The Cost of Attrition.

By Chris Tandridge

The pain of attrition is very real and the costs are extremely high, which can be truly numbing if you are responsible for bottom line results. High attrition rates translate into lost time and increased costs – in recruiting, training and onboarding – and as a manager, you can find yourself caught in a continual loop. To exacerbate your pain, high attrition rates have a broader impact on your team’s performance, such as:

  • Decline in productivity
  • Lower morale
  • Poor office dynamics
  • Lower customer satisfaction levels
  • Loss of potential revenues
  • Stress as workloads increase

We have been asked by a number of clients to help them solve this issue. The good news is that we can. Here is just one powerful example of delivering a great outcome – one that can be easily replicated in any industry or environment.

A Call Centre Case Study

The Client

A large Contact Center that partners with a number of global organisations to fulfil their Customer Service and Sales Support functions.

The Challenge

The company had relied predominantly on traditional processes to screen and select all candidates. The company was aware that their costs were escalating, staff turnover rates were growing, and the quality of delivery provided to their clients was becoming a significant issue. The significant costs of replacing staff was a growing and significant concern, as was the substantial training costs and disruption to continuity.

As a result, they called in the support of a contact center consulting firm who identified that the company had significant process gaps and a lack of reporting capabilities.

Clearly of significant impact amongst the issues was an employee turnover rate that exceeded 300%+.

Our Solution

In order to solve the numerous staffing issues identified, we undertook a number of concurrent programs in order to deliver a complete solution for the client. Speed was of the essence and we were mindful that we would have to customise aspects of our Call Centre Solution range to the very specific and exacting needs of this client.

As a first step, we customised our ContactCenterScreen™ tool to enable the client to rank candidates based on job fit and to improve time to hire. This ensured that they were able to quickly and efficiently identify candidates who were ideally suited to the organisation, which in turn saved time and costs and avoided selection errors.

Our ContactCenterSimulation™ was then used to assess critical hard skills for success. This allowed the company to accurately ascertain the keyboard, maths and process skills of the short-listed candidates.

We also customised our ContactCenterPOP™ (Predictor of Potential) selection tool and applied it to their top performers. This provided a sound base metric on which to assess candidates who shared similar DNA personality traits.

The Results

  • Our Screen™ tool allowed the company to focus on high-quality candidates who outperformed lower quality hires by 2X, and key demographics were identified that correlated to performance and retention
  • Time to hire improved by 35%
  • The Simulation™ accurately predicted 180-day retention and clearly identified keyboarding and math skills quickly, easily and affordably
  • 63% of the candidate pool were identified as having potential to succeed in a Contact Center role and those with the highest potential had 27.4% higher performance ratings

In Summary

The company saved a significant amount of time and costs during the selection and onboarding process.

It also significantly reduced staff turnover rates by 150% and they now have a selection process and model that can predict top performers when hiring. Performance levels improved to new highs and delivered on the customer satisfaction index.

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