AGENT ASSESSMENTS

You know, the “bad fit” agents. They display less-than-desirable attitudes and work ethic. These agents spread negativity around the contact center and call in sick until their sick time is used up. Some agents are even terminated due to too many missed days.

What went wrong? The agents interviewed well. They had contact center experience, were well-spoken, and dressed professionally for the interview.

It might be hasty hiring; contact centers do it all the time. Top management wants to open the new site by the first of the month, which is only two weeks away. That means you’ll need to hire 200 agents in two weeks. So, the “spaghetti is thrown against the wall” as you quickly fill seats with bodies, and everyone hopes for the best, knowing that many will be eliminated.

Expecting that many will be eliminated is flawed thinking. This approach will ultimately cost your contact center thousands of dollars, which is not OK. The spaghetti strategy fails every time.

Identifying the right contact center representatives is one of the most significant performance factors. However, this process doesn’t have to be painful.

Can agent pre-employment assessments eliminate the “wrong fit/bad fit” scenario? Companies spend hundreds of dollars on assessments when they hire managers to ensure they have the “right” guy or gal managing things. Why aren’t they doing the same when they are hiring agents?

“Throwing spaghetti against the wall” and hoping some will stick is never cost-effective. This is especially true when contact centers are hiring hundreds of agents at a time. There is a better way. Today, agent pre-employment screenings have 90% reliability and are highly cost-effective.

Do you know what temperaments make a rock star in your center? Profiling top performers takes the mystery out of what you are looking for. The profile makes the type of agent you are looking for crystal clear. You can see motivation, work ethic, tolerance, and patience, which are soft skills.

Once you have that top performer’s profile, you’ll want to replicate that agent all day and fill your center with agents that fit this profile. Success is more than experience; it’s the right experience, personality type, and value system.

From the outside, all inbound customer service reps look the same. But are they? Is a CSR who spends their day upselling/cross-selling and winning back customers the same CSR who provides service and support? How about the reps who call on B2B customers? Are they the same as B2C reps?

They both make outbound calls—what’s the difference? Do you think the assertiveness levels of the two reps should be different? The nuances between the roles are subtle yet profoundly different regarding long-term suitability for telephone-based occupations.

How do you “see” these nuances when hiring the right agents the first time?

Rather than putting “butts in seats,” take the time to source the right candidates. Running understaffed while recruiting the right agents will save money even if you pay overtime. Those “bad fits” suck up supervisor time in training, coaching, completing performance improvement plans, and ultimately, termination paperwork. The supervisor’s time can be better directed to coaching the right candidate/agent.

When the right agents are developed, they provide excellent service, and cooperation improves,  highly productive teams are built. Call stats increase, and agent job satisfaction improves. Hire the right agents the first time and reduce turnover before it starts.

If you like the results of the constant hire/fire spaghetti strategy, keep using it. However, if you want something different, consider Agent Pre-Employment screening. You just might be pleasantly surprised by the results.