Brent Holland, Vice President for Research and Consulting at FurstPerson, has produced a series of blog posts entitled “Generational Hiring for the Optimal Customer Experience”. Over the coming weeks, I will present some of his research on generational differences and their impact on call center attrition and performance.

Contact centers today are focused on driving the optimal customer experience. An often repeated question concerns whether certain generational groups, such as baby boomers, “gen x”, and “gen y” deliver a higher quality customer experience. In The first question we’ll answer is, “What percentage of candidates applying to call centers in the U.S. today do you think are 40 years of age or older across both at-home and brick-and-mortar environments?” At a recent call center conference, we asked 28 executives this question. Their answers ranged from the mid teens to over 50%. Clearly, there are a lot of opinions and perceptions in the contact center industry that may not necessarily align with the actual trends.

Based on data from more than 156,000 call center applicants, the actual percentage of candidates who are 40 years of age or older is 22% across both brick-and-mortar and at-home environments.

To further explore the trends of generational applicants, we looked at the percentages of applicants 40 years of age or older who were applying to brick-and-mortar centers and at-home centers separately. The percentage of 40 and over applicants applying to brick-and-mortar centers is only 18%, fewer than 1 in 5 people.

The trend was markedly different in the at-home environment. Nearly one-third (32%) of at-home applicants are 40 years or older. These data suggest that, at the very least, at home centers are seeing a much more mature applicant pool than traditional brick and mortar centers.

How do these figures compare to your center?