Issues in Technology Management - Retaining Call Centre Staff

Technology Call Centre managers bemoan the high turnover rate of staff, and yet have very few effective strategies for reducing that rate.  Mostly they talk about methods of managing the impact of that rate of turnover - as if it was a force of nature that they can only (at best) respond to rather than control.

Yet call centre staff turnover can be reduced from the industry average of 40-60% per year to a much more acceptable 10-20% per year.  The pay-off is not just in recruitment and training costs, but in being able to bring to bear stability and experience in your dealings with your clients. 

There is no magic formula, but you might consider (in addition to the 'standard' advice):

• Employing older staff, particularly those who have 'old technology' experience
• Valuing these older staff (your core group) as mentors of younger staff who are 'passing through'
• Offering flexible hours and working arrangements for technology staff who's need for flexibility (eg parenthood issues) means that they have to 'give up' their regular IT career for a while
• Giving staff the opportunity to become Client Researchers (my Client Knowledge Base paper elsewhere in this Blog), or Mentors, or to train themselves, or simply 'goof-off' between calls (because you are paying them to answer calls and if they are really good at that then they earn their 'keep' just doing that - and you'll find that most people would prefer to have some worthwhile 'secondary' task, just give them the space to find it)
• Don't rotate people in and out.  'Outsiders' generally don't look forward to joining the Call Centre, and often destroy morale there by breaking up the the 'The Worlds against us but we're ok' defense mechanism that keeps Call Centres stabilised, and by simply having a bad attitude and complaining (as filling in at the Call Centre is often seen as 'punishment').  If Call Centres had high status this might not be an issue (people would clamour to get in there), but lets be realistic...  If you make the call centre staff responsible for their own (collective) roster you'll find that their committment to their colleagues means that you have far fewer instances of absence, or situations where the on-deck staff aren't willing to put in an extra effort to make up for any short term absences.  It's a touch-and-go decision, but generally an 'off-the-street' replacement is often less trouble than someone brought in from somewhere else in the organisation 'against their will'.  Encouraging 'volunteers' (and methods for doing this) is a big enough discussion to take somewhere else in this blog (when I have a moment..)
• Break down the separate partitions as far as possible.  While managing noise is an issue, it shouldn't be necessary to put Call Centre staff in 'boxes' where they can't even see each other.  And - oddly enough - IT Call Centre staff RELY on overhearing other calls in order to detect 'what's going on' much of the time.

I wouldn't say that it's hard to build a stable and happy Call Centre (remarkably easy in fact 'on the ground'), and if you asked me why more organisations don't make the effort, I'd have to say I suspect it's because most folk in organisations (and I include Executives) pay lip service to the 'importance' of call centres, but wouldn't want to live there, and frankly don't want to get 'too close' in case they are tainted by association.  In that environment what's the point of trying to 'improve' things when you know that your status and the status of your call centre team will at best advance from 'despised and inneficient' to 'despised and efficient'.  (I know its 'nothing personal', I'm talking about 'the job', not the people).

I don't discount personal ambition driving people within Call Centres (particularly managers) to make an 'improvement' in the operation of the call centre, but note that their usual reward (often their driving motivation) is to be 'promoted out of there'.  That of course ensures that the staff left behind are also left with the firm impression that someone (yet again) has been advanced at their expense, and hence lose interest in maintaining whatever improvement had been introduced.  In fact if they 'drop' the improvement and re-introduce it later it might serve as a ticket out for another one of them.  A system in perfect homeostasis with the dial set to 'abysmal'.

Let's leave the grim stuff and get back to that 'easy answer'.  There's plenty of sites on the web which talk about 'how to retain call centre staff', and they include the usual hokum answers - be nice to your staff, say thank you, give them a pleasant environment to work in.  A few go on to the more daring 'empower them' (but without explaining how), and not a few endorse the 'cycle of despair' by suggesting that you promise them release after serving a 'minimum sentence'.  My guess is that folk who write this advice by and large no longer work in call centres (if they ever did), and they've formed their opinions by asking this question:

WHAT'S WRONG WITH CALL CENTRES & WHY DON'T PEOPLE ENJOY WORKING (AND STAYING)THERE.

Which is certainly illuminating, but only half the story.  You need also to ask:

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT CALL CENTRES & WHY DO PEOPLE ENJOY WORKING (AND STAY) THERE).

It's an amusing prejudice actually of the people making the inquiry that they latch on to the people (usually the ones leaving) and the opinions (usually their own) that have a 'negative' relationship with Call Centres.  It's often assumed that the ones who aren't actually leaving are getting ready to leave, and the ones who seem to stay long term are incapable of leaving due to some 'disability'.  There's a sense that the ones who stay behind don't have anything useful to contribute to the debate because they are so obviously lacking ambition and insight (else why'd they still be there). 

I have to admit that the system conspires to make the number of people who actually enjoy working in call centres (long term) fairly few and far-between, but if you ask them why the answers might go like this..

• I enjoy the contact with the people and how they appreciate me (we're talking clients here)
• I enjoy being able to 'switch off' as soon as I walk out the door
• I enjoy having the 'spare time' between calls to do my own thing (study, surf, whatever)
• I enjoy working with the young folk who pass through here on their way to other jobs.
• I enjoy the lack of politics, being so low in the organisation that I can say whatever I want
• Being able to negotiate flexible hours (it sometimes happens)
• Being able to work from home (again, it sometimes happens)

You also get equally valid (but not particularly useful) answers such as "I enjoy being treated badly/having something to complain about" .  If there was a large enough pool of masochists out there this MIGHT  be a valid employment strategy you could adopt.   Equally "I enjoy the high rate of pay relative to what else is on offer' really depends upon 'what else is on offer.  It certainly works in India.  Finally, "I enjoy being able to switch off at work" might just be a little bit too risky (you'd assume this observation was contributed anonymously). 

You might then reframe the question and ask (of everyone there), "what makes it tolerable in Call Centres" and you might get a range of answers such as

• the company of the people I work with (social)
• learning things from the people I work with
• the fellowship that comes from the 'The world is 'against' us feeling I share with my colleagues
• the promise that I'll get out if I serve my time
• the environment, being treated well

Some of these are familiar (a pleasant environment) but we're beginning to 'unearth' things that don't generally figure in the literature, which are not 'silver bullets' in themselves, but expand the range of options open to a manager who is trying to design, or improve, an IT Call Centre.

Which is not to say that a Manager should employ the 'The World's Against Us' line with his or her staff in order to foster solidarity.  But it suggests that the Manager who tells their staff 'Everyone in this organisation values you and we're all one happy family' will simply (if it flies in the face of the evidence) be telling the Call Centre staff that the Manager is in the 'other camp'.  Some acknowledgement of the 'them' and 'us' is actually useful to the Manager who wants to get close enough to the call centre staff in order to work on those other strategies which might break down the 'them' and 'us' to some degree.  But (yet again) a Manager who perceives that the rest of the organisation will never respect the Call Centre might as well play the 'them' and 'us' for all it's worth if it leads to a greater sense of solidarity (and perverse pride) within the Call Centre.

Comments

[Allan Pease]

I'm interested to know if you think that call centres are inevitably going to have low status in organisations. You describe some strategies for retaining staff, but they seem to assume they don't include anything about achieving that by lifting the status of the call centre generally.

Do you include service desks and help desks in the definition of call centre?

[Tban]

Regarding low status, yes unless there is some change in what IT Call Centres (by which I mean Service/Help Desks) actually DO. The attitude that organisation take towards their Call Centres doesn't derive from some 'personal' disklike of the people working there, it has something to do with a view about the 'status' of the work.

In the IT business the Call Centre is the point where clients 'make first contact' with the IT service provider, and you can be fairly sure that they're not ringing up to tell you how much they enjoyed your last software upgrade. The call centre is not only known as the place where these awkward conversations take place, but it is ALSO the place that generates the request to the 'higher status' group within the IT service provider organisation that has to 'fix' the problem (or tell the Call Centre to tell the Client to 'go away'). It's very often the case that the Call Centre is the messenger and suffers the usual fate.

Despite organisations 'theoretical' understanding that call centres are important, here's what happens in practice. The day to day problem resolution stuff achieved by the call centre staff doesn't get any visibility outside the call centre. The really 'difficult and unpleasant' problems that the call centre can't deal with (like the badly managed upgrade) have to be referred internally within the IT service provider organisation. Every such referral from the Call Centre to the tech support team is (as you can imagine) not greeted with joy. In fact the tech support teams will often very openly 'blame' the call centre for not solving the problem themselves (saying 'that's what they're paid for, obviously they lack competence')

So I'd suggest its the nature of the working relationship between the Call Centre and the other 'internal components providing higer level support' that starts to 'cement' the status of the call centre within the organisation.

My Client Knowledge Base proposal suggests that if the Call Centre becomes a Client Research Centre and becomes an 'intelligence' source feeding the needs of the organisation (particularly those 'higher leverl' support components) then it will become known for doing something 'positive' rather than simply on-forwarding difficult problems.

I might add a short example. A help desk I worked in fielded calls on behalf of one of our higher level groups providing ISP services to Government. That ISP group won an award, something about being the 'most valued' service provider to Government that year. Big deal, the company threw a party, our Company Directors and Government big-wigs, speeches etc. All happening in the company board room within 30 feet of the actual call centre, which was asked to deflect any calls relating to ISP business for the duration (unless critical) so that the boys receiving the award (and enjoying the drinks) weren't disturbed. Now credit to these guys, they were doing a great job. But every single call that ever went to these guys came through the Help Desk initially, and perhaps we didn't deserve all that much credit, but it was probably worth something more than the stale sandwiches we managed to scavenge from the Board room after the party was over.