Having good customer service representatives in your call centers is certainly a business necessity. You want your customers to feel they are being heard, helped, and respected. Unfortunately, your company is probably leaking the talent you need from your call centers. Employee retention is a big buzzword when it comes to customer service representatives because so many of the best and brightest will leave your organization for greener pastures.
You can’t afford constant employee turnover when it comes to the best people manning your call centers. These customer service representatives are the point-of-contact between you and your valued customers. If you want to turn consumers into lifelong fans, a quality customer service representative can do more than even a great Facebook page to get people to “like” your company.
So how do you find these great customer service representatives, and how do you keep them in you company? The video interview might be just the solution you’ve been looking for. Before we dive into how to use the video interview to screen great candidates and increase employee retention, let’s look at some of the challenges facing your customer service department:
Call Centers, Customer Service Representatives, and Hiring: What Are the Challenges?
Filling your customer service jobs is certainly not easy. Like finding quality employees in any field, hiring candidates with the right stuff isn’t simple. As hard as it is to find great employees with top-notch customer service skills, it’s even harder to retain this talent. Employee turnover can be massively expensive, which is why retaining these workers should be a top priority for those in the customer service industry.
Good customer service representatives can turn a one-time customer into a lifelong fan, while bad customer service representatives can ensure your company loses out on repeat business. This is why you need to find job seekers with the right customer service skills, and “the video interview can help you isolate and connect with these candidates faster. More importantly, this platform can help you connect with candidates who will be more likely to stay in your organization.
Before we talk about the use of the video interview for employee retention and finding candidates with the right customer service skills, let’s take a look at some numbers about why the process needs to be changed:
- The average employee turnover in call centers is about 40 to 50 percent, according to a survey by FurstPerson.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects customer service jobs will grow by as much as 15.5 percent between 2010 and 2020.
- It’s not just call centers that need good customer service reps; 83 percent of online customers said they needed customer service during their online journey.
- Why do you need reps with great customer service skills? Probably because 82 percent of customers are looking to have their problems resolved quickly and 71 percent expect troubleshooting to take only five minutes.
- If your employee turnover is high, get ready to open your wallet. The average cost of attrition is between $5,466 and $7,994 per person. Ouch!
How Can Video Interviews Help?
So how can you use the video interview to reduce employee turnover and still find the great candidates you need in your open call center jobs?
Look for great customer service skills:
One of the great things about video interviews is the technology’s ability to help employers evaluate candidates on a more personal level earlier than in the traditional hiring process. Instead of going through stacks of papers resumes and hours of phone screens, video interviewing is making it simpler for employers and talented candidates to connect.
For instance, in a video resume, you can quickly and effectively tell if a candidate’s superior communication skills are real or just an empty promise. Using one-way virtual interviews, you can see how a candidate answers written questions on video without wasting time connecting with the wrong candidates. All of this can help you focus on candidates with great customer service skills so you don’t waste time on unqualified hires.
Corporate culture fit and your candidate:
To avoid employee turnover, it’s necessary to find candidates who will fit into your organization’s existing corporate culture. Those who fit into your organizational environment are much more likely to stick around for the long haul, meaning you’ll be vastly improving your employee retention.
In order to ensure your customer service jobs are being filled with candidates who fit into the corporate culture, ask questions in the video interview focused on fit. Find out what a candidate’s ideal workplace would look like and how they cope under pressure.
Using video interviewing to focus on employee retention means your company is more likely to keep the talent you need in your organization. Better customer service representatives means happier customers, and that means a more robust bottom line for your company.