7 Steps to Reduce Agent Turnover with Effective Performance Management
There is no one, single reason for high turnover in contact centers. But agent retention can be dramatically improved by directing attention on empowering supervisors to be more effective with fact based coaching, personalized information and enabling agents to have new levels of insight into their performance. Companies are gaining a new perspective on how to achieve better agent retention and longer average employee tenure with the added benefit of improving operational efficiency and customer experience.
Combined with the best practices below, automating processes with a performance and talent management system empowers your supervisors with the tools to not just lower turnover, but more effective agents, and more rewarding customer experiences.
7 Best Practices to Improving Agent Retention with Performance Management
1. Have supervisors spend at least 50% of their time on agent development
The minimum amount of time that contact center supervisors should spend coaching their agents is 50%.Yet the number one way to increase agent efficiency, motivation and job satisfaction—and therefore decrease attrition—is to provide timely and targeted coaching.
2. Provide constructive feedback to agents
Many contact centers still base feedback on the average performance of all agents. If the average agent needs help handling a particular call type, all agents get training on the subject. This creates a frustrating situation wherein agents often spend time on redundant training and do not receive the necessary training for their specific weakness.
To increase agent efficiency and motivation, they must be evaluated individually, and given feedback and training for their specific performance, not the average performance of their group.
3. Follow-up on your feedback
Once a supervisor has provided an agent with feedback, it is crucial that he follow up with the agent. This ensures the agent’s performance is actually improving, and it reinforces the agent/manager relationship. Without this scheduled and structured feedback, whether the agent is still struggling or has resolved the issued, your efforts to reduce contact center turnover won’t be as successful as they should have been.
4. Put call quality ahead of efficiency
Today, businesses are increasingly looking to their contact centers as strategic partners in achieving business goals beyond customer service. By empowering agents to focus on providing the best service they can, instead of the best service they can in a set amount of time, companies that have made this shift have experienced lower turnover rates in general and of their highest performers in particular.
5. Base compensation on trusted, objective measurements
Bonuses, commissions, performance rewards and other forms of variable pay can be a double edged sword. If agents are compensated on measurements they view as subjective, biased or based on flawed metrics – it can create dissatisfaction that lowers agent morale and productivity, ultimately resulting in higher turnover. If agents trust that they’re being awarded fairly and objectively, you reduce any confusion surrounding compensation, creating a strong reason that employees stay, particularly high-performing employees.
6. Become a fact-based agent advocate
As with focusing on call quality, empowering agents to become strategic partners in your company’s success, rather than a necessary expense, will result in dramatic reduction on your turnover. In order to become one of those companies that views the contact center as a strategic partner, you need to become an agent advocate equipped with objective numbers and metrics. You need to provide senior management, along with organizations like Sales, Marketing and Product Management, with proof that you and your agents can contribute to the success of their objectives. As the primary contact with your company’s customers, you already have the information, all you have to do is put it into action.
7. Implement a consistent and reliable performance management system
All of these problems can be corrected and prevented with an effective performance and talent management system designed specifically to automate many of your management processes, such as performance evaluation, coaching and goal alignment. By collecting accurate metrics that make sense to your business, presenting them to agents and managers through relevant scorecards and dashboards, performance management empowers supervisors to set and share clear goals with agents, provide targeted feedback and follow up, recognize high performers, coach lower performers—and dramatically reduce your turnover.