How to recruit a good customer service advisor?

Customer service is at the heart of every call centre. If you strip down all the technology and procedure, customer service is all that is left. It is a call centre’s main asset. But it can be quite hard to find, so how do you recruit a good customer service advisor?

Understand what you are looking for.

The first and most important step when recruiting a good customer service advisor is to know what you are looking for. You will find it hard to recruit the right person if you don’t know what part they will play in your team or what skill-set you need, so spend some time evaluating what is essential and what is desirable for the role.

Do they have the basic skills?

Once you know what you are looking for, you have to identify whether your potential candidates have the skills for the role.

For example, in an interview candidates can break down their CV so the interviewer can listen out for what the candidate chooses to highlight, or ignore (equally as insightful). Alternatively prepare a list of questions to assess each candidate’s different strengths.

A useful question to ask is: can you tell me about a time that you have given good customer service, as it shows the interviewer how a candidate approaches customer service, rather than just assessing their competency in handling queries.

How about a second interview?

So you have established that your candidates have the core competencies to be a customer service advisor, but how do you separate the best from a good bunch?

Second interviews are not just an opportunity for you to get to know candidates better, they are a great way to expose candidates to the work they will be doing, as they can spend time listening in on calls and meeting your team.

A second interview also gives you the opportunity to set candidates a skills based assessment. The assessment you use will depend on the role they are applying for, but evaluating how they handle calls is always a good place to start. Set them up with a head set and see how they deal with simple and difficult queries. This will provide you with invaluable insight.

Remember you’re looking for team members.

Recruiting for customer service staff can be tough. We are all looking for candidates who are customer focused and technically proficient. The trick is to balance balancing strengths and weaknesses so you create a team where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (individual agents).

When your team is complete you then have the challenge of retaining your staff, check out this white paper for tips on staff retention and motivation.

It is a hard nut to crack, but building a great team will provide you with a solid foundation to create a future proof customer service solution.

Orbital Response is immensely proud of our contact centre and the work they do. If you are interested in how we can help with your customer service, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.