The silver lining of employee turnover: Reprioritizing CX

Across industries, customer service professionals have quit at disproportionately high rates during the pandemic. According to a recent GoCo survey of more than 500 HR professionals, a whopping 35% of customer service employees have resigned this year.

As a benefits professional, you know these employees are key to delivering a great customer experience (CX). As customer service staff leave, it’s challenging to improve (let alone maintain) the customer experience.

While it may feel like an uphill battle for people managers, there’s a silver lining: an opportunity to get the right people on the bus to create a better customer experience moving forward.

Changing expectations and poor treatment by customers

In a study of 1,000 call center agents in the U.S. and U.K., customer service agents cited acute stress, lack of pay and support, poorly defined career paths, and insufficient data and/or technology as top issues affecting their well-being. Layer on poor treatment by customers, especially amid the pandemic, and turnover of customer service staff is understandably high.

When studying the relationship between customer injustice and employee turnover outcomes, researchers found a significant link between customer mistreatment and employee quit rates. Since the turnover of customer service staff affects team morale, productivity, profitability, and the quality of service customers receive, it’s important to recognize that CX depends on the employee experience (EX).

Centering the employee experience (EX)

Although high turnover of customer service staff may mean more work for HR pros, it also presents an opportunity to rebuild. But it’s not enough to refill open customer service positions without recognizing the shifting expectations of staff and advocating for change.

This mass exodus gives you the license to rebuild happier teams by hiring new people who align with your values and the new way of doing things.

To improve retention, customer service staff need to feel valued. They need more control, flexibility, and access to empowering technologies. If their needs go unmet, staffing shortages — and teams of largely inexperienced staff — will inevitably affect the quality of service customers receive and repeat the resignation cycle.

High turnover proves that there’s a problem with today’s approach to customer service: So, how can HR respond?

Embracing a CX focus

HR must embrace a CX orientation. Although HR isn’t traditionally customer-facing, HR’s tasks — hiring, training, and compensation — all play a large role in delivering a great CX. Here are three ways HR can take advantage of unprecedented employee turnover to improve, if not reinvent, the customer experience.

1. Advocate for CX-centered training for management.

Research shows that when dealing with demanding customers, if customer service staff feel respected, listened to, and supported by their supervisors, they are much more likely to stick around. Since there’s a direct correlation between happy employees and happy customers, in a CX-oriented organization, supervisors need the skills and abilities to empower their customer-facing employees. By advocating for CX-centered training, HR and L&D professionals can help create a better customer experience at their organizations.

2. Hire and train for a CX skill set.

With a renewed focus on CX, HR pros have the opportunity to foster the right skill set through hiring and training. A 2021 study of customer incidents in the airline industry found that to increase customer satisfaction and improve CX, airlines must develop and implement training that focuses on adaptability, emotional intelligence and communication, highlighting response, pacifying and de-escalation techniques. By prioritizing these key customer service skills, HR pros can help shift to more customer-centric ways of operating.

Taking a look at the onboarding process and the experience it creates is key. Adding in personalization to a mostly digital experience isn’t easy, but it is possible. Having a flexible HR system sets HR leaders up for success so they can build this into the process with reminders and workflows, and it also frees up their time from manual tasks related to benefits and compliance to allow for that personal touch.

3. Write CX-focused jobs descriptions.

To hire for a CX skill set, HR must revise job descriptions to highlight CX skills. Beyond emotional intelligence and communication, research points to problem-solving abilities, patience, attentiveness, and relationship-building skills. As you brainstorm new titles and update job descriptions, consider how you can make them more CX-centric and still accurately reflect the role. By recruiting CX-minded individuals, HR can attract talent that aligns with the new way of doing things.

The silver lining: Reprioritizing CX

Customer service employees are resigning in record numbers, but there is a silver lining: Companies can rebuild by hiring for CX, setting new expectations, and transforming the current culture. By providing CX-centered training for management, HR can empower supervisors, who in turn empower their customer-facing staff — all while HR continues to recruit and onboard more customer-minded talent.

By focusing on CX and EX, HR can strategically partner with the C-suite to shift company culture. Although HR isn’t traditionally customer-facing, in the wake of unprecedented turnover, HR has an opportunity to not only improve the customer experience but to improve the employee experience as well.