This scene is getting all too familiar for call center managers. A call comes into the center and the agent has difficulty resolving it. It may be due to technology, the caller not being clear on what she wants, or the agent is not having a great day. Whatever the cause, there is a delay in satisfying the customer. When this happens again and again, stress builds up and the agent starts to wonder if this job is worth it.

Employee retention is a huge problem facing call center managers today. There are staff shortages caused by people not entering the profession, too many people leaving the profession for either higher-paying jobs or jobs with less stress, and not enough promotional opportunities to warrant people making a career out of being a customer service agent. These staff shortages are exacerbated by the difficulty in retaining people who enter the profession. While much recent work has been focused on recruitment and getting more people “in the front door”, I’m suggesting that the bulk of future efforts be focused on employee retention and “closing the back door”.

Recent CRM publications have talked about the high turnover rate in the industry. Depending on the location within the country, rates can vary from as low as 30% to as high as 100+%. The reasons given for the turnover are the attractiveness of other, higher paying jobs in different industries and the inability of employers to keep agents over time. The cost of turnover for a trained employee is often estimated to be at least five times that person’s salary. In actuality, depending on the level of the lost employee, that multiple can increase to 10 or 12 times the salary, when you include things like benefits, replacement costs, “ramp up” time and costs, and lost opportunity costs (poor customer service) as the new hire gets up to speed. Obviously, something different must be done, and done quickly.

The first thing is to identify the real reasons people are leaving the profession. We call this the causes of defection. When you know what is causing them to leave, you can take steps to plug these gaps and work to retain employees. Some of the reasons call center managers have to look carefully at include staff pay, status, hours worked, advanced training for the advancing technology, and little or no appreciation for a difficult job well done. In fact, managers would do well to look beyond the typical compensation and benefits areas to the more personal areas such as the psychology, motivation and emotional issues that cause people to stay with or leave a job. They should also take a very close look at the relationship between the staff and their direct supervisors. Extensive research by the Gallup Organization has shown that it is this relationship that is the primary determinant of employee retention.

APPROACHES TO EMPLOYEE RETENTION

It is quite obvious that something has to be done to change the current approaches call center managers are using to retain employees. They are not working as well as the industry had hoped they would work. Let’s review some of what is being done now so that we can discuss how to improve upon these efforts.

The current approaches are really a mixed bag. Someone tries something, it either doesn’t work or works just a little bit, and then they quickly move on to something else. Retention efforts become a sort of “flavor or program of the month”. This is the first major mistake. Too much variability leads to confusion that leads to an increase in job stress that leads to a decrease in performance that leads to an employee leaving. It is a vicious cycle. Call center managers, and anyone in a CRM position, have got to find a way to create a virtuous cycle so people enjoy their jobs and want to stay in the profession.

Employee retention must be an ongoing process, not a program. That’s why everyone is having so much difficulty retaining employees. They develop “retention programs”. They give out perks and bonuses (financial and non-financial). They create a variety of incentives they hope will motivate employees to stay. Things like tuition reimbursement, low cost loans and continuing education opportunities seem to be the standard bearers for employee retention programs, if they are provided at all. While employees are thrilled that their employers paid for them to attend a conference or industry meeting, they are still not staying in the profession. The turnover continues despite these professional developmental and financial incentives. Managers must try something else to improve retention.

One thing they do is they paint a rosy picture of the job upon hiring, and then the employee finds out the job was not at all like it was described. The manager is not to be faulted here. He or she is only trying to present the job in the best possible light. Yet, when the employee finds the long hours, the job-related stress, and the tensions of dealing with the customers, etc., are greater than what was described or expected, that employee is going to look to leave.

This approach of using recruitment as a retention tool is valuable, but not as it is currently being used. Prospective employees would rather be told the truth about the job, its hours, its stresses, and its opportunities, so they have a chance to analyze all the factors and decide for themselves if the job is for them. Managers who do not deliver the whole picture to a prospective employee are actually costing themselves money because they first have to train this new hire, get them up to speed, and then replace them when they leave because of an improper fit. If the hiring manager would have taken more time to do a better job of selection, then the employee/job fit would have been better and the retention probabilities would have increased.

There is a reason the current approaches to employee retention are not working. That is because they are primarily externally based. They are focused on things that the company can do to or for the employee. The truth is that employee retention processes must focus on what the employee gets out of the job. It must be a benefits-based approach that helps the employee answer the question “What’s In It For Me?” Retention processes must focus on the employee’s motivation for wanting the job, taking the job and what it will take for the employee to stay with the job. The retention processes must be ongoing and integrated into the daily culture of the company. The best way to describe how to keep your employees is to treat them like customers and use all your CRM techniques internally.

EMPLOYEES AS CUSTOMERS

This concept is not new. People have been talking and writing about internal and external customers for 20 years now. What is new is using the internal customer service and CRM approach as a technique to improve employee retention. Let’s assume that our employees are as important to our company’s success as the paying customers. We do everything we can to serve and satisfy the paying customers, our external customers. We also need to do everything we can to serve and satisfy our internal customers, the employees.

Many companies take the approach that the customer is always right. They will do whatever it takes to prevent a customer from leaving them. Yet, they don’t put in half the effort to prevent an employee from leaving them. That is because companies have not yet realized that there is a definite performance link between employee service, satisfaction and retention and customer service, satisfaction and profits.

We take external customer service and satisfaction surveys and make adjustments in our processes and performance methods so that customer service is improved. We may take employee attitude surveys, but then we just calculate the average of the responses and report them. We very rarely make changes in our corporate cultures, organizational processes, or the treatment of employees based on the results of these attitude surveys. AND THAT IS A MISTAKE.

Customer service works for the external customers. We treat them nicely. We work to satisfy them. We help them achieve their goals. We use CRM processes and technologies to build and maintain relationships with them. Why don’t we do the same for our employees? If positive customer service policies and practices can satisfy and keep external customers, why don’t we adapt these policies and practices for our employees?

The majority of customers leave a business because they did not like the way they were treated. To prevent these defections, companies work to increase the financial switching costs and the psychological switching costs. The financial costs are associated with what it would cost the customer to find a new provider, to educate that provider as to his or her preferences, and to help the new provider learn how to best serve the customer. The psychological switching costs, which play a greater role in customer retention than the financial costs, are related to the relationships that have been established between the customer and employees of the company, the feelings the customer gets when doing business with that company, and the positive emotions that customer feels from the way they are treated by that company. The parallel to employee retention is extremely obvious.

If you increase the financial switching costs, you may retain a larger percentage of your employees. However, you will still lose many of them because it’s not always about the money or money-related things. This has been proven time and again, and it is a major reason the industry is having trouble retaining employees. Yet, if you provide superior customer service to your employees and increase the psychological switching costs, you will definitely improve your chances of keeping more of your employees. People like to work where they are liked, where they know they make a difference, and where their efforts are appreciated. Internal customer service provides employees with all these psychological and emotional benefits.

We know for a fact that once basic financial requirements are satisfied, people will continue to work where they feel the best. Just look at customer behavior for an appropriate analogy. Customers will continue to buy from the company that gives them the best product or service at the best price (the greatest value). This makes the customer feel good. In fact, customers will buy from a company who has a higher price if the value of the purchase and the “feel-good” associated with that purchase is greater than from somewhere else. So, let’s take an approach that we know already works and transfer it to our employees.

Once the employees are paid fairly for their jobs, the service we provide to them will create feelings of loyalty, greater perceived and received value, and higher psychological switching costs. These, in turn, will keep the employee on the job because that person is now satisfied with what the job provides. We probably should spend less time talking about “comp and benefits” (although they are important) and more time talking about employee needs and desires. When we show an interest in the employee as a person, we go a long way to helping that employee decide to stay an employee with us.

Richard F. Gerson, Ph.D. is the President of Gerson Goodson, Inc., a Clearwater-based marketing consulting firm specializing in customer relationship management, sales performance improvement and employee development and retention. The company works with clients to develop relationship marketing programs that increase sales while simultaneously retaining profitable customers through the creation of a powerful CRM strategy. Company: Gerson Goodson Inc.