The Agent Readiness Assessment
Twenty-four questions about how your onboarding actually runs. You get a readiness score, eight letter grades, a benchmark against programs of your complexity, and an estimate of what early attrition is costing you.
You'll see your score before we ask for your email.
About 5 minutes
Six short screens. Most answers are one click.
Score first, email after
Your score, band and dollar figure show with no email.
Built to forward
The full report lives at its own link. Send it to whoever signs.
What you get
- A 0–100 readiness score and a risk band, with no email required
- Letter grades across eight dimensions of how your onboarding actually runs
- Your ramp compared against what programs of your complexity typically run
- A dollar estimate of what readiness-driven early attrition is costing you
- What to fix yourself — most of it needs no budget and no vendor
What it asks about
Nothing abstract, and no jargon to decode — every question is about something your program either does or doesn't do.
How long your ramp is
Training, nesting, and whether volume steps up or switches on.
How people graduate
What has to be true before someone takes live contacts — and what happens when it isn't.
How much they practise
Scored reps before go-live, and which situations are actually rehearsed.
Feedback and coaching
How fast a bad contact becomes a specific correction, and who has time to give it.
The first four weeks
What support a new agent has once they're on the floor, and who notices when they struggle.
About your operation
Size, geography and complexity — so the benchmark and the cost model fit your business.
How long should new-hire training and nesting actually be?
This is the benchmark the assessment scores you against, and it's published in full. It comes from 32 years of designing and running contact-center onboarding programs. Baseline is two weeks of training plus about five days of nesting for a straightforward, low-complexity program; complexity adds one to five weeks of training and stretches nesting toward two.
| Complexity | Initial training | Nesting | Scored practice reps | Core situations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LowOne type of work, one or two systems, little or no regulatory burden. Straightforward service. | 2 weeks | 5 days | ~10 | 3 of 7 |
| ModerateOne or two types of work, a handful of systems, some compliance requirements. | 3.5 weeks | 6 days | ~12 | 4 of 7 |
| HighMulti-skill or meaningfully regulated — several systems in a typical interaction. | 5.5 weeks | 9 days | ~15 | 5 of 7 |
| Very highA universal role across three or more types of work, many systems, heavily regulated. | 7 weeks | 2 weeks | ~18 | 6 of 7 |
What makes a program complex
Complexity is measured from how the job actually works — never inferred from your industry. A healthcare program scheduling appointments and one adjudicating Medicare claims are not the same job, and grading them the same way would make the whole benchmark wrong. Three things set it:
- Types of work an agent handles. One type, two, or three-plus (a universal role).
- Systems touched in a typical interaction. One, two to three, four to six, or seven or more.
- Regulatory burden. Scripting, disclosures and compliance requirements — heavy, some, or barely any.
"Nesting" — also called incubation, grad bay, or transition — is time on live contacts with extra support before full production. "Scored practice reps" means role-plays or practice interactions where someone actually graded the performance, not hours of shadowing.
Why readiness, and not training quality
Between 69% and 73% of all contact-center turnover happens in the first year. Most centers measure annual attrition, which is exactly the number that hides where it's coming from — and most measure training by course completion, which tells you someone sat through it, not that they can do the job.
Readiness is the gap between those two things: how reliably your onboarding produces someone who can actually handle the work on their first day of real contacts. It's measurable from what your program does, which is what this assessment is.
Scoring is deterministic — the same answers always produce the same score, and complexity is measured directly from how your job works rather than guessed from your industry. A healthcare program scheduling appointments and one adjudicating claims are not the same job, and they aren't graded as though they were.
Common questions
- What is agent readiness?
- Agent readiness is how reliably an onboarding program produces someone who can actually do the job on their first day of live customer contact. It is not the same as training quality, and it is not measured by course completion — course completion tells you someone sat through the material, not that they can handle a real interaction. Readiness is measured from what the program does: how long the ramp is, what has to be demonstrated before go-live, how much scored practice happens, and what support exists in the first weeks on the floor.
- How long should new-hire training be in a contact center?
- It depends on complexity, not industry. For a low-complexity program — one type of work, one or two systems, little regulation — about 2 weeks of initial training plus roughly 5 days of nesting is typical. Moderate complexity runs about 3.5 weeks plus 1.25 weeks of nesting. High complexity, meaning multi-skill or meaningfully regulated work, runs about 5.5 weeks plus 1.75 weeks. A universal role across three or more types of work in a heavily regulated environment runs about 7 weeks plus 2 weeks of nesting.
- What is nesting, and how long should it last?
- Nesting — also called incubation, grad bay, or transition — is the period after classroom training when a new hire takes live contacts with extra support before moving to full production. It should run from about 5 days for a low-complexity program up to 2 weeks for a highly complex one. The critical detail is that contact volume should be reduced and then stepped up during nesting rather than switched on at full pressure; a nesting period that starts at full volume is a shift, not a ramp.
- How many practice reps should a new agent complete before taking live contacts?
- Around 10 scored practice interactions for a low-complexity program, rising to about 18 for a universal role in a regulated environment. What counts is a role-play or practice interaction where someone actually graded the performance — shadowing hours and completed e-learning modules do not count. Competence should also be demonstrated on more than one occasion: a single success is as likely to be a good day as a skill.
- What does it cost when a new agent quits?
- Replacement cost is best modeled as 15–30% of a fully-loaded annual cost per agent rather than as an absolute dollar figure, because an absolute figure that is right in the US is nonsense in Manila while the percentage holds in both. On top of replacement, an outsourcer carries lost billable seat-weeks while the seat refills and ramps, and an in-house center carries coverage cost through overtime and service-level degradation. For context, contact-center turnover averages 40–45% a year, and 69–73% of all turnover happens in the first year.
- How is the readiness score calculated?
- It is deterministic arithmetic — the same answers always produce the same score, and no AI is involved anywhere. Answers are scored across eight weighted dimensions: ramp design, practice depth, readiness gate, early-tenure support, feedback speed, situation coverage, coaching capacity and supervisor capability. Thresholds on several dimensions are recalibrated by the program's measured complexity, so two centers can give identical answers, receive different scores, and both be correct. Three structural failures also cap the maximum achievable score regardless of strength elsewhere: no nesting period, no scored practice before go-live, and graduating purely on the calendar.
- What is a good readiness score?
- The instrument is calibrated so a typical respondent lands in the mid-60s, which reads as elevated risk. Scoring in the 80s means the ramp, the gate and the practice volume are genuinely sized for the work. Below about 50 usually means one of the structural failures is present — most often that people graduate on a scheduled date rather than against a demonstrated bar.
- Do I have to give my email to see my score?
- No. The readiness score, the risk band and the dollar estimate all display as soon as you finish, with no email required. An email unlocks the full report — the eight dimension grades, the benchmark comparison, the named findings and the guidance — and sends you the link so you can come back to it or forward it. Results live at a private link that only someone holding it can open, and the assessment needs no account.
Find out where your program actually stands
No account, no sales call, and the score is yours whether or not you give us an email.
Start the assessment