Posted by If you are in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, then this news may distress you. The industry not only has a high employee turnover rate compared to many other sectors but it’s increasing with each passing year.
As per data released by SQM Group, the average call center agent attrition rate, which was 35 percent in 2021, increased by three percent in 2022, making it the highest rate until that point in time. If we go by the latest McKinsey survey, the average yearly contact center turnover rate is up to 60 percent.
In this scenario, the best thing BPOs can do is to find the causes behind such a high employee churn rate and use the right tools and technology to arrest that. One such tool that can help BPO companies reduce employee churn rate is sophisticated contact center software.
This blog post discusses the top reasons behind the high employee turnover rate in the BPO industry, the consequences of high attrition rates, and how the right contact center software can reduce the churn rate. Read on and thank us later.
Reasons for High Employee Turnover Rate in BPOs
It’s a known fact that the BPO sector experiences high employee turnover. And the reasons are varied. Let’s look at some of them:
1. Nature of Work: Monotonous and repetitive tasks, tight deadlines, demanding clients, and irregular working hours. These are some factors that make working in a BPO extremely stressful and increase the employee turnover rate.
2. Inadequate Training and Support: All BPOs provide training and support to their agents but in many companies, the training and support are not adequate. When agents fail to perform at the desired level, they are disheartened and they believe that leaving the organization is a better option.
3. Stress and Emotional Toll: It is one thing to experience stress due to work pressure but it’s a different thing altogether to experience negative emotions when customers are frustrated and behave badly. More often than not, it happens when customers wait for a long time to get connected with an agent or they are connected with an employee who is not equipped to answer their queries or solve their problems.
4. Poor Management Practices: This can range from wrong decision-making to lack of inter-team and intra-team communication to excessive micromanagement and more. If the management is weak and is not equipped to provide the required support to employees, then it not only causes discontent among BPO employees but it does cause them to switch jobs. As the saying goes, “People don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers.”
Consequences of High Employee Attrition Rate
When employees leave a company in droves every year, it not only shows the company in poor light but also has far-reaching consequences. Let’s take a look at some of them:
1. High Recruitment Costs: There’s no doubt that the cost of replacing employees is extremely high. But to know how high it is let’s take a look at some numbers. The cost to replace an employee can range from 0.5 to 2 times the employee’s annual salary. The costs come in terms of classified or advertising costs, interviews, and of course, onboarding and training.
2. Loss of Institutional Knowledge: High employee attrition rates can result in the loss of valuable institutional knowledge. It not only makes it hard for a BPO firm to be consistent in delivering service to its clients but it also results in loss of knowledge for good.
3. Decreased Productivity: When a BPO experiences constant churn of agents, it struggles with productivity. After the older employees leave, BPOs need to train new agents to understand processes and their responsibilities. That interrupts workflow. A high employee attrition rate in BPO companies reduces team stability and that causes decreased productivity.
4. Impact on Service Quality: BPOs with high employee churn rates struggle to provide good and consistent quality of service to customers. After older employees leave BPOs, the new hires lack the experience and expertise of their predecessors, and that results in delays, errors, and dissatisfaction.
How the Right Contact Center Software Can Reduce Employee Churn?
The right contact center software can reduce employee turnover rates in several ways. Here are some of them:
1. Self-Service Options
When a large number of customers can resolve their queries and issues on their own, it will reduce employees’ workload to a large extent. In today’s time, a majority of customers prefer the self-service option. As per a study by American Express, three in every five US customers would prefer using digital self-service solutions to contact the customer service department. That’s where sophisticated and high-quality contact center software can come in handy. With tools such as interactive voice response (IVR), knowledge base, resource center, and FAQs list, it provides a wide range of self-service features.
2. Routing Calls to Right Agents and Departments
When customers or callers are connected with the right agents and departments, they are more likely to receive prompt service and their issues or queries are more likely to be resolved on the first call itself. There is no question of customer frustration. Instead their satisfaction level increases by leaps and bounds. Equipped with automatic call distribution, skill-based routing, and IVR, sophisticated contact center software can play a crucial role in routing customers’ calls to the right employees and departments.
3. Omnichannel Communication
Would you be surprised to know that an agent handling more than one customer interaction over text is much more relaxed and productive than an agent handling one call at a time? When an agent handles multiple customer interactions over different communication channels such as web chat, text messages, instant messages, emails, and social media, they are equipped with standard operating procedures and templates that streamline their work in a much more seamless manner. However, agents focusing solely on phone calls aren’t as well equipped as their counterparts using omnichannel communication. Besides, in the present time, a majority of customers expect omnichannel support from businesses including BPOs, and the lack of it can dissatisfied or frustrate them.
4. Automation
In the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increased focus on automation, contact center software with a wide range of automation features can considerably decrease customer turnover. As per one recent stat, AI-powered predictive analytics can enhance customer satisfaction rate by 20 percent and decrease customer turnover by 15 percent. And AI-powered workforce optimization tools can boost agent productivity by up to 20 percent. BPOs must invest in cutting-edge contact center software solutions such as HoduSoft’s HoduCC software to get automated features.
5. Training and Development Programs
One recent data revealed four out of every five high-performing customer service agents surveyed in the study said that they received requisite training to perform their work compared to just half of low-performing agents. However, the right training and development programs not only enhance performance but also job satisfaction and retention. Robust contact center software such as HoduSoft’s BPO contact center Software can support a wide range of training modules.
6. Call Whispering and Barging Features
Imagine how motivated and enthusiastic agents would be when the management team, instead of micromanaging them, collaborates with them and provides the right guidance when they are stuck. That’s precisely the role of call whispering and barging features in advanced contact center software. Using the feature, the management team can listen to customer interactions in real time. When an agent makes any mistake, the management team can provide them with the right answer without letting the customer know. They also can barge in whenever required.
All in All,
Even though the employee turnover rate is extremely high in the BPO industry, it still can be controlled with the use of the right strategies and tools. At a time when technology is evolving at a breakneck speed, BPOs can leverage the right tech solutions to retain their agents and win over their loyalty.