ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 - (Page 37)

EXPERT’S ANGLE High Volume, High Stakes: A Better Strategy for Hiring BY KATE DONOVAN If you hire people for call centers or other high-volume positions, you know the stakes are high. Newhires typically require four to eight weeks of classroom training before they can take one call. If they quit or fail any necessary exams, that can represent a lost investment of $25,000 to $40,000 per employee. And that doesn’t include “soft costs, such as lost opportunity, ” customer service or morale issues that arise from employee churn. While there are many components to attracting and retaining top-quality employees, selecting the right people in the first place is critical. The good news is that assessment tools may help you dramatically improve your candidate selection process. In fact, when such tools are used along with a structured interview process and comprehensive training programs, retention rates can improve by up to 100 percent over a one-year period. (For a closer look at some of the agent assessment tools that are available, see THE SCIENCE OF AGENT SELECTION: ASSESSMENT TOOLS HELP CENTERS FIND THE RIGHT FIT.) The high cost of agent turnover can create a pressurecooker atmosphere for hiring managers and executives. Assessment tools can help target and test for performance capabilities, and can increase fair and consistent hiring practices. THE INCONSISTENCY CHALLENGE If you are accountable for staffing call centers, you already know that the cost of employee turnover drops directly to the bottom line. For many centers, candidates need weeks of classroom training, and may need to pass licensing or product exams. In this environment, new employees who can’t master the material often need to be terminated. Or, even more frustrating, they decide they won’t like the job and quit. Developing a stable call center workforce takes a lot of focus and the right combination of compensation, flexibility, supervision and career path. Typically, an attrition rate of 20 to 30 percent is considered good, but it’s not unusual to see turnover running at 100 percent or more. All the effort spent creating a good work environment won’t bear the desired results if you’re not selecting the right employees in the first place. In a high-volume recruiting environment, establishing a consistent recruiting process can be a challenge, a fact that Diane H. Yarosis, national director of Client Services for Quest Diagnostics has firsthand experience with. “We are an organization that has grown organically and through acquisition. Integrating and standardizing our operations is a priority for us. Building and implementing standardized hiring and training practices is vital to consistently delivering high-quality service, ” Yarosis says. While there is no silver bullet that will ensure that every call center candidate will be a perfect choice, years of industrial/organizational science clearly demonstrates the relationship between objective candidate assessments and predicting actual job performance. According to Charles Handler, Ph.D., president of Rocket-Hire, “Objective candidate assessment means doing what you can to evaluate candidates through objective, rather than subjective, methods. Preemployment assessment tools help you make decisions based on data gathered about the candidate that is specifically relevant to the position. ” What’s more, administering such assessments is easier than ever, now that they are available online. BALANCING THE HIRING PROCESS It is possible for companies to combine interviews and reference checks with the powerful tool of objective data to support hiring decisions. Companies that value the power of objective data to support hiring decisions use assessment tools. Such strategies have proven to be very effective, says Joseph P. Murphy, principal of Shaker Consulting Group. “There is over 85 years of research that suggests assessment centers, work samples and simulations are some of the most effective methods of predicting on-the-job performance, Murphy says. “The ” Web now allows work simulations and job tryouts to be conducted through an interactive, online experience. ” But Murphy reveals that surprisingly few companies take advantage of such tools. www.icmi.com | APRIL 2008 icmi’s insight 37 http://www.icmi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 Operations: Small Call Centers, Big Potential Ad Index Contents Editor's Page Contact Center Spotlight People: Assessment Tools Recommended Reading Technology: Speech Recognition Special Feature: Best of Show Strategy: Service-to-Sales Success Expert's Angle - High Volume, High Stakes: A Better Strategy for Hiring Experts Angle - Secrets of Recruiting Success/Job Brands: Changing Applicant Reactions to Your Openings Experts Angle - Speech Analytics: Uncovering the Voice of the Customer

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008

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