Hi

I am looking for information on benchmarking staff retention within the CS/ Call centre environment. Any ideas most welcome.

What are they retaining? I mean are we talking bank accounts or car insurance, Mortgages? It makes a difference.
You could measure retention on number of customers saved or amount of money brought in. need a bit more information.

Sorry - no - I am talking about retention of staff not of customers. I have a relatively high turnover of staff within the team and would like any ideas on how I benchmark this.

Are you conducting exit interviews? If not you, is HR? If HR, are they not sharing information with you?

That is where I would start. Determining the reasons of the turnover. Is it the job? If so, what specifically about it? Is it the pay? If so, what can be done about it? Is it another co-worker (happens a lot...there can be a bully on the team)? If so, what can you do about it?

Is it the industry? If so, talk with others in the same/similar industry and get a sense of their turnover rates to use as a benchmark. You might find that your rates are low in comparison.

Good luck,
Karen

From the information we gleaned we discovered the general lifecycle for an advisor in a call centre is about 2-3 years. We have a pay progression plan (review every 6 months) to allow advisors to reach this level of development in this time frame.

Our measure is number of days with the company, from first day of induction to formal leaving date.

Exit interviews are conducted as well as a review with recruitment every month for the first 6 months of their life with us. It's an informal discussion to catch any warning signs early on.

hope you find this useful

You might find this link useful. It tells you a lot about international benchmarking standards. Let me know if you'd like to see more of these.

Is this a supervisors position or a call center or customer service level position? Is this an entry level position in your company? Do you have levels in the department along with pay increases? Is there somewhere else to go in the company as one achieves highest level of proficiency in this department?

We have a customer service group- one rep has 28 years experience at the company (20 in this dept.),3 have over 20 years and from 3-5 years in this department) and only one is new......with only a year in this department. The pay has grades (8 in all) as one progresses; along with great benefits, education benefits, training etc...You are treated with respect, have the equipment you need to do the job, no one is looking over your shoulder but we do have metrics that must be met each month.

By high turnover, what do you mean....numbers and lengths of time etc......

Thanks

Hi There,

Do you have any formal communication with your employees other than the appraisal process and staff meetings? Gaining feedback from staff can be very useful - as long as it is done confidentially and with the right questions - and showing that changes are made based on employee feedback. This can have a very positive impact on employee attitudes as they start to feel involved and listened to.

There are many companies out there who can assist you with this kind of work (you can also do it yourself but you do lose out on the expert input and the confidential aspect of the excercise) but I would obviously recommend the comapny I work for - Lorien Research who have conducted this kind of employee research with the likes of Ford Europe, National Express and Wolverhampton & Dudley Brewery.

If you want to ask me any questions about setting up your own feedback process then I will be happy to help, or alternatively email me your details to barry.mckeich@lorien.co.uk for a more detailed chat.

Cheers

I am coming into this late in the game. It's easy to start any opnion with "it all depends on ___"...but it does. It depends on what kind of organization this is, what size it is, how strong it has been been and will be, what industry, what dynamics and what kind of leadership (which includes what kinds of values are embraced and replicated).

For some companies, 2-3 yrs is a gold mine for retaining call center staff. Some companies transition employees out of a customer service environment 6, 12 or 18 months after start date, if they are the kind of org that wants to bring in eager individuals with stamina and patience to move into other areas of the company, and presumably the exposure to the "entry-level" environment has a broad enough range of experiences to be gained, that this kind of patience and understanding of what is delivered by a company can be valuable training for other positions in the company. "Customer service" as a career skill in that kind of company may not be a marketable competency, but rather a short-term means to deliver for a higher objective

Other companies would have a different kind of culture if they specialize in a product or market and are large enough to have their own developed customer service department. There, the customer service dept might be more of a competency in its own right, and the "customer service you get at ____" is part of the company's image as well as its product/service. Maybe pay levels increase with months or years of service and there is room for growth inside the CS dept.

Still other companies are there to handle the customer service requirements of others, and THAT is their business.

But with each of those types of companies I tried to describe, there is still going to be variation in culture and leadership and how customer service is valued as a competency. My point of view is that the up or down levels of call center/customer service staff retention is going to be all about those cultural variables and all about why people are brought into a company to begin with and whether thought is given to what will be done with them on a regular basis.

So I'm not really answering the original question directly, but I guess the answers are behind the sketching I have done.