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Selecting the right employees is as important to the call center industry as casting the right performers in a theatrical production!
A good cast can make or break even a challenging script and the same applies to building a call center.
In spite of this fact, it is surprising how often the staffing of call centers lack any systematic method for accomplishing this very important function.
As consultants, we witnessed how often employees were selected for strange reasons. Nepotism can abound and employee referrals or friends who were given a bye in the selection process, were hired because of someone they knew.
Frequently, existing screening methods were pushed aside when staffing needs were critically short and warm bodies became the only real requirement to fill call center seats as quickly as possible. In many cases, it seemed even the interviewee seized the day taking control of the hiring process and selecting the employer rather then the other way around. Hence the question Whos Picking Who?
In the absence of any formal selection process, interviews turn into friendly conversations that can lead wherever the most assertive person wants to take it.
Weve all seen this play out on stage where the wrong actors are in search of the right play or in the field of sports where individual athletes are miscast and consequently, team performance suffers.
In the call center world the wrong people rarely perform well as a team even if the work that they are doing is part of a winning project.
The following case study illustrates some of the lessons we learned from our consulting experience and how we used our experience to shape a selection process that evolved at our call center company over a 10 year period.
Evolution of the Call Center Industry Recruitment Process:
Separating the best from the rest
At our call center company in the 80s, telemarketing campaigns were usually conducted with less than a half dozen trained representatives. Consequently the recruitment needs were very manageable.
Recruitment consisted of local advertising insertions and interviews were handled by staff that wore many hats including supervising and training.
As the company grew in response to growing market demands our recruitment and selection methods evolved to meet those needs.
Even from the start our selection process consisted of a phone interview scored by the interviewer and including some brief exercises to gauge the sales ability of the candidate. Often these exercises would be as simple as asking the candidate to describe a movie they saw recently in a way that would persuade someone to see it.
The interview would be graded and only those candidates that scored above an acceptable number would be invited to come in for a personal interview.
During the in person interview, candidates would be assessed as follows:
1. Attendance (believe it or not many candidates would not even show up for the first interview some of which would call back surprised to find that we eliminated them for standing us up)
2. Impression many people would like wise find it difficult to be on time for the interview or to wear appropriate attire
3. Job Fit Upon learning that the job required continually talking to people over the phone candidates would opt out of or be opted out by their impression of the job
These industry accepted basics were always applied to our process along with a few other similar screening methods, however, as the company grew we added a few of our own unique wrinkles for selecting the best.
Among the most important of these was employee testing systems to gauge various qualities and characteristics. Among these were integrity testing from companies like REID in which testing was used to assess the honesty and integrity of candidates. These were usually pen/paper instruments that took less than 10 minutes and could also be scored by computer quickly.
The key answers we sought from the test are suggested by the old TV game show called Who Do You Trust?
The test was relatively quick, inexpensive, and proved to be relatively successful at predicting the behavior of the candidate.
We also employed more elaborate testing processes for staff/management positions like those from CALIPER where the test time ran up to several hours and costs several hundred dollars per candidate.
Since the number of applicants for those positions were smaller, we felt justified in taking the additional time and money to get it right.
The results of the Caliper process were even more impressive especially as it related to predicting negative behavior i.e. If the test concluded that the candidate was not a good fit for the job usually we found a high correlation to below standard performance of the candidate.
In addition we also employed a Myers Briggs personality profile to determine suitability for different project requirements and we began to see strong correlations in matching the workers profile with appropriate projects.
Finally, after the test results were back we made sure that references validated the strengths of the candidate as well as put to rest any concerns that arose around their weaknesses.
All of these initiatives enabled us to screen out candidates and select in the better characteristics of the general population. More importantly, the extra precaution we took for the staff/management selection enabled the company to build a very competent group of supervisory staff/management with relatively low turnover that stood apart from our competition.
Summary
Whatever stage of development you are going through in your call center operation it is critical to take steps to make sure it is YOU doing the casting of your performers, and not the other way around. Its imperative to make certain that your selection processes are consistently applied in order to build the best team with out discrimination.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when you embark on casting your team of performers:
1. Develop and use an interview guide with scripted questions to test each applicant
2. Measure each applicants interview and keep a record or database of these scores
3. Create a profile of what qualities and characteristics you want for the job you are seeking to fill
4. Implement employee testing to gauge these characteristics for each candidate
5. Validate your interview observations and test results with thorough reference checking
If you create and consistently employ a process with measurable steps such as those outlined, youll be amazed at the results! As your call center grows, your entire team will perform in harmony like a well cast production.
Ray Hansell has been involved in the Teleservices and Direct Marketing Industry for over 25 years. He was the CEO of RMH Teleservices, an international call center operation that he co-founded with his partner MarySue Lucci in the mid 1980s and took public in 1996. During this same period, he also performed consulting services for dozens of Fortune 500 companies regarding their in house call center operations.
Currently, he is the cofounder of MaraStar Communications, http://www.marastar.com, a direct marketing software company founded in 2000. MaraStar produces animated training and communications products that are used in training and motivating employees particularly in the call center industry.
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Tags: counterscript, B2B, phone, callcenter, marketing, telemarketer, advertising
