Make Call Center Agent Satisfaction a Priority: Consultant

First call resolution matters as much to call center agents as it does to customers, according to Sarah Kennedy, senior partner with Service Quality Management Group, (SQM) a company the provides call center analytic and measurement services.

Kennedy, speaking during a Webinar yesterday, said that lower agent satisfaction leads to higher turnover – which can be very expensive for call center operators. According to Kennedy, it costs an average of $7,500 per agent to add someone to a call center, and raise the new person to the skill level of a departed agent.

“Employee satisfaction in the call center has dropped from 40 percent to 31 percent since 1998,” Kennedy said. Customer satisfaction, on the other hand, has remained relatively stable at 66 percent, with only minor fluctuations from year to year. That could change, however, if employee satisfaction continues to drop.

“Employee dissatisfaction makes it difficult on the customer side,” Kennedy said, adding that a 1 percent increase in employee satisfaction typically leads to a 2 percent increase in customer satisfaction.

One way to improve employee satisfaction, Kennedy added, is to allow them to work at home. In her research, she found no significant difference among customer satisfaction with at-home call center agents versus agents in a contact center. Some agents might prefer the at-home environment.

Kennedy added that the employees tend to handle more complex calls today as IVRs and other technologies have taken over most of the mundane, routine processes. That certainly would be true in the area of collections.

For complex calls that require escalation to a supervisor or subject matter expert, Kennedy recommends “warm” transfers – with the information (i.e., account number, customer name) staying with the call or the agent staying on the line until the transfer is complete, rather than cold transfers.