When someone leaves their role in a contact centre within six months, it’s tempting to chalk it up to “wrong fit.”
Maybe they weren’t cut out for contact centre work. Perhaps they couldn’t handle the pace.
“They weren’t who we thought they were.”
But what if the problem wasn’t them?
When we surveyed over 100 contact centre professionals, a different story emerged. One that points to something well within your control.
And it’s a stat that should stop you in your tracks.
People who felt rushed during onboarding were 2.5 times more likely to leave within six months.
Our data revealed that for every 100 people you rush onto the phones, you’re likely to lose 13 more than if you’d given them proper time.
That’s not a hiring problem, it’s an onboarding problem.
And yet 27% of respondents told us they needed more time before going live. More than a quarter of your new starters are telling you, if you ask of course, that they weren’t ready.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
When people say they didn’t enjoy a contact centre role, we assume it’s about the work itself. The calls, the pressure, the repetition, the difficult customers.
But look at the data:
People who enjoyed the role: 23% felt they needed more time
People who didn’t enjoy the role: 42% felt they needed more time
Nearly half the people who said they didn’t like the job flagged onboarding as the issue.
It wasn’t the actual work itself, it was the preparation for the work.
They might have loved it if they’d been set up properly. Instead, they were thrown in before they were ready, struggled, felt like failures, and left.
And you wrote it off as “not the right fit.”
The same requests came up again and again in the survey. None of them are revolutionary, but all of them are fixable.
“Don’t rush us onto the phones.”
More time and better pacing was the most requested improvement – mentioned 32 times. People want to feel ready before they go live. They want to understand your systems, your products, your way of handling things. They don’t want to be learning on the job while a customer waits on the line.
“Let us hear real calls first.”
Call listening and shadowing came up 23 times. There’s something about hearing what the job actually sounds like – the rhythm of a call, the way experienced people handle objections, the tone that works – that no amount of classroom training can replicate. The respondents were clear: they needed exposure to real calls before they took their own.
“Give us someone to go to who isn’t our manager.”
Buddy and mentor systems were mentioned repeatedly. Someone to ask the stupid questions. Someone who remembers what it felt like to be new. Someone who isn’t also responsible for your performance reviews.
It’s not just onboarding. It turns out that the space between offer and day one matters too.
That’s when doubts creep in. That’s when people start wondering if they made the right call. That’s when a better offer might land, or cold feet might set in.
Keep people informed and remove uncertainty. They should know what’s happening, when it’s happening, and who to ask if they have questions. A quick check-in call, a welcome email that actually tells them something useful, maybe even a meet-the-team session before they officially start.
The goal is simple: reinforce “you made the right choice” before they’ve even walked through the door. If you leave that gap empty, doubt just fills it.
Here’s an interesting way to reframe things: onboarding isn’t admin. It’s not a box to tick before someone becomes “productive.” It’s your first retention lever.
Every week you invest upfront pays back in months of retention. And every shortcut you take gets repaid in early attrition, in reputational damage, in the cost of hiring the same role again three months later.
Rushed onboarding feels cheaper. It isn’t. It turns out you just pay later.
And the people who leave? They’re not always the wrong hires.
Sometimes they’re the right hires you didn’t give a chance to.
This is one of seven findings from The Great Contact Centre Survey: our research into what contact centre workers wish employers knew about attracting, hiring, and keeping the right people.
