While getting rid of call center scripts may improve customer and employee satisfaction, it’s not a step to take lightly. Unscripted interactions call for a certain level of empowerment at the agent level, and additional training is generally needed. Stream Energy’s contact center leaders felt that a better customer experience would be one in which agents have the freedom (and time) to be genuine on the phone by asking customers about their day, be empathetic to their concerns and offer different types of payment assistance. Of course, management realized that going unscripted meant that agents needed better access to knowledge and the appropriate skills to handle various types of calls.

After evaluating the training program that had been in place since the call center’s launch, management decided to scrap it and make a fresh start. They developed a new program comprised of different modules, based on the Kirkpatrick model. The revised call center training also includes “empathy and engagement” modules. Along with the enhanced training, the center has examined and revised certain policies and procedures to help their empowered agents provide a better customer experience.

Ask. Formalize an anonymous employee survey program and include exit interviews in this process. Use this as a vehicle to collect what employees like—and dislike—about their jobs and what suggestions they have to make the job more palatable. Face-to-face exit interviews are uncomfortable for the former employee and employer alike and rarely uncover the real reasons for someone leaving. Identifying and addressing issues before they become acute enough to drive employees out the door is one of the most effective ways to combat attrition.

Innovate. Find innovative ways to motivate agents and encourage them to stay. These programs need to closely map to the causes of attrition (see “Ask”), otherwise they won’t deliver the desired results. One example might be job sharing or at-home work for those agents who might otherwise leave due to a changing family situation. A valuable employee is retained and the cost to replace him or her is avoided as a result.

Reinvest. Or perhaps, more accurately, invest differently. Once the causes of attrition have been identified, spend some of the money that would otherwise be spent on recruitment, hiring and training on retention programs.

Think differently. Not every employee can be prevented from leaving, but if every employee who considered leaving stayed one extra pay cycle (two weeks for most organizations), attrition would effectively be reduced by 4%. Find ways to extend the tenure of those who might be flight risks to “buy some time” to recruit, hire and train their replacements. This doesn’t solve the attrition problem, but it helps mitigate some if its effects.

Agent attrition will probably never completely be eradicated and, for most organizations, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Organizations that actively seek out the root causes of attrition and implement innovative programs to combat it will be rewarded with less unwanted and undesirable turnover, reduced hiring and training costs, and improved overall operational performance.