Agent attrition cost calculator
Attrition in contact centres is rarely framed in its true cost. This calculator converts your attrition rate into a hard annual number — and shows the persistent capacity drain that makes understaffing worse than your rota suggests.
Annual attrition cost
£71,100
£5,688 per leaver · 12.5 leavers/year
Cost breakdown
53% of total cost
47% of total cost
Steady-state capacity drain
2.3% of your seated capacity is occupied by ramping agents at any given time.
Frequently asked questions
What is a typical contact centre attrition rate?
Contact centre attrition typically runs 25–40% per year in most markets, with some high-volume outbound or BPO environments exceeding 60–80%. In-house operations with stronger culture and career paths tend to sit in the 15–25% range. Anything below 15% is considered low for the industry.
What does it cost to replace a contact centre agent?
Total replacement cost typically ranges from 0.5× to 1.5× annual salary when you include recruitment fees or time, onboarding administration, training facilitator time, and the productivity gap while the new agent ramps. For a frontline agent earning £25,000/year, this often works out to £5,000–15,000 per leaver.
How does attrition affect service levels?
Beyond the direct cost, attrition creates a continuous capacity drain. Agents in ramp deliver only 50–70% of a tenured agent's productivity. At 25% attrition with a 12-week ramp, a 50-agent team is effectively running at the capacity of a 47-agent team at any given time — a persistent shortfall that must be offset by either overhiring or accepting worse service levels.
What does 'steady-state capacity drain' mean?
At a steady attrition rate, a predictable number of agents are always somewhere in their ramp period. This number can be estimated: if 25% of 50 agents (12.5) leave each year, and the ramp is 12 weeks at 60% productivity, roughly 1.7 FTE-worth of capacity is permanently consumed by the ramp gap. This is a planning constant you should add to your seated requirement.
Factor attrition into your staffing plan
Turnella lets you set an annual attrition buffer on each workstream — it adds the attrition headcount into your hiring recommendation automatically, so your plan stays accurate as your team churns.
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