You’re hitting every SLA target on your dashboard. Your metrics look solid, and leadership is happy with the numbers. But here’s what those green indicators don’t show: which agents are absorbing the overflow during volume surges, how often you’re leaning on the same high performers to handle escalations, and how sustainable that approach really is.
The call center industry faces an average annual agent turnover rate of 38 percent.¹ When your most reliable people burn out and leave, you lose the institutional knowledge and efficiency that kept those SLAs intact.
The real question isn’t whether you can hit your SLA goals this month but whether your staffing strategy can protect those metrics six months from now without overworking the agents who carry your operation.
The Hidden Costs of Leaning on Your Top Performers
Meeting your SLA targets consistently feels like a win, but if you’re relying on the same handful of agents to make it happen, you’re building risk into your operation. Here’s what that approach actually costs you.
Overreliance on Best Agents Makes Them Prone to Burnout
Your top performers are the ones absorbing overflow during volume surges, taking on the most difficult escalations, and staying late when call queues spike. That workload builds over time. Over 30 percent of calls agents handle are repeat issues that weren’t resolved the first time, and 14 percent are classified as complaint calls.²
When your best agents consistently field the toughest interactions under the most pressure, exhaustion sets in. Performance starts to slip, or they start looking for jobs elsewhere. When they leave, you lose the speed, expertise, and customer rapport that kept your SLAs on track.
The Rest of Your Team Won’t Develop Their Skills
When veterans handle all the complex calls, junior agents stay stuck in low-complexity work. They don’t get the exposure they need to develop problem-solving skills or build confidence with difficult customers. The skills gap widens, which makes you even more dependent on your top performers. Without a succession pipeline, you’re one resignation away from a serious capability gap.
Short-Term Wins Create Long-Term SLA Vulnerability
You’re hitting metrics today, but you’re also building brittleness into your operation. One resignation during a busy season or one unexpected sick leave during peak hours can send your SLA compliance into a nosedive. Sustainable performance beats short-term heroics every time.
How the Right Staffing Strategy Protects Your SLAs AND Your People
The solution isn’t to push your current team harder. It’s to build a staffing foundation that can handle demand fluctuations without burning out your best agents. Here’s what SLA staffing best practices actually look like in action.
Build Surge Capacity with Flexible Staffing Models
Temp and temp-to-hire solutions let you scale with demand patterns, whether that’s peak seasons, product launches, or unexpected volume spikes. Your core team handles steady-state operations while flex capacity absorbs the surges.
For example, if you’re staffing a financial services call center during tax season, you can ramp up with temporary agents who handle the increased volume without grinding down your full-time staff. When the season ends, you scale back down without the cost or complexity of layoffs.
Deploy Pre-Vetted Talent That Hits the Ground Running
Generic hiring processes mean long ramp-up times, which puts more pressure on your existing team while new hires get up to speed. Call center staffing specialists maintain ready-to-deploy talent pools of agents who are already pre-screened for call center demands.
These candidates come in with metrics fluency, compliance knowledge, and de-escalation skills already in place. Faster onboarding means less burden on your veteran agents, who can stay focused on their own work instead of spending weeks training new hires.
Prioritize Culture Fit and Retention, Not Just Speed
Wrong-fit hires churn fast, which restarts the pressure cycle and keeps your team stuck in constant training mode. Staffing partners who understand call center culture place agents who actually stay. Higher retention means you build institutional knowledge, maintain stable SLA performance, and reduce the constant training load that wears down your experienced agents.
Look for Partners Who Offer Ongoing Support, Not Just Placement
Effective staffing partnerships include onboarding assistance, performance check-ins, and rapid backfill when you need it. You want an extension of your HR team, not a transactional vendor who disappears after placement.
Quick Assessment: Is Your Staffing Strategy SLA-Ready?
Answer these 5 questions to gauge whether your current staffing approach can sustain SLA performance without burning out your team:
- Do you have flex capacity for volume surges?
- Yes – We have temp/contract staff we can deploy within days
- Somewhat – We rush to backfill or ask for overtime
- No – Our core team absorbs all surges
- How quickly can you get newagentsproduction-ready?
- Under 2 weeks (pre-vetted, call center-experienced talent)
- 3-4 weeks (standard hiring + training)
- 6+ weeks (lengthy recruitment and ramp-up)
- Who handles your most complex calls during peak times?
- Distributed across the team with proper load balancing
- Mostly the same 20% of top performers
- Almost exclusively our veteran agents
- What’s your agent retention rate among high performers?
- 85%+ annually (stable, engaged team)
- 70-84% (some churn, manageable)
- Below 70% (frequent turnover, constant backfilling)
- When was the last time you evaluated your staffing partner’s performance?
- Within the last quarter (active partnership review)
- Over 6 months ago
- We handle all hiring internally / No current staffing partner
If you answered “Somewhat” or “No” to 2 or more questions, your staffing strategy may be putting both your SLAs and your team at risk. Strategic staffing partnerships can help you build the flex capacity, speed-to-productivity, and retention you need to sustain performance.
Protect Your SLAs Without Burning Out Your Team
Meeting SLA targets shouldn’t come at the cost of your best agents. Salem Solutions specializes in call center staffing that scales with your demands, giving you the flex capacity and pre-vetted talent you need to maintain operational readiness during surges.
We help you build sustainable performance by matching you with agents who fit your culture and stay long-term.
Ready to protect both your metrics and your people?
Contact us today and let’s design a staffing strategy that works for your call center.
Reference
1., 2. “Call Center Burnout Problem: Defining, Measuring, and Tips for Recovering from It.” SQM Group, 24 Feb. 2023, https://www.sqmgroup.com/resources/library/blog/call-center-burnout-rate-problem.
