Johannesburg, 24 Feb 2004
Staff absenteeism continues to be a problem for the contact centre industry, which in SA represents almost 0.5% of the employed population, reveals a new report from Dimension Data, which surveyed over 200 contact centres across the world.
This year`s Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report indicates a 10% agent absenteeism per annum, which alone equates to 1.61 million lost working days per year within SA`s 80 000 call centre employee base.
The survey also revealed that the contact centre industry was still experiencing a very high agent turnover rate of 19% globally, with Europe and the UK in particular battling against a rate of 25%. Findings from the report indicate that one reason for the poor attrition rate and absenteeism is that not enough emphasis is being placed on career development and staff retention. Only 50% of centres have specific policies for career development, which represents a drop from 57% in 2001. And more directly, only 47.7% of centres stated they had a specific policy for staff attrition.
Another factor for the high attrition rate within certain regions is a lack of any major salary increase. The report highlights that agent salaries in Europe remain comparable to 1999 levels, stabilising between $17 261 and $25 440 (lb10 000 and lb15 000). North America has the best-paid agents, with all employees receiving over $25 000 remuneration a year. Africa has the least well-paid agents with 94% of centres` paying a minimum agent salary of the equivalent of less than $10 000 a year. Given the differences in salary bands between Europe and the US with Asia and Africa, the economic argument for transitioning centres to these low cost locations becomes compelling.
The survey reveals that just over a half (52%) of contact centres conduct telephone interviews with candidates. The decreasing use of telephone screening is a surprising one for an industry where the job entails mostly talking to customers. This trend may have led to the recruitment of ill-suited staff and may also be a factor for the high attrition rate.
Martin Dove, General Manager of Merchants, South Africa comments: "Staff absenteeism among contact centre agents continues to be an area of concern. Although contact centre management would appear to be compensating for any agent absenteeism, this can only be a short-term solution as it only treats the symptoms and will ultimately lead to increased `burnout` rates among the supervisor levels. Staff will continue to leave contact centres if we let them. Businesses need to ensure that those centres that are governed by corporate HR departments do not lose sight of issues that are unique or amplified within the call centre environment.
First published in the UK in 1996 by Merchants, European contact centre specialists and a subsidiary of Dimension Data, this year`s edition is the sixth in a series of the industry-renowned benchmarking reports. The report has balanced global and industry representation from over 200 contact centres in 19 countries and five continents, and is an invaluable reference for all contact centre professionals. It provides managers with a set of benchmarks with which to measure their operations against, including contact centre staff salary levels, performance statistics, technology developments, CRM trends and training needs.