Joe Palestina: "The first thing that I would recommend to [a call center with high turnover] is to examine all of their exit interviews, something that I've done with my call centers in the past. Every candidate who left, regardless of tenure. Conduct as thorough an exit interview as you can to find out exactly why.

"What I've found out in the past is that more times than not, it is working conditions and who they are working for.

"So the first thing I'd recommend is to understand why people are leaving, via exit interviews; determine whether your pay scale is at market, below market or above market for call centers -- that's the second thing. The third thing is, examine the hard and soft bonus programs, financial and non-financial, that you're offering your call center folks, and see how they compare with comparable call centers.

"One of my customers in the past asked us to conduct market surveys among other call centers in the market to see if they were competitive with their pay, with their benefits and also with their incentives, and what they found is that they were above market with their pay and fine with their benefits, but not competitive with their financial and non-financial rewards. And that was why some of the folks were leaving for these other call centers.

"So you really need to find out why people are leaving. Do your analysis of your pay, your incentives and your benefits. The other thing is training and career growth. There is a certain personality that can sit on that phone eight hours a day, forty hours a week, 52 weeks a year. But at some point, they're going to want to see a door open.

"And what we found out in our analysis is that those call centers that have a progression from call center agent to team lead, team supervisor -- at least see a path -- have less turnover."

Chris adds that hiring the right people is essential: "A lot of call center will fall into that trap of getting people in to fill the seats -- you know, bums on seats -- they need people there, but if you're not bringing in the right people initially, the culture that you build is not going to work towards retaining your top staff."