This new research about why employees leave can inform staff retention strategies for customer service employees. Find out the motivation behind voluntary leavers in 2014.

Why Customer Service Employees Leave 2014

great{with}talent has collected exit data from 12,837 workers, 947 of these are customer service employees. The results show why staff leave in 2014.

It also shows the importance of conducting exit surveys as the results can improve employee retention strategies. (Click the below image for more.)

Read: New Customer Service Employees and Staff Engagement 2014.

Comparing these results to the overall reasons why employees leave shows significant trends. Like with the entire group, this exit data focuses on voluntary leavers. As the graph shows, this is the vast majority of the sample group.

The results of this staff survey, however, shows a higher number of involuntary leavers. There’s also a much lower percentage of ‘unhappy’ leavers.

It’s clear that staff retention and employee engagement strategies need to be tailored for customer service employees. This group evidently have specific needs.

Employee Retention Strategies

Customer service employees listed a more competitive salary elsewhere (33%) as their top reason for leaving their role. This is equal to the average.

Whilst lack of promotion opportunities (33%) came in lower than the overall group (36%). Again, an inadequate level of pay (27%) was slightly less (28%).

These results are positive for customer service employees however these issues were still the highest ranked. As a result these areas need to be addressed to improve the staff retention of customer service employees.

It’s always important for organisations to offer a competitive salary. Inadequate pay, for example, was a lower percentage but jumped from the fifth highest concern to the third so there’s evidence that this is a deal breaker.

Whereas it’s essential to give employees an informed and realistic impression of promotion opportunities. By doing this with potential employees staff engagement will be higher and therefore employee turnover is likely to be lower.

Additionally, a lack of relationship between job performance and reward (27%) was cited as a lower issue. To tackle this variable there are lots of low cost recognitions to increase employee engagement.

Read: The Importance of Exit Interviews for Employees.

Work not challenging enough (25%), on the other hand, did not make the top five staff turnover drivers of any other group. This shows the exit surveys for customer service employees are important to detect such factors.

To challenge customer service staff employers can combine recognitions with ways to push staff in order to further encourage self-motivation. For example, goals can be set and the highest reached receives the employee of the week/month.

Another way to increase staff motivation is to encourage employees to share their ideas and create a collaborative culture. This can be done in group meeting, one-to-ones or even an off-site monthly meeting to add more enjoyment to the proceedings.

Similarly, new staff can be given mentors who can help them evaluate their development goals. This way staff can evaluate their skills, build them and add more value to the company whilst challenging themselves.

Team building is also a great motivator to create competition, build relationships and push employees. All these techniques will benefit individuals and the organisation as a whole.

The differences between customer service employees and leavers as a whole shows the importance of exit surveys. It can easily and cheaply improve staff engagement and employee retention strategies in 2014.

Contact great{with}talent and find out more about their LastOpinion exit interviews.

(Main image Market Culture)