Nature or nurture? It's a question we often ask when we're at a loss to figure out why people behave the way they do.
Our answers are unlikely to satisfy us because nature and nurture overlap in ways that can make the two indistinguishable from one another. In call centers, the environment in which an agent works can bring out or undermine an agent's ability and motivation to assist customers.
Conversely, an agent who has no aptitude for or interest in communicating with customers will probably not become more effective with experience, no matter how many hours of training and coaching the agent receives.
When you decide whether to employ a prospective agent, you're doing more than assessing an individual's abilities, or the relevance of that person's previous work history.
With each candidate, you seek answers to several interrelated questions. Will a candidate for a position with your call center demonstrate a minimum level of skill? Will this person thrive within the environment he or she works? Will the candidate improve with time, and if so, will this person stay long enough to make your company's investment in him or her worthwhile? By answering these questions before you hire agents, you enable your call center to devote resources to developing people who learn to do their jobs well.
In this article, we describe how different tools and services help you choose the best candidates for your center, and help you refine what your company expects of agents.
SKILLS AND MOTIVATION
Companies don't earn positive reputations by accident. They are aware of what customers think of them because they observe customers' behavior and gather feedback from the people they serve. Companies devote a lot of effort to establishing profiles of customers they want to acquire and retain.
But companies don't always give as much thought to identifying, let alone retaining, employees who are adept at communicating with customers. Turnover among agents is an ongoing problem for call centers, yet it need not be an inherent feature of an agent's job.
Turnover reflects how well a company describes to agents their roles, as well as the expectations that come with these roles. All too often, call center agents become aware of their companies' expectations of them only after they receive their first performance evaluations. These evaluations are only meaningful if agents already know what their performance goals are.
From a call center's perspective, the most important indicators of an agent's performance are those the center assesses before the agent comes on board. One challenge with assessments is that there is a difference between recognizing candidates who can help customers, and those who want to do so. You need different kinds of tools to reveal different information about what each candidate has to offer.
Tools that assess prospective agents factor in at least one of three characteristics: a candidate's skills, motivation and adaptability to a company's working environment.
"The cluster of behaviors that underlie service and selling success are often considered in the realm of personality," explains Malcolm McCulloch, a senior research consultant with Limra International (Windsor, CT, 800-235-4672). "On the other hand, ability to learn and adaptability are in the realm of cognitive ability." And, he adds, "The call center work environment has a clear influence on the blossoming or withering of these personal characteristics."
Of the three characteristics we cited above, ability is easiest to observe. Pre-hire assessment software, such as Employment Technologies' (Winter Park, FL, 800-833-3279) Call Center Simulation, enables candidates to handle a series of calls from hypothetical customers.
The reason that developers of pre-hire assessment software provide additional tools alongside simulations is that consequences of hiring agents extend beyond filling seats. Joe Sefcik, CEO of Employment Technologies, says that assessments are useful not only for helping companies decide whom to hire, but also for finding out what training and coaching an agent needs. From a call center manager's point of view, an assessment helps establish a development plan for an agent. That plan must account for what an agent can learn, in addition to what an agent can do.
As Deon Appelgryn, president and CEO of Sui Generis Solutions (Alpharetta, GA, 404-622-4449), puts it, "I'm looking at your competencies when I'm looking at your development." Sui Generis provides a software suite, ContactPoint, that includes, along with evaluation and workforce management modules, a pre-hire assessment tool known as ContactPoint Recruiter. Dictaphone offered the overall suite before selling its call center business to Rutherford, NJ-based call monitoring company NICE Systems last year. Since moving its headquarters from South Africa to Alpharetta, GA,, Sui Generis has relaunched the ContactPoint suite in the U.S. (NICE has opted not to offer pre-hire assessment tools.)
A key premise of the suite is that call centers need to establish profiles that describe what call centers expect of agents. That's why an essential component of ContactPoint, ContactPoint Profiler, outlines competencies – that is, traits and skills – agents must demonstrate for a call center to justify the decision to hire and develop a candidate. Sui Generis' Appelgryn says that framing agents' roles in terms of competencies enables call centers "to identify those candidates who are the best fit for the job and so will require less training – and be more productive sooner."
Indeed, the most productive agents aren't always those who have the most skills at the time you hire them. Productive agents are those who make the most of the skills they develop while they're with your company. They grow in their professions because they improve with experience, and have the motivation to do so.
"Being effective now is more about how long you stay with a company than it is about how many words per minute you can type," says Anthony Adorno, a vice president with The DeGarmo Group (Bloomington, IL, 866-4DEGARMO), a consultancy that offers pre-hire assessment services. "Organizations are looking for employees who will grow with them, so a high value is placed on tenure. Since job skills don't predict career longevity very well, the key traits now are about the will to do the job."
From his previous experience with call monitoring companies that offer pre-hire assessment tools, John Kaiser, a vice president with NICE Systems, often finds that "someone with a good attitude and willingness to learn is a better fit than a highly skilled person without the proper motivation."
Sui Generis' Appelgryn concurs. "It is easiest to develop specific how-to skills, such as keyboard skills, telephone etiquette and computer literacy, through coaching and training," he says. "Abilities such as communication, language proficiency and problem solving require more time and resources to develop. Personality traits such as empathy and friendliness are arguably the most difficult traits to develop through coaching and training, if indeed it is possible at all."
The DeGarmo Group's Adorno similarly observes that the presence of certain personality traits does indicate how quickly candidates can learn how to do the jobs they apply for, and how easily they can adapt to the working environments of their employers.
"Companies are now seeing the value in measuring those traits which are not as readily trainable and which better predict longevity," Adorno says. "You can't train someone to enjoy being yelled at by another person on the phone. You can't train someone to enjoy working under time pressure. It's not possible to train someone to like having an irregular work schedule. These are personal characteristics that we either possess or do not. It's what makes us all different from one another."
GREATER EXPECTATIONS
The skills and traits we've described so far are, for many call centers, minimum qualifications for agents. Employment Technologies' Sefcik observes that, increasingly, his company's clients "want to get a better sense of someone's written communication skills."
One of Employment Technologies' tools, e.SKILLS, available in English or Spanish, lets candidates answer e-mail messages from simulated customers. Rather than selecting responses from sets of choices, candidates generate their own. e.SKILLS presents a checklist, including grammatical guidelines, that companies can use to evaluate candidates' answers. The software also provides examples of effective responses, and assesses what training candidates – or agents whom you've already hired – need to improve their communication with customers by e-mail.
Beyond helping you find the right agents, assessments indicate whether your center offers jobs that people would want to fulfill. You can expect to have a hard time filling a position whose performance indicators are incompatible with each other.
"An agent's ambition and persistence can be undermined by a poorly thought-out reward system," cautions Kurt Ballard, senior vice president and chief marketing officer with Qwiz (Roswell, GA, 800-367-2509), a developer of prehire assessment tools for a variety of jobs, including those of call center agents. "If agents recognize that conflicting goals undermine their ability to earn bonus compensation, they might quickly lose their motivation."
To illustrate this point, Ballard cites the example of agents in collections roles who "become frustrated by competing goals to be empathic and courteous, while at the same time pushing to collect money."
Another challenge, observes Jeff Furst, CEO of FurstPerson (Chicago, IL, 888-626-3412), is that call centers often hire a lot of agents at the same time. Furst says that when companies choose from a pool of applicants, they "don't have as much time to hold someone's hand through the hiring process" as they do with a candidate who has fewer competitors for a position.
A recent trend in pre-hire assessment is that more call centers seek information about a prospective agent's ability and willingness to sell. The more call centers aim to contribute financially to their companies, the more they depend on agents, including those who answer calls from customers, to be accountable for generating revenue. As Miriam Nelson, a senior vice president with Aon Consulting (New York, NY, 212-441-2000), puts it, call centers are "no longer rewarding people simply for tenure."
Can a candidate recognize an opportunity to cross-sell, such as suggesting accessories to go with an outfit a caller purchases through a catalog? What's the likelihood that a candidate with, say, a computer manufacturer will upsell customers by convincing them that they can get great deals on laptops that cost slightly more than the computers they initially called about? These are the types of questions call centers are asking, whether agents handle outbound or inbound calls.
Call centers may also find it worthwhile to determine not only if candidates can sell, but also how. Limra International offers its SellingStyles Questionnaire, which asks candidates to indicate whether and how much they agree with statements that represent different approaches to selling.
The questionnaire uncovers whether there are significant disparities between a candidate's perception of what it means to sell and how your company trains agents to sell. Some candidates primarily strive to build rapport with customers; others make a priority of advising customers on what products may be best for them.
But if, for instance, your company intends to develop agents who collaborate with customers on understanding which products suit them, then it may not make sense to hire agents who think of a sale as a confrontation that they're supposed to win.
Aon Consulting offers a simulation tool, REPeValuator, that assesses a candidate's ability to cross- and up-sell. The software is available in English and in Spanish; like an increasing number of prehire assessment tools, REPeValuator lets candidates complete simulations on-line over a secure network connection rather than requiring candidates to run through the simulations at your company.
The true test of your assessment efforts is whether you hire people who want to work in call centers. This is why assessment tools that indicate a candidate's attitudes about serving customers can be especially helpful.
Limra's ServiceFirst, for instance, suggests interview questions to gauge a candidate's inclination toward customer service, and offers recommendations for developing strengths, like politeness and patience, among agents you supervise.
Assessment firms provide different types of indexes to identify candidates who, given other choices of jobs, would opt for employment in a call center. One such tool is Aon's Service Fit Index; the index asks candidates what types of jobs and tasks they prefer, as well as what personalities they exhibit at work.
Other types of indexes, like Limra's Performance Skills Index, assess what training methods best suit a candidate. With such a tool, you can determine if, for example, a candidate is more likely to learn his or her job by observing other agents or by listening to an instructor in a classroom.
THE ROLE OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Ability and motivation are but two aspects of assessment. The third aspect, a call center's working environment, requires yet another type of tool.
As Berta Banks, president of banks&dean (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 800-381-5488), points out, "Different attributes and training have to be geared to the culture and job." That's why she advises that "assessments should not stand alone but be integrated in the whole picture of" a candidate.
Banks says that her company comprises a "team of experts dedicated to bringing organizations an innovative, scientifically-configured screening and selection process."
In addition, adds Banks, banks&dean provides "an integrated hiring solution that streamlines the hiring process in its entirety through on-line applicant screening, scientifically-configured candidate selection and a full process reporting capability."
"The platform is designed to identify talent quickly, with an emphasis on process and continuous improvement," Banks explains. "The end result is better screened and selected candidates that will fit to the culture, perform better, and stay longer."
Employment Technologies' Sefcik finds that "environmental factors often are addressed with a job fit index." He adds that such an index identifies agents who are likely to leave within the first 60 days of joining a company. From that point forward, he says, agents decide to stay based on their relationships with their immediate supervisors and based on whether the agents believe they can do their jobs.
Several of the assessment software developers we've mentioned provide tools to gauge the probability that an agent will perform well – and stay – with your center. Limra's CultureFit indicates which attributes, like trust, productivity and quality, candidates value most at work. CultureFit also shows you whether the attributes candidates rank most highly correspond to those your center ranks highly.
Employment Technologies offers The DeGarmo Group's Call Center Fit Index, which indicates if a candidate can thrive in several different types of call centers. These centers include those that generate telemarketing and collections calls, as well as those that answer calls from customers. Aon offers versions of its simulation tool, REPeValuator, to assess candidates for positions in centers that make collections calls, and for positions that don't require selling.
Some firms, like FurstPerson, provide assessment services targeted to candidates with specific characteristics, like the ability and desire to work from home. In terms of simulation, some assessment software tools, including FurstPerson's CC Audition, let you customize scenarios so that they represent and prepare candidates for calls they're likely to handle at your center.
Assessment tools aren't easily portable among different countries, which have different labor laws. But as assessment practices expand beyond the U.S., more assessment tools, like etalk's (Irving, TX, 888-258-1528/972-819-3590) Job Applicant Screening Simulator, is becoming available in international editions.
One alternative to hiring agents yourself is to collaborate with staffing firms, many of which offer assessment services, too. Next month, we'll describe how staffing firms can complement your recruiting and hiring efforts, or even manage them for you.
