We spoke to Kirsten Corbell, product manager for Manpower's contact center and HR services about the staffing business for our upcoming article on Staffing & Recruiting. Here's what she had to say:

As I mined the ICMI QueueTips page for wisdom about staffing and hiring practices for our February Staffing & Recruiting feature, I was amazed at how many posts there were about what to call agents.

And many call center professionals obliged with lengthy lists of euphemisms for one word: agent. That's what we call them here at Call Center Magazine -- it's just easier. Occasionally we'll use the term CSR or customer service representative. But consumer care specialist? customer support coordinator? Why look for synonyms?

How can call centers reduce employee churn? We asked a staffing agency.

As a part of our continuing research for the February Staffing and Recruitment feature, we spoke to Joe Palestina and Chris Tucker from Act 1 Personnel Services, one of the largest woman- and minority-owned staffing agencies in the country. Act 1 has a lot of experience with call center staffing, so we asked Mr. Palestina and Mr. Tucker for their thoughts on reducing turnover.

Here's what they had to say:

To understand angry, you have to first understand happy. And satisfied.

In our research for February's Staffing and Recruiting feature, we spoke to Dick Finnegan of TalentKeepers who argues that the most pressing issue in call center staffing is actually keeping the agents you already have.

Not surprising to hear from a guy who works for a firm called TalentKeepers. But his point is important and his firm has numbers to back it up. Think about how much your center spends on training. Not just in dollars, but in time and energy.

Here's some of what Mr. Finnegan told us about call center agent turnover and retention:

This reader plea came our way last night. I must confess, I don't know the answer to his question, but I'd like to. Anyone in the call center blogosphere have any thoughts to share with him or us? This is a fascinating best-practice question.