The contact centre industry faces a major HR challenge with high levels of agent absenteeism and churn, which, given that 70 per cent of the cost of a contact centre is the staff, is posing an expensive problem for the industry; Adrian Garton, Human Resources Manager, Milton Keynes, Cork & Business Development, Merchants reports.

The Merchants Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, 2006 has identified the global level of absenteeism to be 11 per cent, up almost 50 per cent on last year’s figure. We know it’s also an industry which has an extremely high agent churn rate – we estimate the actual figure to be far higher than the 21 per cent figure recorded, as much as 70 per cent for some transactional outbound work.”

Two contrasting scenarios can best illustrate what factors decide an agent’s satisfaction in their role. Typically, an agent who is placed under extreme pressure to perform, is badly managed, and given poor training is likely to be unhappy and will look to move jobs.

For this agent, life in the call centre means a day of relentless calls, few breaks, minimal team contact and little understanding of the product they are supporting. On the other hand, a role where there is responsibility for end-to-end problem resolution, where the agent is empowered with the right knowledge, given adequate time to make calls and act on customer requests to ensure customer delight, and works as part of a close team, will be more fulfilling.

Where businesses have a reputation for poor customer service, consumers are likely to give the agents more grief and agents are uninspired. In a business where the product or service offered is at rock bottom levels for competitive reasons (for example, budget flights) the strategy is often not about customer experience, it’s about throughput.

However, where organisations recognise the value of CRM as a customer loyalty tool, and place customer experience as a key performance indicator, the agent’s role is to ensure that the customer goes away happy, not simply try to resolve the call in record time and move on to the next caller. This allows them to ‘please’ rather than ‘deal with’ the customer, and a greater personal satisfaction is gained. With a happier workforce, and less churn, a contact centre can afford to invest more in CRM, and the improvement is a cyclical process – happy customers, happy agents, more money for sophisticated systems. Depending on the business’ approach to customer relationship management (CRM), I’ve seen call centres where agents take 40 calls per day and handle the customer exceptionally well, while in another they are taking up to 150, with an obvious comparison in the quality of the interaction and in agent job satisfaction. Clearly, there is a commercial balance to be struck – but are we getting that balance right?

Agent absenteeism and churn are driven by the same thing – employee engagement. We know that agents are more likely to leave because of the quality of the role and their relationship with management rather than for a small increase in salary, and there are several processes which a contact centre can implement to maximise agent motivation levels and ensure greater job satisfaction:

1. A staff engagement plan focuses on an employee’s relationship with his/her line manager, who acts as the representative of the organisation. This brings the agent and their manager together for regular one-to-ones and coaching, providing an environment where they can talk openly and honestly and build a more robust relationship. Measuring levels of engagement through a staff survey, and monitoring trends throughout the year, will also help to ensure that problems are caught early – this need not be expensive! As a starting point try getting the team to rate and briefly substantiate their satisfaction levels from one to four in your team meeting.

2. Continuity of management – as is clear from above, the most influential person in determining how long an agent will stay is their line manager. The line manager’s skill set should involve positive performance management, coaching, one-to-one meetings with agents, and personal development liaison, taking on non-managerial duties (for example escalated phone calls) only as a minor role within this. If a manager is well-respected and is consistently available to provide coaching and advice, this increases the likelihood that an agent will feel engaged and therefore stay with the organisation.

3. Acknowledging and ensuring employee personal development – is also a key factor in the length of time an agent will stay. This need not be career development along; it can involve supporting agents’ achieve their dreams and ambitions beyond their life at work.

4. Training – regular training, and training needs analysis to ensure that it is targeted, is key – not just a quick induction training.

5. Absence management plan – this involves return to work interviews after absence or sickness to identify the root of the problem, and counselling sessions to that provide support and attendance objectives. This builds upon the bonds of engagement, and will prevent agents leaving the company.

6. Showing the agent’s value add – Having the head of frozen foods from Unilever come and talk to the staff in the contact centre team about the value they add to the business and showing close tie-in with the client company’s culture and objectives will make the agents feel part of the bigger team. And by giving feedback too, for instance telling an agent that their feedback has been responsible for changes in product and process as a result of channeling the customer enquiries, that, too, makes them feel valued and motivated to continue in the team.

With absenteeism, you inevitably need a bit of carrot and a bit of stick, but short-term incentivising, for instance a chance to win an iPod, whilst it appears a good idea, is often not so, and agents see through such schemes quickly. However, with the World Cup looming, contact centre managers who aren’t interested in engagement will see their results suffer.

Those who think ahead and plan to put up plasma screens, or take on temporary workers to enable core staff to take more breaks to watch matches, will do well – and those who encourage their agents to take part in competitions around the World Cup to bring a sense of team spirit into the call centre environment will do even better.