What if you could see into the future? What if you could read an applicant’s palm and tell how long they would stay with your company and how well they would perform?
If you could, you would likely end up hiring a small fraction of the individuals that actually apply for your open positions. You would also save yourself lots of time and the expense of hiring individuals who will not stay with your call center long enough to justify the cost of their training.
This is where pre-hire assessment tools come in. While these tools won’t let you in on who will win the 2005 World Series or the next presidential election, they can help you weed out the individuals who are likely to turnover quickly.
By doing most of the work for you, pre-hire assessment tools reduce the amount of time that you and your human resources staff have to devote to screening and interviewing candidates who would not be successful within your company. The tools let you discover information about applicants that you wouldn’t ordinarily get just from reading their resumes. Therefore, you save the time you do have for face-to-face interviews with only viable candidates.
“Companies need to realize that agents are the superstars of their organization,” says Jeff Furst, president and CEO of FurstPerson (Rockford, IL). “The majority of the population couldn’t work well in a call center.”
It takes a unique individual to succeed in a call center environment; someone who possesses a variety of skills and characteristics. As a reflection of that, there are many different assessment tools on the market that assess for and measure different aptitudes. Based on our research, we find that assessment tools generally measure one of the following categories:
- Hard skills such as the ability to navigate multiple screens and record information accurately;
- Cognitive abilities such as multitasking, problem solving, attention to detail and, increasingly, the ability to upsell and cross-sell;
- Personal characteristics such as conscientiousness, honesty and emotional maturity; and
- Fit into work culture and the degree to which the candidate would be satisfied working in a call center environment.
Assessing the Issue
Once you know what traits assessment tools cover, you need to take a step back and think about the issues in your call center that you’re attempting to address, such as turnover, tardiness, customer service delivery, upselling and cross-selling, etc.
Most vendors recommend that you perform a job analysis as a first step to understanding what competencies and skills are critical for success on the job.
“This critical step is often where we see the biggest disconnect,” says Kurt Ballard, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Qwiz (Roswell, GA). “Companies will often decide to implement a certain test without realizing that the test has nothing to do with the critical success factors of the job.”
“It’s similar to buying a car or a suit,” says Joe Sefcik, president of Employment Technologies (Winter Park, FL). “The companies that end up with the best fit are those that take the time to evaluate their needs.”
Employment Technologies’ Call Center Simulation is a multimedia simulation that applicants access via PC. During the simulation, applicants handle a series of inbound calls from a variety of customers who vary in demeanor — from calm to confused and irate. While handling the calls, the candidate must look up and enter information, identify responses and summarize the call, which gives you the ability to rate their keyboard and navigation skills. The simulation takes about 45 minutes to complete.
Call Center Simulation’s reports provide a prediction of each applicant’s potential for success as well as feedback on skill strengths and developmental needs. The simulation also measures upselling and cross-selling skills.
“Simulations offer direct measures of performance, which provide better predictions of success and better accuracy,” says Sefcik. “Instead of looking at what characteristics of an individual make them successful, we look at what people actually do on the job that makes them successful. We analyze the job activities and link that to job success. We tend to focus on direct measures of performance as opposed to indirect measures.”
For call centers whose reps need to correspond with customers via the written word, such as in e-mails and on-line chat, Employment Technologies’ e.Skills measures candidates’ data entry and e-mail composition skills. Depending on your call center’s needs, the software offers three separate skills assessments: e-mail composition, data entry and typing/keyboarding.
If you have Spanish-speaking customers, e.Skills Bilingual measures how effectively potential agents can communicate via e-mail and text chat in both English and Spanish.
Go Beyond Skills
In addition to simulations and tests for measuring “hard skills,” assessments that measure candidates’ behaviors, cognitive abilities and even personalities are gaining momentum.
“The importance of pre-hire assessments is only going to grow,” says Malcom McCulloch, senior research consultant with LIMRA International (Windsor, CT). “In the future, because of mergers and acquisitions, rapidly changing products and the pressure for call centers to contribute to the bottom line, agents will be under pressure to do more with less. I refer to it as the ‘call center rep of the future’ — as these people are forced to take on more responsibilities, they’ll need to be adaptable and learn fast. It’s going to be more difficult for call centers to find the right people to fit these roles.”
LIMRA’s Performance Skills Index is a cognitive-ability test that measures candidates’ flexibility, learning ability, attention to detail and ability to multi-task. And the company’s latest offering, Productivity Index, assesses whether a candidate is likely to be dependable and show up to work on time.
LIMRA also offers ServiceFirst, which measures a candidate’s service personality and scores applicants to pinpoint who’s likely to deliver top customer service.
“Competencies are the innate abilities and behaviors that you need to be successful on the job,” says Furstperson’s Jeff Furst. “If a person doesn’t have problem-solving abilities, you can’t teach it to them in training. But if the person already has that ability, he or she can be coached, trained and developed to get even better at it.”
FurstPerson divides essential competencies into four key areas: work habits; inter-personal abilities; thinking and problem-solving abilities; and desire to perform.
The company’s latest assessment tool, CC Hire, measures candidates’ mental ability to learn multiple tasks and skills useful for the job. CC Hire consists of optional modules that focus on attention to detail, understanding communication, business vocabulary and problem-solving/multi-tasking skills.
FurstPerson also offers CC Audition, a Web-based simulation assessment that lets you score agents on their computer skills, problem-solving and general learning abilities.
While turnover still remains a huge priority among call centers that purchase assessment tools, Qwiz is seeing some of their larger clients take advantage of these tools to actually maximize agent productivity.
“Turnover is a problem of the past for some of the more savvy organizations,” says Qwiz’s Ballard. “Organizations that are moving forward have already addressed their turnover issues through policy changes in their selection process and management compensation packages. They’re now working on maximizing agent productivity through assessments. They want to know how many calls they can take with the number of agents they employ and how many calls they can take in the future with the same number of agents.”
Qwiz’s latest offering is Qwiz Reveal, which uses what the company calls bio-data.
“Bio-data is a methodology that states that one of the most accurate predictors of future behaviors is past behavior,” says Ballard.
Qwiz Reveal asks candidates about situations from the past that measure what Qwiz calls citizenship behaviors (e.g., commitment and loyalty, helpfulness and dependability) and counter-productive behaviors (e.g., impulsiveness, dishonesty and hostility). The software provides easy-to-interpret reports that include information on specific actions the employer should follow-up on if they bring that particular candidate in for a face-to-face interview.
Qwiz offers other tests for helping you measure candidates’ personalities and behaviors including Qwiz Vantage, which helps identify candidates whose behavior, attitude and work-related values may interfere with their success as employees and Qwiz Factor6, which measures cognitive ability, learning styles and personality traits.
As for skills-based assessments, Qwiz’s Call Center Simulation Test measures skills that include candidates’ error rates and keystrokes per hour. And Contact Center Scenario Test looks at more soft skills such as how well the candidate handles an angry customer, whether or not they build report and their ability to cross-sell and upsell.
Robert Hogan, founder and CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems (Tulsa, OK), believes that personality tests give you better information as to how the candidate will perform on the job. “Sometimes with skills assessments, the issue becomes if you can train candidates to do something on the job within a reasonable amount of time then the test isn’t really valid,” he says.
Hogan Assessment Systems’ software focuses on five dimensions of personality including emotional stability, extroversion, likeability, conscientiousness and the degree to which a person needs stimulation.
Hogan offers customizable reporting options. For example, you can choose reports that simply score agents as: hire or don’t hire. Or you can have more extensive reporting that specifically outlines the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.
The Call Center Culture
Some assessment tests go beyond measuring competencies and behaviors to determine how well candidates will fit into the call center environment. If the biggest predictor of turnover is ultimately job satisfaction, then it makes sense to try to identify candidates who are most likely to satisfied by call center work.
“It’s a situation of ‘can do’ versus ‘will do,’” says Anthony Adorno, vice president of the DeGarmo Group (Bloomington, IL). “While many of people have the actual ability to work in a call center, few have the ability to succeed at call center work. You can’t train someone to enjoy being yelled at on the phone; it’s something a person can either tolerate or not.”
DeGarmo Group’s Customer Service Fit Index (CSFI) is a 25-minute assessment test that identifies whether or not someone is likely to quit. Adorno says that this is most helpful with entry-level employees who may not have any prior customer service experience.
DeGarmo Group identifies the major tasks that the job involves, for example, working under time pressure, handling routine tasks and problem solving, and then measures candidates’ tolerance for working in these conditions.
“With just a 3% to 4% reduction in turnover, a call center will break even with their investment in CSFI,” he says.
DeGarmo’s reports give you a risk-factor rating for each candidate that tells you how likely they are to turnover. Depending on your needs, you can get even more detailed reports that detail why candidates were identified as high risk and in which areas they were red-flagged.
Adorno does believe that skills testing and work tolerance assessments can complement each other well. And he cautions not to neglect spending money on your hiring processes.
“Often times, companies think it’s better to spend more money on training than in selection but if you don’t get the right people in the door then all your training money is wasted,” he says.
LIMRA’s CultureFit is based on a similar premise and quantifies applicants’ degree of “fit” to identify which candidates are likely to be turnover risks.
The software is based on 54 electronic cards, each describing an aspect of work culture such as customer orientation, detail orientation, achievement orientation, professionalism, and pace. This enables you to create an Office Profile of your work culture. The software ranks the 54 cards in a forced distribution from “not very characteristic” to “highly characteristic.”
Agent applicants sort the same 54 cards, but rank the cards by how important the attribute on the card is to them. CultureFit then compares the candidate’s profile with the Office Profile by generating scores that reflect how closely the candidate fits the work culture.
Minimum Qualifications
When designing your assessment program, at the very least you should establish some sort of pre-screening process to help you screen out people who don’t meet the minimum qualifications for working in your center, such as availability for certain shifts or possession of a high school diploma.
To expedite this process, you can outsource to a third-party company, such as PeopleScout (Chicago, IL), which handles the pre-screening of agent applicants for Cingular Wireless. FurstPerson also offers a service where members of the company’s staff conduct behavioral-based phone interviews to introduce candidates to your company and review their bio-data and work history.
There are also tools to help you automate pre-screening such as Trend Integration’s (Cherry Hill, NJ) Interview Direct. The Web-based software lets you automatically schedule, conduct, play back and grade automated phone interviews.
Interview Direct sends candidates e-mail messages with the toll-free numbers they can call to answer your pre-screening questions. The software lets you quickly compare and rank candidates’ responses to narrow down your applicant pool.
LIMRA’s ExSel Qualifier helps you get through the chore of looking through piles and piles of resumes. The software links to your Web site or any Internet job boards where you advertise job openings.
According to Sean O’Donnell, LIMRA’s marketing director, the software takes the candidate through a series of questions that have “key knockout factors.” For example, whether candidates have previous customer service experience, are willing to work a certain shift or take a drug test. The questions are customizable for your center. Candidates with the closest match float to the top of the list. You can also link ExSel Qualifier with LIMRA’s other screening tools so that candidates who do well on ExSel Qualifier can move on to take additional assessment tests.
Job previews, such as FurstPerson’s CC Preview, are another useful tool that give candidates who don’t have prior experience working in customer service, a realistic understanding of what it’s really like to work in a call center. Candidates will even de-select themselves from the process if they find that they wouldn’t like working in a call center environment.
“Candidates who come into the center with the wrong expectations can add 5% to 10% to attrition,” says Furst.
A Valid Point
In the end, no matter what type of assessment tool you choose, the most important thing you can do is to verify that the test actually predicts performance on the job.
“Ultimately, what you’re really buying is the prediction and the research behind the tool,” says LIMRA’s O’Donnell. “You should understand the validation approach your vendor takes and request that they explain in detail how the tool was developed and validated. The more thorough the validation, the better the tool.”
But you also have to do your part too. It’s sometimes easy to lower your standards when you’re having a hard time filling seats.
“It’s a constant battle of quality verses quantity,” says Furst. “Sometimes companies establish a bar for their candidates and when they can’t find enough candidates in their area to fill their training classes, they drop their qualifications bar. But what does this ultimately do to performance? You have to find that balance that meets the needs of your business.”
Leverage What You Learn
Assessment tools certainly can’t cure all of your turnover ailments. Aside from making the wrong hiring decisions, there are other reasons why good agents decide to leave their jobs including bad supervisors, low salaries, poor working conditions, and lack of training and growth opportunities.
That is why some call centers are learning how to leverage valuable assessment information after the candidates are hired.
For example, based on agents’ assessments, Employment Technologies’ Career Prescription provides an objective performance plan for each individual that outlines areas where the candidate can use further development or coaching and links actual on-the-job activities to take.
According to Qwiz’s Ballard, more call centers are evolving their development and succession plans by conducting exit interviews and learning from their selection process.
“Many companies are moving beyond turnover and taking it to the next level by using the information to predict site expansion and even to understand the labor pool in new markets.”
Jeff Furst believes that the competency profiles companies build during the selection process can be the foundation for many other processes in your center, including scheduling, call monitoring and training.
“A few of our clients are even interested in competency-based routing,” says Furst. “This is similar to skills-based routing but instead you’re using agents’ abilities and behaviors to route the right calls to the most appropriate agent.”
Qwiz’s Ballard emphasizes the importance of consistency: “With a thorough selection process that consists of tests, analysis of job requirements, detailed score reports and established passing criteria, you begin to build a sound, repeatable process that you can deploy across your entire organization.”
Small Center Assessments
If your company has a smaller call center that doesn’t have the need to hire hundreds of agents per year, you can still find a fully-featured selection tool.
Banks and Dean (Milwaukee, WI, and Toronto, ON, Canada), a professional services and consulting firm, offers Integrated Recruiting and Selection System for small to mid-size companies that typically hire between 30 and 150 agents per year.
The Web-based software is customizable to mimic the look and feel of your company’s Web site. When candidates visit your site to apply for available positions, they take an on-line psychometric test that includes multiple-choice questions to evaluate their experience, background and skills.
Once candidates pass this initial screening, the software provides them with a more comprehensive test that determines the type of positions candidates are best suited to, such as inbound customer service, inbound upselling and cross-selling, outbound sales or customer support.
You can view candidates’ results in real time and can schedule automated phone calls with them to assess their verbal skills. In the automated phone screening, you can have candidates respond to further inquiries to better judge their qualifications and you can also capture their answers to open-ended questions.
Taking advantage of Banks & Dean’s extensive experience with assessments, Integrated Recruiting and Selection System also provides you with guidelines and best practices for conducting face-to-face interviews. By capturing agents’ entire histories form their scores on initial assessments to their performance in training, this tool shows you how to identify traits and skills that are common to the most successful agents.
Assessment Add-Ons
It's only logical that assessments should fall under the quality assurance umbrella, which is why many vendors that specialize in call monitoring software have introduced modules for assessing potential agents.
For example, etalk's (Irving, Texas) Job Applicant Screening Simulator (JASS), which lets you put applicants through a realistic preview of what it's like to work in your call center. JASS simulates different call types, such as problem calls, question calls and request calls.
Based on the values you specify, JASS produces a single pass/score for each applicant so you can quickly narrow down a qualified pool of candidates. etalk offers a customized solution by examining up to 100 of your current agents to identify characteristics that make agents in your center successful. Some of these key characteristics include learning, empathy, total call time, accuracy, listening and logic.
Dictaphone (Stratford, CT) recently released its ContactPoint Recruiter as an optional module to its Freedom call monitoring system.
ContactPoint Recruiter lets you create an on-line job application form that prospective candidates complete. This forms helps you identify candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the positions they're applying for. You define all the stages of your hiring process that follow and the software tracks applicants' progress through them. With each stage, you indicate the information you seek to elicit from agents, whether through questions during live interviews or through questions within written tests.
Dictaphone also offers professional services to assist you with creating competency models for positions in your center.
