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Why telecom employees leave and how to understand why
Why field engineers, network operations and installation staff leave telecom jobs, and how to ask about on-call, travel, targets and growth at exit.
7 min readRead article
Telecom · Telecom customer care and call centres
HR for Telecom Customer Care and Call Centres: Agents, Shifts and Quality
A telecom care centre answers customers who are already annoyed, on shifts that run all night. Here is how to hire, roster and keep the agents who carry it.
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Share your requirementsA telecom customer care or call centre handles billing queries, plan changes, network complaints, port-out requests and fault tickets by phone, chat and email. Some centres belong to the operator and many are run by service companies for several operators. Agents are largely young, work in shifts that include nights, and speak the languages of the circles they serve. Teams are led by team leaders, supported by quality, training and workforce planning staff. Work comes in waves tied to billing dates, outages, new plans and festival offers. Customers ring when something has gone wrong, so agents face frustration all day with scripts and tools that limit what they can do. See also HR for telecom.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in telecom customer care and call centres, you may see
- Agents leave within months
- Night shifts wear people down
- Rosters do not match call patterns
- Team leaders are promoted agents
- Quality scores feel unfair
- New joiners are thrown in early
- Language skills are patchy
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in telecom customer care and call centres
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Voice and chat agents
- Language and regional specialists
- Team leaders
- Quality analysts
- Trainers and nesting coaches
- Workforce planning and scheduling analysts
- Escalation and back-office staff
- Centre and operations managers
Where HR strains in telecom customer care and call centres
Agents leave within months
Shift timings, abuse from callers and limited growth push people out soon after training is paid for, so the centre keeps hiring to stand still.
Night shifts wear people down
Rotating roster patterns, transport after midnight and poor recovery time lead to absence and burnout that rostering alone does not fix.
Rosters do not match call patterns
Volumes spike at billing dates and during outages, but staffing is set from last month's average, so waits grow when it matters most.
Team leaders are promoted agents
Good agents become team leaders with no training in coaching, feedback or handling a team member who is struggling.
Quality scores feel unfair
Agents are scored on calls they could not control, and the same call gets different marks from different reviewers.
New joiners are thrown in early
Classroom training is short and nesting is thin, so new agents take live calls before they can find the answer.
Language skills are patchy
A few agents handle a regional language and are stretched, while others struggle with scripts in a language they use less comfortably.
HR topics for telecom customer care and call centres
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Onboarding and Probation; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for telecom, not in general.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a telecom customer care and call centres business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Design a hiring and training pipeline
Assessment on language and listening, a training batch plan and a nesting period with a named coach.
What this coversHide
Design a hiring and training pipeline
Assessment on language and listening, a training batch plan and a nesting period with a named coach.
What this coversHideAssessment on language and listening, a training batch plan and a nesting period with a named coach. The recruitment process and onboarding and probation work set it out.
Make rosters predictable
Shift patterns that give notice, protect rest days and distribute nights fairly, built from call volumes by hour and by date.
What this coversHide
Make rosters predictable
Shift patterns that give notice, protect rest days and distribute nights fairly, built from call volumes by hour and by date.
What this coversHideShift patterns that give notice, protect rest days and distribute nights fairly, built from call volumes by hour and by date. The attendance, shift and leave software keeps the roster.
Calibrate quality scoring
Reviewers score the same calls together every few weeks and agree what good looks like, so agents get consistent feedback.
What this coversHide
Calibrate quality scoring
Reviewers score the same calls together every few weeks and agree what good looks like, so agents get consistent feedback.
What this coversHideReviewers score the same calls together every few weeks and agree what good looks like, so agents get consistent feedback.
Train team leaders to coach
Practical sessions on feedback, one-to-ones and difficult conversations before or soon after promotion.
What this coversHide
Train team leaders to coach
Practical sessions on feedback, one-to-ones and difficult conversations before or soon after promotion.
What this coversHidePractical sessions on feedback, one-to-ones and difficult conversations before or soon after promotion. The leadership and manager development programme covers this.
Build a path beyond the headset
Defined steps into quality, training, escalation and team lead roles, so staying has a visible reason.
What this coversHide
Build a path beyond the headset
Defined steps into quality, training, escalation and team lead roles, so staying has a visible reason.
What this coversHideDefined steps into quality, training, escalation and team lead roles, so staying has a visible reason. The competency and talent management work builds it.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- Count how many agents who joined in the last six months have left, by batch.
- Look at call volumes by hour for a billing week and compare with staff on the roster.
- Have two quality reviewers score the same five calls and compare the marks.
- Ask team leaders what training they had before taking the role.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Attendance, shift and leave software
Shift rosters, swaps and leave handled in one place, with visible fairness on night duty.
- Retention and attrition
A view of when agents leave and why, by batch and by team leader.
- Manager development programme
Coaching and feedback skills for team leaders who were promoted from the floor.
- Customer-service skills
Practical training for agents on handling frustrated callers and closing a call properly.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in telecom, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
How to recognise and address employee workload problems
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
HR Process
A joining checklist for Indian SMEs: documents, assets, access, statutory enrolments
A practical joining checklist covering documents, assets, system access and statutory enrolments, with owners and timings, so nobody's first salary is wrong.
8 min readRead article
HR Process
The training calendar nobody attends: fixing the learning and development process
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Usually a mix of night shifts, abusive callers, narrow growth and an early period of poor support. Look at when people leave and under which leader before changing pay.
Publish the pattern in advance, rotate fairly and give recovery time afterwards. Arrange safe transport if the centre asks people to travel at night, and confirm any legal requirements with a qualified professional.
Calibrate regularly, score on things the agent controls and share examples of good calls. Credibility comes from consistency.
A good agent is not automatically a good coach. Prepare them first, start with a small team and review how the team members experience them.
Long enough that a new agent can handle the common calls with help close by. Decide it by what they can do rather than a fixed number of days.
Batch-wise leaving numbers for agents who joined in the last six months would come first, followed by call volumes by hour against the roster, and how two quality reviewers score the same calls. A sensible first piece of work is a predictable roster and calibrated scoring. Afterwards we write down the agreed scope.
More on HR for telecom
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Internet and broadband providersTelecom retail and distribution outletsWorkforce management companiesTelecom tower and infrastructure companiesFibre rollout and network contractorsTelecom equipment installers and field service teamsRetention and Attrition Management in telecomOnboarding and Probation in telecomLearning and Development in telecom