New research about new customer service employee onboarding shows the levels of staff engagement, leavers and those at risk. Find out the reasons new starters leave and problems with the onboarding process.

New Customer Service Employees and Staff Engagement 2014

Onboarding new starters is key to preventing high early attrition rates. Whilst demographic differences are important to recruitment and retention because one size does not fit all staff.

This is true of employee engagement strategies and taking on new employees. Staff engagement improves productivity, customer service and employee retention.

Customer service employees often have a high staff turnover rate. That’s why it’s important to use exit data to lower early attrition and save resources from recruitment.

This research demonstrates the specific needs of onboarding new customer service employees. In 2014 great{with}talent researched 270 new employees from this sector to test their staff engagement levels.

This chart shows the number of new starters who are actively leaving, at risk and engaged.

Compared to the overall new employees sample of 7,490 new starters there are predictably more leavers among customer service employees. The results show that these leavers are from the ‘at risk’ staff.

This shows that new customer service employees are more willing to leave within the first 12 months of employment. This makes staff engagement initiatives all the more important.

Early attrition can cost organisations due to recruitment. Yet, there’s also the resources spent on cover work and losses through lack of productivity.

Read: How to Calculate Staff Turnover Rate with Exit Process Cost Calculator.

The top reason new starters listed for being ‘at risk’ of early attrition is the potential for progression through the organisation (57%). This has been rated a lot higher by customer service employees.

Whilst training and development opportunities (41%) came second. Similarly, this is unlike the overall group and is a much bigger issue.

Therefore, these areas need more attention with customer service employees. Contrary to popular opinion, staff engagement ideas to solve these issues can be achieved on a tight budget.

Organisations can use mentoring, shadowing, low cost rewards and creating a collaborative culture. These techniques can train employees on a budget, give them a forum to ask questions and simply increase employee engagement.

Read: HR Onboarding New Employees and Why New Starters 30 and Under Leave.

During recruitment it’s important to be honest with potential employees. Meanwhile, the onboarding process should make it clear how new starters can benefit from such employee engagement schemes.

This communication allows new employees to have realistic expectations of the role and organisation. Moreover, companies can get the most rewards from their investment in employee engagement.

Once again, the nature of the work itself (39%) was rated higher. It’s evident that this work is difficult to make engaging.

Though, organisations have an uphill battle, you can make customer services fun. By helping the customer enjoy the experience, employees can enjoy it more.

Lastly, is the pay and benefits package (36%). Customer services is a highly competitive market so it’s important to offer industry rates and stay ahead of the game.

Yet, as a concern from ‘at risk’ new employees, it has gone down from 42%. This shows that the customer services industry is doing better than overall employers from other sectors.

These differences from new employees as a whole shows the importance of collecting onboarding and exit data. It can easily and cheaply improve employee engagement and staff retention in 2014.

Contact great{with}talent and increase “speed to performance” of new customer service employees with this onboarding tool:

(Main image from Around & About)