Customer Experience News & Trends

5 reasons best agents leave – and how to keep them

Good agents are hard to find — and it’s often even tougher to keep them. Here’s why they might leave.

Experts at Humetrics, an HR firm, found that most hourly employees look for different jobs because they:

  1. face scheduling conflicts. They often applied for and accepted the job because it promised “flexible hours,” but that never happened. To keep them happy: Offer flexible hours as a reward for good work, and make that clear from the get-go.
  2. aren’t recognized. Positive feedback must be ongoing and sincere. To keep them happy: Managers need to schedule time to give on-the-spot praise, recognize department accomplishments weekly and sit down one-on-one with agents quarterly.
  3. get all the dirty work. Managers know good employees will get the job done – so they give them every job. So instead of spreading the workload, managers often overwhelm their best people, says Humetrics’ executive Mel Kleiman. To keep them happy: At regular  meetings, ask top performers how they feel about their workload. When they’re overwhelmed, pass their low-level tasks off to others who need to step up.
  4. don’t get enough advancement opportunities. In some organizations, promoting from within doesn’t happen as much as it should. To keep them happy: Announce openings to agents first and let them have the edge on applying for them.
  5. are surrounded by substandard co-workers. Working with lazy, indifferent or undependable people will bring down otherwise excellent employees. To keep them happy: Don’t allow substandard work to continue in your contact center. Establish guidelines for performance and hold everyone equally accountable to them. Then, if people don’t improve with training, let them go.

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