When hiring new employees to work at a call center, quality should be the deciding factor. These workers are your first line when communicating with customers and, therefore, are very important to your bottom line.
The following call center staffing best practices can make a difference as you go through the recruiting and hiring process:
1. Hire for Attitude
Since your employees will be working with the public, they should have the necessary attitude. You can train an employee to do the job properly, but it’s much more difficult to develop this individual’s personal skills.
2. Set Expectations
Before granting an interview, make sure that reasonable expectations have been set. That way, there is no chance of miscommunication between you and your call center employees.
3. Give Feedback
Both during and after the interview, give your candidates feedback. Not providing these individuals with feedback means that they’ll never improve and that the quality of your staffing will remain stagnant.
4. Listen to Feedback
At the same time, you should listen to any feedback that is given by your candidates. This helps you to improve in the future by giving you a list of things that you should work on.
5. Provide Training
You can’t expect your new staff members to fit into your call center seamlessly unless you provide the necessary training. This training should include refreshers on things like phone etiquette, in addition to on the job training that the employee will receive.
6. Implement Good Management
Without good management, your employees are likely to fail. Make sure that you have solid managers on the clock at all times and encourage your workers to contact these managers when they run into problems.
7. Screen Resumes
The pre-interview selection process is vital because it allows you to remove any candidates that you don’t view as a good fit. This helps you to streamline the staffing process, as you can cut down on the number of interviews that you actually grant.
8. Conduct a Job Simulation
Before making an actual hire, it’s essential that you see how a person would respond on the job. When running a call center, this is very easy to accomplish, as you can conduct a simulated call.
9. Offer Bonuses
When employees reach certain metrics, offer bonuses. This helps you to attract better prospects, since they won’t be capped on how much they can earn.
10. Make Employees Accountable
Employees who don’t make certain metrics or perform poorly should be made accountable. IF you keep people who perform poorly on the job, you could create a culture where no one cares about the results.
11. Stress the Importance of the Job
Call centers are very important to the company as a whole, as they provide a portal with which the organization can communicate directly with its customers. Make sure that your employees are aware of the importance of their jobs.
12. Value Social Skills
Occasionally, people who call the center will be upset about something. Having agents who can defuse the situation, rather than escalating it, are extremely valuable. It takes certain social skills to be able to calm someone down, so make sure that you look for people who can do this.
13. Survey Customers
Ask customers about their experience after a call. This provides you with direct feedback and allows you to see if your staffing strategy is working. If you’re not attracting the right staff, it might be time to make some changes.
14. Plan for Improvement
Always look to improve. Remember that you want your agents to provide a good solution to the problem, rather than looking to get the customer off the phone as quickly as possible.
15. Strive for Excellence
The goal is to operate a call center that offers world class service. Don’t be satisfied with average service, as a center that offers better service is much more valuable to the organization.