Experienced, knowledgeable help desk agents are worth their weight in gold. Not only do they provide excellent service, but they can also help guide and mentor other agents, raising the performance and morale of your entire help desk.
So, the last thing you want is to see your best agents jump ship to another company.
No matter how wonderfully you treat your help desk employees, turnover is an inevitable part of managing people. You may have “good” turnover, where agents get promoted to other positions within the company, or “bad” turnover, where an agent leaves or is let go. In either case, however, turnover leaves a vacancy to fill.
Is your help desk turnover rate acceptable … or alarming? What are some of the causes of turnover and what effects can it have on your company? And how can you improve your employee retention rate and keep great agents around for the long haul?
Naturally, your first step in discovering if your help desk has a problem with help desk employee retention is to establish your benchmark turnover rate. You can only manage agent turnover if you measure it.
Once you know what your average annual agent turnover rate is, compare it against industry benchmarks. The average annual turnover rate for agents in U.S. contact centers is 37%, according to research conducted by The Quality Assurance & Training Connection. This rate is more than double the average turnover rate for all occupations in the U.S. (Bear in mind that this statistic is for contact centers in general, not IT help desks in particular.) The folks at HDI, who focus on training and consultancy for technical support and service management, confirm that the average turnover in this field is 40% per year.
According to the latest US Contact Center HR & Operational Benchmarking Report, published by Contact Babel, a leading analyst firm for the contact center industry, agent attrition rates vary depending on the size of the organization. Median agent attrition in large (200+ seat) operations is more than twice that of small (<50 seat) contact centers.
Whether your current turnover rate is alarmingly high or blessedly low, the key to consistently low turnover is to figure out why turnover happens and what steps you can take to keep employee retention high.
Agents leave help desk positions for any number of reasons, but there are a few common causes.
Organizations in the U.S. must spend roughly $12,000 to replace a help desk agent. This amount includes the direct costs of recruiting, screening, interviewing, onboarding, and training a new agent. But it also includes many indirect costs, such as:
These costs, unsurprisingly, can have significant effects on service levels and other KPIs. HDI revealed that the higher the annual agent turnover, the lower the first contact resolution rate – and the lower the customer satisfaction rate.
When it comes to reducing turnover, think of how a good marriage operates: If you only focus on the relationship once the red flags are up and the other party is halfway out the door, you’re not going to have long-term success. Instead, focus on what you must do to set agents up for success and keep them happy. Your goal is to be proactive, not reactive.
One sure way to reduce your help desk agent turnover is to outsource part (or all) of your help desk. Outsourcing improves your bottom line, increases your operational efficiency, and eliminates your agent turnover headaches at the same time.
When you outsource, your help desk service provider picks up the slack when you have an uptick in internal turnover. They easily absorb the extra workload because they already have the staff on hand to jump in and be productive immediately.
If you like, you can use a hybrid model. Rather than manage your help desk 100% in-house, or outsource 100% of it to a third-party firm, you go for a combination approach:
By the way, Global Help Desk Services Inc. provides help desk outsourcing services to enterprise-level companies. Unlike many of our competitors, we are based 100% in the United States, and we focus exclusively on delivering help desk services (no managed services, no products to sell, no projects, no upsells). If you want to reduce your help desk agent turnover, let’s talk.