Call centers have become notorious for possessing one of the highest employee attrition rates of any industry. According to Talkdesk, call centers have a turnover rate ranging from 30 to 45 percent. This is a staggering number, given that the average employee turnover rate in 2015 for all industries in the United States was 16.7 percent.
This isn’t entirely surprising: Call centers are stressful work environments. Agents are required to deal with challenging, frustrated customers, with the knowledge that the calls (and their performance) are being monitored and timed. On top of this, a U.S. News Careers report found that customer service representatives suffer from below-average job flexibility.
We’ve previously discussed ways to combat agent burnout, but today we ask: What are the symptoms? How do we properly make an early diagnosis? Identifying the symptoms of burnout as soon as possible can significantly boost your service quality, workplace satisfaction, and bottom line. Continue reading
Are you the Yoda of your friends and family, full of realism and words of advice? You may not realize it, but if you’ve ever worked in a customer facing position, you’ve likely learned some hard lessons about life. The call center can truly open your eyes to human behaviour and the psychology behind it. By interacting with people constantly, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually get hit smack dab in the face by some real-life wisdom during your time at work. It might take years, even decades, to cultivate the knowledge and humility call center agents learn in a fairly short period of time.
Today is “National Scavenger Hunt Day”, a day created to enjoy the good ol’ fashioned fun of a scavenger hunt. The first documented scavenger hunt was organized by gossip columnist, songwriter, and professional hostess, Elsa Maxwell (May 24, 1883 – November, 1963), as a party game. Her birthday now marks its origin. For those who have never played before, a scavenger hunt is a game where teams hunt for a list of random items, each item may have a riddle indicating its whereabouts. The first team to successfully find each item on the list wins.
One of the most commonly used metrics in the modern contact center is the “service level”. This metric is composed of a pair of numbers: a percentage value and a time value in seconds. So, for example, an “80/20” service level means 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds.
