How to treat the brain drain in call center?

In the past two years, many call centers are worried about the problem of employee turnover. It is more difficult to recruit and keep artificial seats, and the staff turnover rate continues to increase. Thanks to the convenience of work, the author participates in the training and management of new employees every year, and gradually has his own views through deep or shallow exchanges and understanding.

1. Is income the most direct factor leading to employee turnover?

What should I do if new employees are lost because their salaries are not up to expectations? What should old employees do if they are dissatisfied with salary increase and job hopping? This is the most frequently asked question by the team manager of the call center, but usually the reason for the employee's resignation report is not because of the income problem, so this is also a question often discussed by the personnel department and the team manager.

Like most team managers, I used to think that income was the most direct factor leading to employee turnover. However, after collecting and analyzing the data of the resigned employees, it is found that this may not be the case. The argument that income determines whether employees stay or not has always existed in call centers, but employees who have joined since the establishment of the center still account for a large proportion of all call centers. For example, in my call center, half of the team leaders have been working for nearly 8 years or more, and the distribution of background and operation departments are basically employees who have joined the center since its establishment. In the past few years, although the staff of these positions have lost, the turnover rate is negligible. Through contact and understanding, I found that for them, the sense of responsibility and accomplishment is more important than income. Years of work and job training make people's professional consciousness more perfect, make people feel happy physically and mentally in a good working atmosphere, and make people feel more motivated through hard work. As long as the income is not too low to meet the needs of life, it is not the biggest factor. Employees are eager for leaders to discover their own efforts, explore their own abilities, increase their income through post promotion, and thus reflect their self-worth.

According to the data collection and analysis of resigned employees, the reasons for resignation are sorted:

1: It is difficult to control the irritability when answering repeatedly at work, and the pressure of going out to work is too great and nervous.

2. I don't recognize the industry and think it is not respected. I hope to find a professional counterpart.

3. I feel that the team atmosphere is intrigued, disharmonious and unhappy, and I can't get respect and fairness.

4. Dissatisfied with income, salary and welfare.

It can be seen that the ranking of resigning due to income is not high.

In contrast, the turnover rate of front seats is higher, especially for new employees. Do new employees value income or promotion channels more? Due to the nature of the call center, the attention of newly recruited new employees is usually more easily attracted by the shift system, labor intensity, job repetition rate and working environment, thus ignoring corporate culture, promotion channels and career planning.

The income after employment determines the quality of life, or the help and change brought by this salary can be obtained in a short time. Moreover, many industries are third-party employees, and new employees do not have the ability to clearly plan promotion channels, so they value income more. Another part of the new employees who have been engaged in the customer service industry have attractive salary reasons when they leave the former center first, and pay attention to their income first.

From the data point of view, the turnover rate of new employees in call centers has been very high, because there is no fixed standard in every industry, because the development of online customer service of e-commerce has also been included in the scope of call centers. According to statistics, the loss rate of call centers during training is 20%, and some even reach 50%. It is conceivable that the attraction of this industry to new employees is not stable.

Therefore, I think that income is not the most direct factor leading to employee turnover, but the direct factor leading to the retention rate of new employees. If you want to recruit people, the right salary is the key. If you want to retain people, you must use clear promotion channels.

Second, why are old employees losing?

The loss of old employees is usually divided into three categories: first, the ability is outstanding, and the income is not proportional to the position; Second, I don't have the ability and qualifications, and I want to try my luck on the current platform; The third is to muddle along. I'll go with you after I leave.

In addition, age has also become a major factor in the loss of old employees in call centers. With the increase of working years, some front-line agents have entered middle age, and family responsibilities and education for children have become the focus of life. Most of them leave their jobs because of irregular working hours, and some of them are unable to persist because of physical reasons. However, some groups dare not leave their jobs easily, because they have entered middle age and the cost of living such as raising children in the garage has been fixed.

What are the determinants of the turnover of old employees? According to the data collection and analysis of resigned employees, the reasons for resignation are sorted:

1: I can't see the future and feel self-improvement and promotion.

2. Have a problem with the management and feel that the promotion system is unfair.

3. Dissatisfied with income, salary and welfare.

4. Uneasy about the status quo, find a better position or be poached by peers.

"I thought I was already an industry expert. I should join a management team when I go out. Who knows that when I applied for some small call centers, I found myself in the eyes of others. " Last month, a friend told me with a wry smile that her previous position was as a call center supervisor of a commercial bank for eight years. I have to say that the reality is that the work of the call center is not only as simple as making external calls and team management, but also making PPT and analyzing forms is not a special skill. Now the management of call center has entered the intensive stage, and countless advanced theories and structures have been completely embedded in the management system and model. Making full use of data model is the normal state of management. If you don't keep the habit of learning at any time, the development of the industry and specialty will make you doubt your life.

I often hear similar complaints. Why do some people have no work experience, no achievements and no efforts, but they can always get opportunities to study and go abroad easily? And gain the respect of the leaders, but the research data that we try hard to answer and forget to eat and sleep are always not appreciated by our superiors?

This is an unanswered question, so it can only be called complaining, because there is no absolute standard for what is hard work, what direction and degree of hard work can be recognized. This is very subjective. You think others don't work hard because you don't see it. You think you are working hard, but it's not enough.

I try to communicate with colleagues who are energetic and busy every day, and find a breakthrough to answer this question from them: old employees should not just stare at others to see if they have made efforts and achievements. Everyone has different standards for hard work, which makes no sense. We should examine whether we know enough about our core competitiveness. First of all, we should constantly improve our knowledge and research on our industry, not just our work. Second, how much value can be created for the enterprise rather than how much honor can be won, knowing that the honor won by relying on the platform is not your own; Third, how much impetus can be given to the development of enterprises depends on maintaining the habit of learning at any time at home and maintaining a state of struggle at any time abroad.

There are many people with high salaries in the industry. Generally speaking, you can only see him doing the same thing as you. The point is that what you can't see is the reason why he gets a high salary.

In my opinion, the key to the loss of old employees is that it is difficult to maintain a positive state for decades, but it is easily influenced by mentality. Their greatest advantage is that they have enough work experience and can complete the work with good quality and quantity, but they need to be given certain pressure and requirements to do more. If we analyze the performance of new employees in the past three years, they can do the same job, and there may be some flaws, but they must have their own ideas and novel practices, especially in innovation. For details such as system optimization, operation mode, demand analysis and even reporting materials, the "show stopper" in the eyes of these old employees is definitely a technical player.

The essence of call center is that the number of front-line employees far exceeds the number of managers. If you want to stand out but have no core competitiveness, you can only take a back seat. So most people leave their jobs because they can't see the future and the promotion system is unfair.

Third, core employees must not be easily lost.

Core employees are not only employees in core positions, but also employees with authority or special positions. There are core employees in any position. For example, a front-line agent who answers the phone combs all the details of his career in his private time, from the change of mentality to the feeling of answering the phone, and then studies all kinds of customers he meets and classifies them in detail, including customer preferences, requirements, psychological changes, language feelings for customer service, etc. Combined with all businesses, he analyzed the experience, methods, customer acceptance and standards for predicting customer demand. With this detailed research report, by comparing his own resource advantages, he can figure out which aspects can be optimized and which aspects can be rapidly improved with the strength and advantages of the company platform, and then make plans and strictly implement them. I am most impressed by this kind of colleague who strictly implements it on the basis of careful observation and persistent collection, and learns from it and innovates quickly, because such people are really terrible. Even if they compete in another industry, they are winners. This is the core employee.

The loss of core employees is the biggest. On the one hand, the training cost of core employees is huge. They will benefit from their own ability advantages and get more resources from the enterprise. Second, the value of core employees themselves is great, and a long-term accumulated and erected benchmark figure can play a great role in the industry. How to become a core employee is actually very simple, that is, the precipitation of time and continuous learning. The more core employees you contact, the more you can feel the power they generate by using fragmentation time. According to industry observers, core employees usually only account for 3% of the total number of call center employees.

You can't be a core employee because there is no room for promotion in the enterprise? No, maybe you're dying. Now the situation shows more and more that as long as you keep learning and improving yourself, time will help you eliminate most of your opponents. However, simply imitating others' dedication to a certain major does not guarantee that they can become core employees. This personal charm formed by studying both inside and outside for ten years is difficult for imitators to obtain in a short time. Only by laying a solid foundation step by step, under the background of time, can they have the opportunity to complete self-leap again and again and eventually become irreplaceable core employees.

Fourth, there is a shortage of people in the industry, but what is lacking is people who are capable and willing to be down-to-earth

Some employees talk about ideas and innovations as soon as they come up, make profound analysis and reports, and keep their mouths shut about profound theoretical knowledge, but they don't want to and won't answer the phone well at all. At present, the core part of the call center is manual seating, and the most scarce thing is the person who can do a good job first. In recent years, college students have been an important way to supplement manpower. At the job fair in graduation season every year, some large enterprises still put countless resumes in their call centers, including high flyers, a famous school. However, this shortage of jobs has not solved the problem of brain drain, because many people can't accept starting with the positions of first-line seats, and few people have the patience to stick to it. A friend who is in charge of operation told me that a graduate he just recruited is very good in all aspects, with writing ability and analytical ability, and his personal quality and accomplishment are perfect. The company positioned him in the talent pool of future managers, but he resigned after only one month of training, because this job faced unreasonable customers and could not realize her poetry and distance.

Just like the old customer service said, the university environment brings people a kind of vision that is too beautiful to believe the cruel reality. How can the favored children, who have been in a cold window for ten years, accept such a career that they feel unable to lift their heads? In fact, now customers' service awareness is strengthening, and the requirements for service experience are more diversified. Customer service positions really need professional service awareness and good mentality adjustment function. Many old customers have refused to take this position, and recent college graduates are unwilling to take this position. In addition, the industry itself is labor-intensive, and its income cannot be compared with that of cutting-edge networks or financial companies. Therefore, there is a lack of competent and practical talents in the industry, and the call center may still face the loss of personnel in the next few years.

5. Identity is the common pursuit of employees and enterprises.

The most frequently heard word recently is probably "outsourcing". When discussing the topic of call center outsourcing with colleagues, I frankly admit that I don't know much about it. Although this form of outsourcing has become popular in the industry, I have never been exposed to it, so I have no ability to judge and analyze the future trends and advantages and disadvantages.

Communicating with friends who work in outsourcing companies generally reflects that we envy our own call center employees because they really lack a sense of belonging and identity. Think about it, too. The first goal of outsourcing centers should be profitability and survival, but their profit point is not products, so there is too much business to deal with, unlike call centers built by enterprises, which have clear room for improvement and corporate culture. Simple and boring work is difficult to bring people a sense of identity, and the tense rhythm may increase the difficulty of team atmosphere and employee emotional management. So far, we have seen such a work slogan "Don't work hard today, try to find a job tomorrow", which implies that employees are trying to resign. Or advise employees to resign without hard work?

What employees care most about is actually recognition from all sides, which will make him full of passion and motivation for his work, while enterprises care most about employee recognition, so as to have strong cohesion. However, the current situation is that many employees lack a sense of identity, so enterprises cannot gain the sense of identity of employees. Employees don't want to tie their future with the development of the enterprise, resulting in losses. How to gain employees' sense of identity is a problem that team managers need to think about.

I have always believed that if you want to gain something, you must pay first. In team management, we can't ask employees to do anything extensively, but what my management can provide to employees and what you can return. In order to gain the recognition of employees, many call centers have made great efforts to care about employees' ideas and environment, but the effect is not ideal; Some call centers focus on the team manager, affirming the achievements and performance of employees in various activities and daily work, gaining the recognition of employees and achieving good results; There are even some powerful telephones, which set up various communication platforms to create a lot of opportunities for employees to exchange and learn, to keep employees in line with the industry, to realize the strength of their own enterprises in the industry and to increase their sense of honor. Therefore, not only employees are eager to be recognized, but also enterprises are eager to be recognized.

In fact, employees' thoughts and feelings have always been there, and our team managers will certainly feel that the key is what we have done, whether it will lead to the loss of employees and whether it will create a comrade-in-arms who will live and die together. In fact, we don't need to worry about what to do with employee turnover. As long as we focus on employees' feelings, design their career paths wholeheartedly, recognize employees' efforts more in our work, and treat our employees more sincerely instead of following the rules, someone will definitely stay because they agree with you.

A friend who succeeded in starting a new retail business told me that he had set a unique slogan for his call center. I think it's simple but meaningful, so I recommend it to the team manager to chew, and I hope everyone can share it with employees. This sentence is: you just need to focus on the customer and leave the rest to me to serve you.