We spoke to Kirsten Corbell, product manager for Manpower's contact center and HR services about the staffing business for our upcoming article on Staffing & Recruiting. Here's what she had to say:

How can call centers reduce employee churn? We asked a staffing agency.

As a part of our continuing research for the February Staffing and Recruitment feature, we spoke to Joe Palestina and Chris Tucker from Act 1 Personnel Services, one of the largest woman- and minority-owned staffing agencies in the country. Act 1 has a lot of experience with call center staffing, so we asked Mr. Palestina and Mr. Tucker for their thoughts on reducing turnover.

Here's what they had to say:

In our research for February's Staffing and Recruiting feature, we spoke to Dick Finnegan of TalentKeepers who argues that the most pressing issue in call center staffing is actually keeping the agents you already have.

Not surprising to hear from a guy who works for a firm called TalentKeepers. But his point is important and his firm has numbers to back it up. Think about how much your center spends on training. Not just in dollars, but in time and energy.

Here's some of what Mr. Finnegan told us about call center agent turnover and retention:

When a whirlwind of responsibilities and questions ambush a call center manager's schedule, it's nice to know that there agencies out there who can give assistance, advice and a template for organizing hiring options for call centers. One option that is more enabling to a call center is working with an advising agency, such as Banks and Dean.

Berta Banks, Vice President of Banks and Dean, focuses on the idea of offering better hiring, training and retaining solutions that call centers can execute on their own.

A weekly compendium of call centers that are opening, closing, and making the news around the world.

What is the greatest risk call centers face in 2006? It's that as jobs in general become more plentiful, call centers will be more vulnerable to attrition. Call center managers will have to work much harder to retain agents.