With a 22% turnover rate across the call centre industry signifies the high levels of job dissatisfaction with working in call centres. This can be linked directly to poor performance appraisal and measurement systems and HR policies that fail to address the roots of high staff turnovers.

Gone are the days where a call centre was seen as an overhead that simply takes orders and handles complaints.

Call centres are one of a company’s greatest assets. Maximising the potential of your call centre significantly increases its ability to reach its true profitability.

Traditionally performance measures have been based on quantity such as call volumes, this results in reduced staff empowerment, quality and customer problem resolution issues.

The call centre of today needs to focus their key performance criteria on quality allowing empowered employees to maximise the value of every customer interaction, ensuring the call centre becomes a profit making asset. So how can we turn it around?

Companies should undertake a staff diagnostic survey to uncover weak HR and performance management practices.

The survey needs to be tailored to individual companies but in general cover the following issues:

• Leadership and management styles
• Communication and the flow of information
• Organisational commitment
• Work stress and work load
• Internal customer service
• Job satisfaction

Trust in management

A management consultant can help you on the road to maximising your call centre profitability and remember, a satisfied CSR creates hundreds more satisfied customers than the company had before!