Employee Attrition – Reasons & Ways to Reduce It

I read an article on ‘Four stats you need to know to improve your customer service.’ The article discussed about customer dissatisfaction (DSAT), First Response Time (FRT), First Call Resolution (FCR), and Employee Satisfaction (ESAT) statistics.

While FRT and FCR are commonly discussed, what caught my eye are the other two stats, DSAT and ESAT.

Let us look at ESAT in this article and leave DSAT for another day.

Employee Attrition Rate

The industry average for call center attrition is between 30 and 45%, which is a vast number. Besides, we are in the job-seekers market, and attracting top talents has become difficult.

Hiring, onboarding, and training new customer service representatives (CSRs) are not only expensive but risk introducing challenges that can affect your DSAT, FRT, and FCR stats.

On the flip side, agents are at the bottom of the pyramid in the customer experience journey. Still, when customers call in, they happen to be the face of your industry. They are expected to know everything you offer, get paid the least, and their work is policed the most.

Everything works against them to be the performer you desire the agent to be. 

They are the most stressed people when it comes to delivering customer experience.

The Reasons for Their Stress Are:

• 26% mentioned finding the right answers to customer questions
• 25% mentioned different systems and information sources giving different answers
• 20% mentioned hopping from one application or window to another
• 14% mentioned it was hard to keep up with all the new information and changes
• 15% mentioned other issues

[Source: A Forbes Study]

If you look at this, the right technology platform could handle 85% of the stress, directly influencing the delivery of a great customer experience.

How to Reduce the Employee Attrition Rate?

Imagine you providing your CSRs with a platform that can do the following:

• A single view of the customers, irrespective of the channels in which the customers interact
• Clearly defined knowledge management system with updated FAQs
• Seamless transition from the CSRs to product experts without the customer having to wait on the interaction channel
• An analytics platform that pulls out all the customer interaction friction points
• Workforce management solution that ensures that the customers get routed to the right agent at the right time for the right queries.

These would remove most stress that a CSR would go through and make their jobs enjoyable and fulfilling. They would be able to respond faster, resolve queries quicker, and improve customer satisfaction levels. In turn, it would reduce the employee dissatisfaction levels and hence the attrition levels.

How Else Do You Enhance Employee Satisfaction Levels?

To enhance, it is essential to gauge employee satisfaction levels. Do employee satisfaction surveys regularly and also conduct 1-on-1 meetings. Understand what they lack, their perceptions about the environment and the job they do, and what they need to do their jobs better.

Ensure that you provide an environment that allows your employees to be honest with you. Provide your reps with clear job descriptions, expectations, and rewards for doing their job well. Besides, measure their workloads objectively, and ensure that they get ample breaks and recreation as a part of their work.

At the end of the day, your business needs to provide exceptional customer service. The key pieces in the puzzle of providing exceptional customer service are your CSRs. They need to be on top of their game for them to provide the best possible experience.

A dissatisfied or disgruntled employee will do more harm to your brand than you could ever think of. Make the customer service environment positive by constantly monitoring the employee satisfaction levels and improving it with honesty.

Happier employees make happier workplaces. They, in turn, make customers happy.

Isn’t customer service all about delighting your customers?