The call center is a fast paced, sometimes high-intensity work environment. Hiring quality employees that are able to handle this pressure is always the consideration with management.
Call center agents are the employees that will be dealing directly with, and helping out, the customers. These are the employees that could keep the customer coming back or not. Businesses lose lots of customers due to poor customer service. This should never happen.
With high unemployment rates, it is more important than ever to make sure the agent you hire is a perfect fit. You are looking for a employees with strong work ethics, motivation, people skills and a pleasant personality and demeanor. You want this to be a fast hiring process but one that is cost-effective and will leave you with the best person(s) for the job.
Conduct voice auditions – this way you will know right away if the person can speak clearly and articulate their words properly. Agents who communicate professionally and who are understood will resonate with the callers.
Require a skills test to ensure that each candidate is proficient with spelling, comprehension, typing speed, accuracy and data entry.
The candidate should take a personality assessment. It is much more important that an agent’s successes lie in their personality than knowledge of a product or service. Experience shows that candidates who possess the correct traits for call center agents will remain on the job longer and be more productive employees.
You should meet with the prospective employee face to face. Ask any relevant questions about their past jobs and pose hypothetical situations to see how the candidate would behave and react. You will get a good sense and indication of how they will conduct themselves when the job becomes more demanding. Ask them what they remember as the best thing they did to satisfy a customer. Did they go above and beyond what was expected of them?
Have the candidate job shadow someone to experience the actual calls and the day-to-day responsibilities that is required of an agent. Being ensconced in the environment of the call center will allow you to see if the candidate is prepared. It will also allow them to see if the job is right for them, too. It is far better for them to see exactly what is expected of them before they are hired than for you to invest more time in the interview process only to learn later that the job was too difficult for them to manage.
Make sure the candidate is aware that they are accountable for all the time they are working. If you have installed workforce management software, you will be able to track exactly what they are doing and when they are working. It is important that they know up front that they are being monitored and evaluated.
Contact references. This is still a standard operating procedure with most companies and for good reason. It will help you predict the likelihood that this candidate will be effective as a customer service representative.