Call Center Turnover: How to Eliminate Employee Attrition Costs

By Jenny Kiesewetter
December 19, 2020

Call Center Turnover: How to Eliminate Employee Attrition Costs

No matter the industry, managing employee turnover seems like a never-ending item on every company’s to-do list. Since January 2019, 3.5 million employees have left their jobs voluntarily, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, costing companies millions of dollars. Things have been even more unpredictable in the time of Covid-19 with higher unemployment and greater uncertainty. It seems like all companies, especially call centers, must reexamine their operations without compromising on how they serve their customers.

Turnover Costs: Breaking It Down

Call centers are no exception to the pain point of continual turnover. According to Quality Assurance and Training Connection, turnover in the call center industry averages 30% and 45%. When you lose a call center agent, you don’t just lose their expertise or years of experience with your company, but also the investment that it took to hire that employee. For example, when calculating the cost of turnover, you need to not only account for that employees’ salary but also recruiter fees, onboarding costs, and training expenses.

These costs often depend on the position you are refilling. For example, Glassdoor estimates that it costs $4,000 to hire a new employee while Workable estimates that it costs approximately $15,000 to replace a high-level executive. But the costs don’t stop there; companies then have the costs of training and managing their employees.

After being hired, it takes an employee approximately eight months to get up to speed, working at his or her fullest capabilities. However, keep in mind that about one-third of new employees look for another job within their first six months, and another 23% look for a job before their one-year anniversary. And hence, the turnover cycle keeps—well—cycling.

Ending High Turnover Rates in Your Call Center

One way to help alleviate the impact of attrition rates in your call center is to leverage technology like virtual AI-powered agents to handle extra customer demand. Unlike full-time hires, virtual agents don’t have on-going hiring costs. You can implement virtual agents once, and your augmented call center can be up and running in a matter of days, answering customer calls 24/7 with high success rates.

Additionally, by augmenting your live agents with virtual AI-powered agents, you can eliminate a significant portion of your training costs, as virtual agents only need to be trained once, thanks to artificial and machine intelligence. And if your product line changes, or your call script changes, implement the updates, and your virtual agents are immediately off and running, reducing the impact of any turnover cycle dramatically.

Furthermore, companies don’t face a plethora of human resources issues with virtual agents, such as salary and benefits, time off, sick days, employment taxes, or non-productivity, all of which can add up over time. Conversational AI-platforms also shorten customer service calls with fewer errors, including any necessary after-call work, providing further efficiencies and greater cost-savings.

With customer service transforming before our eyes, companies need to stay ahead of the curve when investing in, operating and managing call centers. With Replicant, learn how to reduce or eliminate unnecessary setbacks and costs, without sacrificing on efficiency or the customer experience.

Visit us at Replicant.ai to learn more!