It’s no secret, agent turnover at call centers has been on the rise since 2020 and the great resignation movement that swept the U.S. hasn’t seen as much of an improvement as we’d like.
While this isn’t what we like to hear, it’s important to acknowledge what is happening in the workplace. After all, we can’t address an issue until we’ve identified the problem. That’s why we’re sharing 15 employee retention stats so you can come up with the right solutions for your call center.
What is employee retention?
If employee turnover is what you want to avoid, you’re looking for ways to retain employees. That means you’re trying to keep employees around for the long haul, helping to minimize the knowledge gap, develop a culture within the organization, and save money!
You can calculate your employee retention rate by setting your timeline (start date and end date) and using the formula below where EE represents employee count.
Employee retention rate is: Employee count on last day / Employee count on first day x 100 Image source
Why is employee retention important?
Why is employee retention important though? Well aside from the benefits we mentioned earlier (knowledge, culture, and saving money), TechTarget found a positive employee retention led to six key business benefits.
- Better process efficiency
- Greater worker productivity
- Higher employee morale
- Reduced staffing costs
- Improved customer experience
- Increased revenue and ROI
Some of these benefits are more tangible than others but the benefits are long term and trackable. Plus, employee retention means a positive reputation for your business.
Employee retention statistics for call centers
We’ve broken these statistics into three categories: saving money, trends, and stats that point to ways you can improve your employee retention. Note that some of these stats are presented in terms of employee turnover, which is the inverse of employee retention.
Statistics about employee retention saving money
You see it everywhere, but we have the numbers to back it up. Being able to keep your employees, or even keeping current employees and adding new ones, is less expensive than having to replace employees. And if you’re losing more employees than you’re keeping or gaining…well, let’s hope that’s not the case. Here’s how you can justify keeping your team to save money:
- It costs $5,000 to $7,000 to hire and onboard a single call center agent.
- In other words, hiring, training, and onboarding costs 30-50% of the new agent’s salary.
- A Cornell study estimated the cost to replace one agent cost 16% of the company gross annual earnings.
- Call center turnover cost per agent is $20,800 on average.
- Businesses in the U.S. lose $1.8 trillion to productivity costs every year and it takes 6-8 weeks to onboard and train call center agents, plus months to reach full potential.
In some cases, retaining employees can even earn you money. In a Zippia call center report, it was found that 96% of customers said customer service was an essential part of their decision making. To that end, a positive experience increases the likelihood of a purchase by 140%, meaning you want to keep your high performing agents.
