Most first-year attrition in contact centres occurs during the first ninety days. Recruitment data shows who joined. Exit data shows who left. Leaders still need to understand what people experienced between those two points.
Sariio gives managers an earlier view of how each new starter prefers to learn, prepare and ask for support. That insight can inform onboarding and coaching while there is still time to act.
The Play Book. The strategic companion to Sariio's retention work. Read The Play Book.
Why are people leaving?
Pay matters. It's rarely the whole story.
UK agent pay rose 15% in two years while attrition stayed above its historical norm. The reasons people give are usually closer to home: a role that wasn't what they expected, work that doesn't suit how they operate and a first manager they never quite got to know.
Gallup found that 51% of people who left their job had no conversation with a manager about their work in the three months before they went. That conversation is where Sariio helps.
TL;DR
Why call centre agents really quit
Around 70% of first-year leavers go within ninety days, so accurate recruitment, tailored onboarding and team leader support are where retention is won.
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Global contact-centre attrition averaged 39 per cent in 2024, reaching 41 per cent in EMEA (NICE, 2025).
Around 70 per cent of first-year leavers leave within the first ninety days, concentrating retention efforts in early onboarding (COPC Inc.).
Replacing one average-performing agent costs around $20,800, making early exits a substantial operating expense (SQM Group, 2023).
For leaders, check attrition by tenure and team leader, then focus on accurate role previews, tailored onboarding and manager support during the first ninety days.
Are call centre jobs bad? What makes agents stay or leave
Call centre work can be demanding and career-opening: South Africa’s GBS sector retained 84% of hires since 2010, while global agent attrition reached 38% in 2022.
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Global agent attrition was 35% in 2021 and 38% in 2022, while 84% of South African GBS hires since 2010 remained in formal employment (SQM Group, 2024; Harambee, 2026).
Contact centre work can combine emotional labour, close monitoring, high occupancy, limited autonomy and changing schedules; the mean absence rate was 9.4% in 2024 US data (ContactBabel, 2024).
Around 90% of South African GBS hires over the past decade were young people, and more than 30% came from households where nobody held a job (BPESA, 2025).
For leaders, examine first-90-day support, occupancy, monitoring and role fit, since these design choices shape whether agents can sustain the work.
Agents are more satisfied when supervisor support is minutes away, 57% against 9%; motivation also depends on meaningful work, autonomy and individual fit.
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Agents who could reach a supervisor within minutes reported 57% satisfaction, against 9% among those who could not (McKinsey, 2018).
Across 183 samples and over 212,000 people, incentives predicted quantity of work while intrinsic motivation better predicted quality (Cerasoli et al., 2014).
In a field study, fundraisers who spent five minutes meeting someone their work had helped raised dramatically more in the following weeks (Grant et al., 2007).
For leaders, make supervisor help easy to reach, show agents the people their work helps, and give them some control over how they work.
Know how each new starter works from their first week.
Each new starter spends about twelve minutes answering questions online about how they prefer to learn, think a problem through and take feedback. They see their own map first.
Their team leader then has something specific to start from. The first coaching conversation can open the way this person prefers, and the support around them can be shaped to fit.
Get to know candidates before day one.
Candidates can answer the same twelve minutes of questions while you recruit. Each candidate then decides whether you may see their map, and the map stays theirs either way.
With their agreement, Sariio describes how that person prefers to work alongside the people already doing the job well. The description informs your interviews, and the decision stays with the people making it.
If you hire them, nothing needs repeating. Their team leader starts the first week knowing how they prefer to learn and take feedback.
Candidate participation can form part of an agreed intake or recruitment engagement. The scope, fee and measures are agreed around the work.
Case study41 of 42stayed the full contract
TL;DR
Staffing a tax-year peak: 41 of 42 stayed
An outsourced contact centre recruited 42 technical advisers for a software company’s tax-year peak against a map of the client’s top performers. 41 stayed for the full nine months, and the client then hired 28 of them.
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One of the 42 left during induction; the other 41 stayed until the contract ended nine months later.
The client filled 28 internal posts straight from the contact centre’s team.
The contact centre won the work because it could show how it would attract, engage, develop and keep the right people.
Knowing how the people already doing well in a role prefer to work is one of the cheapest retention steps you can take.
One in four frontline hires say the job was misdescribed, while 12% of US centres lose more than a quarter of new agents within 90 days.
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COPC found 25% of frontline staff did not agree the recruiter accurately described the role; accurately briefed hires reported twice the satisfaction and twice the likelihood of staying. (COPC)
ContactBabel's 2024 US data shows 45% of centres lose 5% or fewer of new agents in their first three months, while 12% lose more than a quarter within 90 days. (ContactBabel, 2024)
Agents typically need six months or more to reach average-agent performance, while replacing one agent costs $10,000 to $20,000. (SQM Group, 2022; McKinsey & Company, 2018)
For leaders, describe the role honestly before day one, then use graded call complexity and close coaching to support agents until competence catches up.
Work preferences describe how people do their best work, and person-job fit correlates .56 with satisfaction and −.46 with intention to quit.
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Work preferences cover how people build relationships, think and plan, make decisions and get things done; everyone has a full set, and no preference is wrong (Foggin, 2026).
Person-job fit correlates .56 with job satisfaction, .47 with organisational commitment and −.46 with intention to quit, but only about .20 with rated performance (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005).
6 in 10 fully-remote employees would look for a new job if remote flexibility were removed (Gallup, Hybrid Work Indicator).
For leaders, ask how people prefer to work alongside how they feel about work, then use those insights to discuss role fit and working arrangements.
They can't tell you what a person experiences when a manager is rushed, a team is stretched or the work no longer makes sense.
The Play Book brings together the evidence and the questions worth asking at four connected levels: the individual, the relationship with a manager, the team and the organisation.
“Sariio strengthens our ability to have meaningful, data-led conversations with employer partners about candidate fit, while empowering our Shadows with greater insight into their strengths and potential.”
Nate JacobsChief Operating Officer, Shadow Global
“For us to be sustainable, it's this kind of continuous improvement that would really support us. Sariio is an incredible tool.”
Tell me where early departures are happening, what people have told you and what you'd like to understand. We'll look at whether the work preference layer has a useful part to play, and how we'd both see the difference.
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