Here at Call Center Magazine, we're on a year long quest to help you most efficiently and effectively find and develop the kind of agents you need. And, oftentimes, call centers turn to staffing agencies to aid them with the "finding" part.

But just as you would not think of casually hiring your workforce without screening, and you would never consider leaving your agents unsupervised, so you should put appropriate thought and diligence into the selection and ongoing relationship with a firm that is going to be selecting and helping to develop dozens or hundreds or thousands of agents on your behalf.

Staffing agencies often offer several different services for call centers, which generally fall into the following categories that we outline below:

Flexstaffing. The "bread and butter" service that most staffing firms offer is providing temporary employees. Staffing through a temp agency enables you to ramp up your operations rapidly to meet seasonal needs, handle short-term sales promotions, and deal with unexpected increases in call volume. You can also scale back without incurring the costs and the morale-depleting effects associated with laying off permanent employees.

Bringing agents into temp-to-perm positions is an excellent way for you to test the skills of prospective employees and since a temp agency handles the administrative work relating to a temp's employment, it frees your company to concentrate on what you do best. Temps also help you get around headcount constraints imposed by senior management and they often cost less per hour than do permanent employees, particularly when you consider the cost of employee benefits.

But, of course, flexstaffing has its pitfalls, too. One of the main being that temps are more likely to walk away from the job than are your permanent employees, which can both disrupt your operations and reduce your return on investment in agent training. Turnover is of special concern if your company needs to train agents extensively in unique procedures, so temps often fit best in the lower service tiers. But since they have fewer ties to your company, some temps may lack the incentive to maintain high customer service levels and if you're not careful, temps may feel resentment toward higher paid full time employees.

There are large economies of scale in hiring temps, so working with an outside agency is almost always going to be faster and less expensive than hiring temps internally. If you're working with the right agency — and we'll advise you how to do that below — the agency knows the local employment market, understands the staffing needs of call centers, has call center-specific evaluation and training programs, and has access to a pool of pre-selected employees.

Recruiting, screening and training full-time agents. Staffing agencies bring the same expertise to the hiring of full-time employees as they do to hiring temps, and call centers seem to be catching on. Tracy Buelow, marketing and product manager for contact center services at Manpower (Milwaukee, WI), reports that her firm has seen an increase in the number of requests for direct hire placement in the last few years. Even organizations that prefer to hire in-house will often turn to an agency for assistance staffing a new call center.

Insourcing. Many agencies can staff and run your call center's operations. This lets you rely on the staffing agency's expertise in hiring and managing staffing levels while retaining more control than you'd have if you outsourced your call centers. It also lets you use your investment in office space and call center technology even if you have decided to remove yourself from day-to-day management.

Consulting and Training. Staffing agencies are increasingly using their expertise and knowledge of personnel practices across many firms to assist their clients in developing screening, retention, skill development, performance evaluation, and compensation programs for call centers. Many staffing services are now opening up their call center agent training programs for use to train their clients' full-time employees for a fee as well as temps on the staffing agencies' payrolls.

Select the Right Agency

Before you engage a staffing agency, be sure that the persons servicing your account are knowledgeable about call center staffing needs and local labor market conditions. Stay away from agencies that don't have call center staffing experience. Experience in staffing call centers that are similar to yours by activity (collections, outbound, customer service), size, or industry is extremely useful; larger agencies may even have industry-specific screening and training procedures.

"You shouldn't assume that all staffing services have call center-specific screening and training tools," says Manpower's Buelow.

You have to evaluate the agency's hiring policies, screening tools, and training programs to ensure that they're right for your business. The tools used can vary widely; large agencies usually have firm-wide hiring practices and systematic skills assessment tools. For example, Teresa Setting, vice president of U.S. marketing for Kelly Services (Troy, MI), says that Kelly incorporates the results of research they have conducted with Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality into their selection and training processes. Smaller firms, on the other hand, will usually rely more on personal evaluations. Regardless of the exact methods it employees, a good agency will, at a minimum:

• Check each applicant's background and references.
• Evaluate both the skills (e.g., can they enter data while conducting a conversation) and the motivation of each applicant.
• Put potential hires through some sort of role-paying, either in a telephone interview or in a more formal computer-based assessment program, to weed out applicants who lack communication or customer service skills.
• Address your company's specific needs. For example, if your agents answer e-mail and engage in Web chat, the agency needs to check for basic writing ability. If the agency doesn't ask you a lot of questions upfront about what you value in an agent, don't be surprised if you are not satisfied with the agents they do find.

  For example, if your staffing is highly seasonal or expanding rapidly, Buelow recommends, "you should feel comfortable that a staffing service can handle the fluctuations, and will proactively recruit to meet your needs." Todd McLaren, vice president, call centre and billing at ATCO I-Tek (Alberta, CA), a Manpower client and provider of outsourced customer service to utilities, says that when his firm needed to add 250 agents over a six month period to meet expanding demand and seasonal needs, it was critical that Manpower "assigned the resources it took to get the agent classes filled."

• Ensure that new hires who have little call center experience understand and are comfortable with the demands of working in a call center. Many attractive candidates will have customer service experience, but not in a call center environment. Prospective agents need to be comfortable with the work rules (e.g., shift requirements, regimented break schedules) they will face and the way that their performance will be measured. Setting, who notes that Kelly's temps can take training at any time at the firm's on-line learning center, says that "a little bit of training goes a long way" toward turning inexperienced agents into good employees.

Buelow and Setting also advise that you be sure the agency follows through. Ask the agency what role it is willing to play in helping you to train, retain, and develop the agents they place at your facility, and be sure you are comfortable with the answers. If you bring in a large number of temps, your agency should have full time on-site representatives. If you're concerned about retention (and, aside from seasonal employers, who isn't?), ask what your agency does to reward temps for sticking with an employer.

You can't assume that every office provides the same level of service. Staffing agencies vary in size from single office operations to multinationals that have thousands of offices worldwide, and service quality can vary markedly from office to office. When you're looking to staff call centers in a new city, you need to evaluate not just the overall performance and reputation of the agency, but also the knowledge and capabilities of the local office. And if you're looking to use an agency with which you've got a relationship in a new city, you might want to get assurances from the agency that persons whom you trust will be involved.

"You don't want the staffing service that always says yes," says Buelow. Of course you want your agency to respond to your needs, but you want them to tell you the truth, too. If you have unrealistic expectations regarding the quality of agents available at the price you are willing to pay, your agency needs to tell you. If your agency has identified workplace issues that hindering performance, it would be nice to know that, too.

Once you enter the final stages of your selection process, keep in mind that services and prices are negotiable. If you are a large customer, you have leverage over the agency, and you need to use it wisely. For example, you may not want the service sending temp or permanent agents whom you have trained to your competitors, so you may need to negotiate an exclusivity arrangement. You can also negotiate a "bulk rate" on administration fees if you bring in enough temps.

While we don't think that the low cost provider is always the best provider — paying an extra 5% of salary in fees is nothing compared to the cost of hiring the wrong agent — the negotiability of fees is something you need to know about.

And finally, don't forget to check references and shop around. You should consider several agencies before selecting one — and they should all know that you are conducting your evaluation this way.

Develop a Working Relationship

Once you've contracted with a staffing agency, you need to manage the service to get the most out of the relationship (and you need to let them manage you a little, too).

One of the main things you need to do is communicate. According to Buelow, communication between call center managers and staffing service personnel is key to maintaining a good relationship. She recommends that someone from the staffing service attend periodic staff or HR meetings. This helps the agency anticipate your needs, and address those needs earlier. ATCO I-Tek, for example, has weekly meetings with Manpower's on-site managers, and a monthly group meeting, to review the relationship and anticipate and resolve issues.

You must also recognize that temps are part of the team, so treat them that way. Temps should be included in team meetings, morale building activities, and individual and group-level reward programs. By treating them as part of the team, it increases their motivation, decreases the likelihood that jealousy of full-time employees will degrade morale, and helps you to retain the highest performing temps.

This can be as simple as including temps in your birthday and anniversary recognitions, but it should be as broad in scope as are your team-building and incentive programs. For example, ATCO I-Tek's McLaren says all temps participate in their rewards programs, including their 2004 ATCO Idol program, which combined fun events (yes, they sang — though we're told that Simon Cowell was not able to attend as a judge) with performance-based incentives.

Temps also need coaching. According to Kelly Services' Setting, "the number one element of a manager that I'd look for" in a call center is the willingness to recognize strong performers. This applies to the management of temps as much as it does to relations with full-time employees. If you want to get the most from your temps, it is important to deal honestly with them, telling them what they're doing right and wrong and suggesting ways they can improve their performance.

Buelow suggests that the most important factor in retaining staff (temporary or permanent), and more important than salary, is recognition from senior management. It is amazing how valuable it is for someone at the vice president or director level to take a moment to thank someone for his or her efforts and to ask questions about the work environment — and it's equally amazing how few senior managers do this regularly. (Do you remember seeing Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf conducting daily morale-building sessions with the front-line troops during the first Gulf War? He wasn't out there because he didn't have other things to do — he did it because it was the most important thing that he could do to get the most from his soldiers.)

Finally, be sure to work with your agency to measure performance. You and your agency need to be on the same page regarding how you evaluate agent performance. This lets the staffing service know what's important to you, and helps them to reinforce agent behaviors that will help you to meet your objective.

Staffing agencies may also have suggestions that can help you improve your performance evaluation process. Setting says that your agency should be able to help you justify the impact of the call center's operations (and its budget) to a company's more senior managers.

By taking the time to work on and develop the relationship with your staffing service, you'll make more successful hires that will benefit your call center in the long run.