04 Apr Wondering How to Hire and Recruit the Best Call Center Staff? Here’s How!
It’s no secret that one of the most important aspects of any company is its customer service. After all, that’s the most popular means that customers communicate with a company and address any questions, comments, or concerns that they may have. One could even go as far as to say that customer service is the very thing that can make or break the success of a company.
As a business person and owner of a growing company, you already know that in order to stay ahead, you’re going to need the best call center services out of your competition – no, out of your industry – if you ever hope to stay a top player in the game. That said, you’re going to want to know how to recruit and hire on the best call center staff and support to take care of your company.
But how exactly do you go about doing that? What sort of tricks does one need to perform to obtain the perfect call center staff? The good news is that it isn’t as hard as you might think. This article goes in-depth with what you need to know to bring in the best employees for your call center services. Keep reading to find out more!
What Do I Need to Know to Make the Best Call Center?
Here’s the deal. Most companies think that to have the best call center and offer the highest call center services, you need to just shove a lot of money into the customer service department, hire a bunch of people, spend hundreds of thousands on training equipment and customer service tools, and then shove the employees out into the untamed world that is customer support.
If this is the way you’ve been thinking about going about things, we can honestly say it won’t end up too well for you.
Customer support is way more than just a numbers game, and simply having more members or pricier equipment is not the answer to your problems. Remember, the call center is essentially the middle man between your faithful customers and your growing business. Not taking proper care of your support unit will result in you losing your customers and damaging your business – something that you can’t afford to happen.
So, what do you do to keep everything afloat? For starters, you need to understand both sides of the playing field. Your callers are going to want to be treated a certain way and expect specific answers to their problems, which will vary between industries and even businesses. Likewise, your call center employees are going to need specific things to help them do the best job possible. Learning this info will allow you to best figure out what you need to offer the best for both your customers and your employees.
Calculating all of this in, here are a few things you’ll want to know to help you hire and recruit the best call center staff for your business. Make sure to take some notes.
1. Keep Your Turnover as Low as Possible
We know that call centers naturally have a higher turnover rating than most other companies. That said, we also know that the dangers of having a high turnover rate are too great to not highlight this matter first.
When you hire new people, one of the first things they’re going to want to find out is the turnover rating. After all, anyone who dedicates their time to a business is going to want to know how well that business is with retaining its members, and why it fails to retain them if it has a concerning turnover level. This is especially true if the retention levels showcase some extremely low figures.
If your call center is prone to losing more people than it hires on, you can expect that to lead to catastrophic results. First, many of the members that you already have will leave, meaning you’ll have wasted thousands of dollars and earned some bad markings. Secondly, the new recruits will notice the high fallout from the past groups, which will influence many of them to drop as well, meaning you’ve just wasted more money on employees…and so the cycle continues.
Clearly, you don’t want to be stuck with this as the face of your recruiting policy, so you’ll want to take smart measures to avoid it.
2. Do It for the Culture
One of the first things that employees will notice is the vibe of your company. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that shows the culture of a company is one of the biggest things that will determine if they stay or if they walk out of the door, and it makes sense. If your people aren’t happy with the thought of getting up and working for your business, why would they want to stick around?
This is especially true for repetitious jobs such as call center duties which can quickly begin to feel like a chore. Help them out a bit by giving them some good people to be and workaround. Enjoyable co-workers, good company management, and friendly bosses are just a few of the ways you can push for a better place to work, which will not only make employees stay but will also make them want to do better at their jobs.
3. Use Several Different Assessment Tools
Another thing that you’ll want to start looking into is assessment tools. In an effort to hire on as many people as possible, many bigger companies use very simple and almost childish assessment tools, and they only one or two of them at the most. As a result, they tend to hire on people who aren’t fit for the call center tasks at hand, and they’re either fired or quit on their own.
This results in a mass exodus of employees, which leaves you staring at our first note about turnovers in the face again. Remember how we were trying to avoid that problem?
For this reason, it’s always a great idea to hire your employees based on a series of strong assessment tools. Having your potential hires take a multitude of different assessments not only showcases their desire to obtain the call center position but will also help you as the employer to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of each employee you plan to hire, ensuring that you only get the best on your team.
4. Make Sure to Define the Ideal Employee
No, we’re not trying to make this seem like the “ideal” matches made in a B-rated romantic comedy. Even though companies are obligated to provide equal opportunities for all (and we support that in every way) there comes a time when we have to realize each job is best suited for certain types of people. This could be based on their mentality, their emotional fortitude, or simply the way they’re able to adapt to their roles in the business.
In general, there are some ideas as to what makes the optimal call center employee, such as being a people person, remaining calm under pressure, and being willing to work with the general environment. There may be extra requirements based on your company services and your clientele, so start building up a portfolio of what you would consider an ideal employee to work in your company.
5. Be Serious About Your Spending
The call center environment requires a lot to keep it running at its best. Between tech upgrades, employee wages, and training your employees (among other things), you’ll be spending quite a bit of cash – and if you aren’t careful, it’ll eat you and your company finances up alive.
Of course, cutting corners just to save a few bucks is never the right way to do business; in fact, it might make things worse and have you spending more company funds. That said, make sure you calculate how much you have to spend on your call center needs and how much cash you’ll need to get the job done.
This is where you need to do a good deal of research on the market to determine where you need to spend. Find out how to best balance employee wages, tech spending, building costs, training, and other financial necessities to give your workers the best environment to be the most successful.
6. Let Your Employees Know What to Expect From the Customers
One of the worst things that a company can do to its employees is to not be upfront and honest with what they should expect when working in the call center business. They tend to cover things over and shove company propaganda down the throats of their potential hires, leaving out any of the realities that the employee can – and will – eventually face.
When that employee is hired, they soon run into these problems that the company was trying to hide from them during recruitment. Then the employee becomes upset or frustrated, or they don’t do the job properly because of situations that they weren’t prepared for, and they ultimately leave the company. And then we’re back to problem number one.
See how hiding facts isn’t really a good thing?
To avoid this, you need to be as open and honest with your employees as you possibly can. Tell them all about the nitty-gritty details of what to expect while working in the call center, what types of customers you serve, what personalities they should expect from said customers (this is a big one) and what they can do to best survive and thrive in their new work environment.
7. Equip Them With Call Center Software That’s up to Date
Have you walked into a business that had its employees trying to take care of business on Windows 7 computers? We can almost guarantee that those businesses aren’t doing too well right now.
If you want top-notch employees, you have to be willing to give them top-notch equipment. Each day, tasks are becoming more demanding and need to be carried out in record-breaking time. In order to hang with consumer demand, you have to have powerful technology that can deliver on the speeds and outperform your competition.
Make sure to equip your employees with the best call center headset, the latest computers, and the most updated software that they’ll be using to deliver the greatest company call center support that the world has ever seen.
We’ve Got the Help You Need
Now that you know what steps you need to take to create the best call center in your field, you’ll be able to start gathering the best employees for your business to succeed with your customers and thrive among the competition. That being said, you’re going to want to get started immediately on making these changes and strengthening your company brand. We’re the right people to help you with the job.
At Scion, we know the importance of customer services and support. That’s exactly why our biggest asset is offering those services to companies who need them. We specialize in giving immediate temporary customer services to companies who need to build, and build fast. We can help you to have a working customer support unit in a matter of days to handle the most pressing support matters in your business.
Our company offers temporary aid in several different positions, including sales assistants, sales representatives, customer support representatives, technical services, sales managers, customer success units, and many more. Our high standards for candidate selection and our 98% retention rate showcase just how dedicated we are on never compromising on our services and offering only the best to our clients every time.
Are you ready to get started with making your customer service department the best that it can be? We’re more than happy to make that happen. Simply give us a call to receive immediate staffing assistance and get on track to a more solid business. We look forward to helping you and your company succeed!
