Today’s contact centers have adapted to the routine entry and exit of their employees. Managers in most successful organizations have developed comprehensive strategies for addressing the challenges created by high attrition.

But with the economy on the upswing, hiring up across the board, and the Baby Boom generation on its way to retirement, contact center employee turnover rates may be well beyond the usual benchmark. And with Millennials hitting the workforce in large numbers — with new preferences for how they share information and communicate — these changes will have a profound impact on how contact centers plan for onboarding, training, and knowledge management.

Below, we’ll examine three challenges that evolving workforce demographics now pose to contact centers. We’ll then explore ways that managers can use video to overcome these challenges by improving employee training and internal communications.

3 Challenges Impacting Contact Centers

Let’s start by looking at the imminent challenges. At contact centers around the world, above-average turnover is already threatening institutional know-how. Here’s why:

1) The economy is up and so is job hopping
With Americans increasingly optimistic about the job market, more people are gaining the confidence to leave their old positions to find new work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the national quit rate has risen over the past year. And contact centers, which already have higher than average attrition rates, are likely to feel the effects of this growing labor movement than other industries.

2) Baby boomers are out
The American workforce is aging rapidly, leading to huge workforce turnover. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of 10,000 Baby Boomers (1946-1964) retire every day.

This exodus of veteran employees not only impacts many contact centers, but also many customers who invest in contact center operations. Four of the largest industries in the country — real estate, manufacturing, insurance, and health care — are also some of the oldest by median employee age, and are already feeling the ripple effects of our aging workforce.

As contact centers prepare for the retirement of a generation of leadership — both for in-house talent and long-term contacts within client organizations — designing repeatable processes for onboarding, knowledge retention, and management training will be critical.

3) Millennials are in
Millennials (born 1980-2000) have become the largest age demographic in the workforce. Contact centers, which have historically attracted younger employees, will be among the first to feel the full impact of this generation and the new expectations they bring to the workplace. Millennials expect more flexible work schedules and access to on-demand information that helps them do their job more effectively. They also change jobs more frequently than their older co-workers. One report found that 70% of recent college grads leave their first job after graduation in less than two years.

These changes in expectations and behavior will put pressure on organizations to train employees and share information in new ways — using technologies that new hires are familiar with, and enabling employees to acquire information at the moment they need it.

Overcoming Contact Center Productivity Challenges Using Video

In our personal lives, video has become the communication method of choice, and the same trend is happening in corporate environments. Driving this growth is a confluence of technology and simple human nature. Video is more engaging and impactful than text, and people retain more of its information. Video activates more parts of our minds with visual content that can more easily hold our ever-shortening attention spans. And a new generation of smartphones, webcams, and video software has made creating, sharing, and accessing video easier than ever. It’s not surprising that, according to Cisco, 85 percent of companies expect to create more video content this year than in years past.

As contact centers face a talent management challenge, increased job hopping, and changing demographics, video can play a critical role in onboarding, training, and knowledge retention. Here’s how:

1. Reduce Time to Productivity for New Employees

Whether it’s for job training, benefits enrollment, or communicating organizational culture, efficient onboarding is an essential part of every contact center’s learning and development activities. For many organizations, onboarding presents a unique challenge, especially as contact centers increasingly employ remote workers: how do you deliver time-sensitive training, tailored to a specific role, and to a small audience that may be located across the country or around the world?Many organizations have found video to be a simple, valuable tool for enhancing their onboarding programs. Video provides a more engaging way to ramp up employees, and because video can be viewed and searched from any laptop or mobile device, it provides new employees with easy access to the information they need for a successful start.

2. Deliver Consistent Training and Reduce Costs

For many large, geographically-dispersed contact centers, ensuring that training materials are consistent across locations can be a challenge. This is particularly the case when multiple trainers or departments are involved in the onboarding process. By using video for training, managers can be sure that their message is communicated in the way that they intend, regardless of who conducts the training.Video can also help reduce training costs. Between travel, lodging, venue, food, and talent, the costs of holding live training events can constitute a significant portion of a company’s learning and development budget. Switching to video learning can help minimize these costs and recoup much of those funds for other functional activities.

For example, after realizing that up to 40% of its classroom training costs were being spent on travel and lodging, IBM switched half of its training programs to an eLearning format. As a result, the company was able to save $579 million during the first two years of the program.

3. Capture Institutional Knowledge

When it comes to sharing information on technologies and processes, video makes it easier to show rather than tell. In particular, screen recording tools enable contact center employees to demonstrate to colleagues how to perform a task or reproduce an issue. With social knowledge sharing, video can actually benefit an organization twice. First, by recording answers to frequently-asked questions, subject matter experts save time that would otherwise be spent on repeated, face-to-face inquiries and demonstrations, giving them more time to get work done. Second, capturing and sharing that expertise in a corporate video library also helps ensure that vital information doesn’t eventually leave with the employee. This may help explain why, according to a study from Bersin by Deloitte, the average enterprise spent three times more on social learning tools than in the previous two years.

It’s a year of new challenges and opportunities for the contact center. By leveraging the right tools, contact center managers can make sure that their onboarding, training, and knowledge retention programs continue to be effective in the face of changing economic and demographic factors.

Ready to see how video can help your contact center improve operations and increase efficiency? Contact Panopto today to request a free trial.