importance of employee engagement to boost contact center productivity and retention. Image source
You can take these numbers at face value, but keep in mind that you may be able to read between the lines to come up with employee retention strategies that work for your business. For example, job satisfaction comes in many forms, so you may be able to offer better training or tools to accomplish this. Or you may want to consider offering professional development opportunities instead.
Employee retention is critical to the success of your call center. Looking at statistics can help build an understanding of where problems stem from and allow us to come up with potential solutions or mitigations.
Use these call center-specific statistics to get you a better picture of how you can approach employee retention in your business.