A training class graduates on a Friday. A month later, a lot of those seats are empty again. So you post the jobs, run the interviews, fill the class, and start over. Many contact centers have stopped seeing this as a problem they can solve. It's just part of the job. Many lose a third or more of their agents every year, and recruiting has to run nonstop just to stay even. Training teams spend months onboarding people who won't make it to day 90. And every one of those exits costs real money: recruiting, training, and the weeks it takes a new agent to get up to speed, all spent again on the next hire. Do that for one class and it hurts. Do it for every class, every year, and it becomes a huge cost in the contact center, one most leaders have come to accept as the price of doing business.
The attrition you're already paying for
But accepting it misses something important: when it happens. More than 70% of first-year contact center attrition happens in the first 90 days (COPC, 2024). That's after you've paid to recruit and train someone, and before they've had the chance to give much back. These aren't agents who burned out after two good years. Many of them were never going to stay, and in a lot of cases, there were signs before the offer ever went out. The decision that empties the seat usually happens early. Most teams just don't see it until week six.
Good attrition: the mismatch you want to find early
That reframes the whole problem. If the loss is mostly decided up front, the goal is not to stop people from leaving. Some of them should leave, and the cheapest version of that is the one that happens before you have spent a dollar training them. That's what we call good attrition: the candidate who realizes early in the process that this job isn't for them, and walks away. Compare that to the one who figures it out in week three and stays on just long enough to find something else. You can't get rid of the mismatch. But you can find it earlier. That's what a pre-hire assessment is built to do.
What is a pre-hire assessment for call centers?
A pre-hire assessment for call centers is a short job simulation a candidate completes before they're hired, so both sides can see whether the job is the right fit. Here's what that looks like with Reddy. A candidate sits down at a copy of your agent desktop: the same systems, the same layout, a synthetic customer on the line. They take a single, ordinary call, the kind your floor handles a hundred times a day. And you watch. That's it. It's not a personality quiz, a typing test, or a one-way video interview. It's the job, for one short call, before anyone commits to anyone. And it's not something new to build. It's a shorter version of a simulation you already run in training, cut down to one simple call type and moved to before the hire.
How does a pre-hire assessment reduce attrition?
Moving the simulation before the hire does two things: it shows the candidate the job, and it shows you the candidate. Both lead to good attrition. First, the candidate finally sees the job. Most people applying to a contact center have never sat on the floor with three systems open and a customer talking in their ear. The gap between what they imagined and what the work actually takes is what drives those early exits. A simulation closes that gap before anyone signs on. Some candidates will realize it's not for them, and that's fine. The ones who say yes know what they're saying yes to, and they're more likely to stay. The person who steps away at this stage costs you nothing. That's not a side effect. That's the point.
What a pre-hire assessment shows you about a candidate
Second, you get to see the candidate. That same short session shows you what no resume or interview can. Can they move across screens without getting lost? Can they hold a natural conversation while they navigate? Do they keep their footing when the customer pushes back? Watching someone do the work is one of the most reliable ways to know how they'll do the job. And you're not looking for a perfect call. You're looking for instinct, not execution. Rough execution is what training is for, but one call is often enough to see whether the instinct is there. It's the same mismatch that would otherwise show up on a paid floor six weeks from now, caught before anyone has spent a dollar.
How should you use pre-hire assessment results?
How you use the results depends on one decision: whether they help decide who gets hired. Seeing a candidate work is valuable, but it raises a question you need to answer before anyone sits down at the desktop. If the results are only a preview for the candidate, it's a job preview, and it never touches your hiring decision. If the results help decide who gets hired, it becomes a hiring test, and hiring tests come with real legal obligations. Neither one is wrong. They're just different tools, and everything else follows from which one you choose.
In practice, most teams land in one of three places. The lightest is a pure preview. The simulation is there for the candidate. Scores aren't kept, the hiring team never sees them, and your existing interview makes the call. You still get good attrition, with almost none of the risk. The middle option is human observation. Someone on your hiring team watches the session and forms their own read on the basics, like navigation, typing, and composure, the same way they would in an interview. Their judgment feeds the decision, not an AI score. The fullest option uses the results as part of the hiring decision. That gives you the most signal, and it also makes the assessment a formal hiring test. That means proving it predicts job performance, checking that it doesn't unfairly screen out any group, telling candidates how it's used, and keeping a person accountable for every decision.
The right option depends on your business: how you hire, how much risk you're comfortable with, and what your hiring and legal teams are ready to support. Reddy builds the tool and makes each of those options possible. How far it reaches into your hiring decision is up to you.
Where it fits: the hire-to-retire flywheel
That flexibility comes from building pre-hire assessments into the same platform that trains and coaches your agents, instead of adding a separate screening tool. The assessment is built from your own call types, so candidates see a version of the work your agents actually do. The customer on the line is synthetic, so there's no real customer data in front of someone you haven't hired yet. And because it runs on the same simulations your team already uses for training, the first call a candidate takes and everything that comes after it live in one place. The same simulation that shows a candidate the job becomes the first step in how you train and coach them once they're hired.
Good attrition isn't a failure of hiring. It's hiring working the way it should: early, honestly, and before anyone has spent a dollar on training. The candidate who walks away after one call isn't a loss. They're the attrition you'd have paid for later, caught at the very start.
Sources
- COPC Inc., 2024: share of first-year contact center attrition that happens in the first 90 days
- SQM Group, 2022: annual contact center agent turnover
- Sackett et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022: work samples as predictors of job performance
