In recruiting and staffing new call center agents, we typically look for certain personality types, skill sets and energy levels.  Our process compares our client’s best agents to our applicant pool, matching up as many characteristics as possible.  This allows us to tailor our recruitment efforts to each individual call center  - as each call center has its own unique flavor.

In an article on callcentercafe.com, they laid out some characteristics to look for in hiring quality call center representatives:

Some characteristics to look for in a good call center representative are:
(1) telephone etiquette and the ability to respond professionally to clients on the telephone,
(2) the candidate’s ability to use proper grammar,
(3) vocabulary skills relevant to a call center position,
(4) attention to detail and ability to follow specific instructions,
(5) basic math, logic, analytical and telephone problem solving skills,
(6) ability to follow specific instructions, and
(7) telephone problem solving skills.

What characteristics do you focus on in hiring for your call center?  Interested in seeing how CallMe! could help you recruit better agents? Then, contact us!

In a recent article from insidearm.com on the issue of agent turnover and attrition, Dr. Brooks Mitchell stated,

If you want to attack the problem of high employee turnover, you only have two choices. You can try to change your organization: pay, working conditions, supervisors, etc. or you can try to change the people you hire…

I suggest to you that it is easier to change who you hire than it is to try to change your organization…

Research has proven the best way is to try to understand the basic characteristics of the people who are staying with you and then do a side-by-side statistical comparison of those same characteristics of the collectors who are prematurely leaving you.

As call center staffing experts, we are strong believers in this technique at CallMe!  When recruiting agents for our client’s call centers, our process flow always begins with a complete assessment of our client’s current call center staff.  In this assessment, we seek to establish baseline metrics against which we compare our new applicants.  We not only study the high performers, but also, we focus on those performing at or below expectations. Our experience is that by understanding the personality types that are both successful and unsuccessful in our client’s call centers, we can better target new applicants.

It has also been our experience that each call center is unique in its personality make-up.  What might work in one call center very well might not work in another.  Some call centers thrive on a high energy, high emotion environment while others are more staid and professional.  Understanding our client’s call center allows us to target the right personality types for each unique environment giving both our client and our agents the highest likelihood of success.

Again, from Dr. Mitchell,

There are many other measurable characteristics that could differentiate the good from the bad agents. Once you can understand the pertinent characteristics, then you can apply them to future job applicants and hire more people like the good employees you already have.

For an example of putting this into practice, check out this article on Harvard Business Review about how Zappos studied its culture to create a hiring methodology that guaranteed that their culture would continue to scale.

If you would like to learn more about CallMe!, our process, and our results, check out www.callmestaffing.com, download a PDF detailing our recruiting and screening process, or contact us.

For anyone considering adding customer service representatives (or CSRs) to their staff to support an e-commerce operation, this article from the American Express Open forum contains advice on how to staff these positions and some things to consider” from American Express Open Forum, How to Staff Customer Service for an E-commerce Business.

The role of the customer service agent has changed over time.  Now, functions can include telephone support, live chat, email, and social media.  Many customers can assume 24-7 support as they can purchase from your web site 24-7, so you need to be able to handle inbound volumes at the appropriate times.

CallMe! enables our clients to have a flexible workforce that can match with the peak activity times. For more on our services, click here.

Related articles that may be of interest

• Five Thousand Companies Adopt Zendesk as the New Approach to Customer Service (eon.businesswire.com)
• Amazon.com adds Live Chat to customer service options (techflash.com)
• Some Tips To Provide a Better Customer Service Experience For Your Online Clientele (wealthyways4you.com)

Two silent killers that must be monitored by call center management are Attrition and Absenteeism – both can have a significant and costly impact on call center performance.  The danger is both can also be missed if not properly monitored.

A good way to emphasize the importance of monitoring the impact of both attrition and absenteeism is to examine the “hard” and “soft” costs of each.

Hard Dollars – Attrition

• Training – The cost associated with training replacement agents can be calculated by multiplying the Agent’s hourly rate by the number of hours to train.
• Trainer cost – The cost associated with time spent by management or other employees training new agents. This can be calculated as salary or rate of pay times the number of hours to train plus the number of hours of preparation time.
• Recruiting costs – The costs associated with recruiting new agents.  This includes the cost of advertising.  Also included are the costs associated with screening (third party screening tools, etc.). Also, the number of live screens must be considered (calculated as the hourly wage of the interviewer multiplied by the number of hours interviewing candidates).

Hard Dollars – Absenteeism

• Empty seats translate into lost revenue. If your call center typically runs 100 agents during a certain time block, each seat empty due to absenteeism will cost you 1% in revenue.

Soft Dollars – Attrition

• Lost revenue – This can be better gauged when working on the outsourcing side but the cost would.  This can be calculated by multiplying the bill rate by the number of lost productivity hours due to empty seats from attrition.
• Performance – losing a veteran agent and replacing with a rookie agent can have a significant impact on performance.  An agent fresh out of training is simply not going to be as proficient as a veteran without actual real world experience manning the phones.

Soft Dollars – Absenteeism

• Brings down morale – forces management to ask the remaining agents to do more with less!
• Service levels (such as wait time) suffer as does customer service.

Call center management must monitor the impact of these two silent killers.  In future posts, we will examine the best ways to combat both attrition and absenteeism. You can also

Over at CallCenterCafe, there is a new post detailing the two basic requirements to run a successful call center.  The post breaks it down to two categories, good people and cutting edge technology.  I will leave the technology aspect to those slightly more technologically competent than myself, but I will focus on the good people aspect.

The post notes:

The next vital cog in the machinery of a smooth-running, efficient call center operation is, of course, the actual agents. Whether they’re remote agents or in-house call agents, they need to have a professional attitude, be well spoken, dependable, and have infinite patience with people.

To reduce the expense of employee turnover and retraining, call agents should be carefully screened to weed out “job hoppers” or those who don’t have the necessary “people skills” to be effective and courteous on the phone.

A lot can be gleaned from a thorough job interview. So-called “behavioral interviews” can often be the most effective way to uncover personality traits – both good and bad — and identify “red flags” in job candidates that might otherwise not be revealed.

For example, if you ask a call agent applicant to describe a specific situation in which they have had to deal with a difficult customer or co-worker, how they handled it, and how it turned out, you can often gain some valuable insights into how they react to stress or conflict.

If you think about the face of your organization, the person representing your brand, and how you want to communicate with your customers, you will immediately realize the importance and value of a quality call center agent.  Employing courteous, professional agents who are adept at handling potentially frustrating situations will reflect well on your company’s brand and reputation.

Because of the importance and value of this position, CallMe! has invested heavily in developing personality, skill set and attitude testing specifically focused on call center agents.  Our testing is designed to best match the potential agent to the job taking our understanding of the qualities that are usually associated with successful agents.  This process is not only good for the employer, but for the employee as well.  By going through our screening process, the potential employee distinguishes themselves from the crowd and is more likely to succeed when placed as they will be a better match for the employer’s call center environment.

Click here for more on CallMe!’s recruitment & screening process.

Over at Call Center Cafe, they recently posted an article entitled, “Why Are We So Terribly, Horribly Awful at Hiring People” details the gap in the standard interview practice that leads to incomplete assessments of candidates prior to hiring.  The article points out,

By reading resumes for skills, education, and experience companies begin to get a good handle on the cognitive status of the candidate. Through face-to-face meetings, good interviewers can get an appreciation of the personality, values, and motives of the candidate. Careful reference checks fill in many remaining gaps in these areas. But the cognitive piece has been largely ignored…

Our process seeks to fill in the gaps that simply reviewing a resume and conducting a interview can leave.  CallMe! has developed a proprietary online screening and interview system that tests the skill set, personality traits and cognitive ability of our applicant pool specifically geared towards work in the call center environment.  Our process includes three steps:

1) Assessment of current staff – we examine our client’s call center employees and assess their skill set, personality type and cognitive abilities creating a “baseline” for guidance.

2) Assessment of applicant pool – testing the applicant pool in the same way we assess our client’s current staff, both via online screening and a telephone interview.

3) Comparison – applying the assessment result of the applicant to the known baseline for our client’s call center workforce.

This process produces a better result for both the call center and the employee as it increases the likelihood of a good fit and success…to everyone’s benefit.

Click here for more on our process, or contact us.