Recruiting in today's economy poses unique challenges and opportunities. Contact centers are receiving more resumes and applicants than ever. But that doesn't necessarily equal more qualified candidates; it typically means the recruiting team now has more work than ever to filter though piles of applications to find those few applicants who are a good fit. Streamline the hiring process and keep your recruiting team spending their time where it matters most - recruiting.
- Don't get stuck with the leftovers.
Good recruiting is not enough - if you put even the best recruitment at the beginning of an inefficient hiring process, it becomes inconsequential. The majority of contact center employees live paycheck-to-paycheck and will take a job today over an opportunity tomorrow. Fifty-two percent of contact centers have an application-to-hire timeframe of two weeks or less. The remaining 48 percent that take over two weeks to hire run the risk of being left with the least-qualified candidates. Refine your hiring process to reduce your application-to-hire timeframe. - Let your candidates self-filter.
Be upfront with your candidates about work schedules, dress code, call volumes, difficult customers and sales quotas. Let candidates that are not comfortable with your requirements opt out before you invest valuable time and resources. This is a critical component of reducing 90-day attrition. - Don't become a broken record.
Most hiring processes require recruiters to invest enormous amounts of time and resources "filtering" through piles of applications and performing screening interviews. Recruiters quickly become "broken records," repeating key information (such as shifts, dress code, job requirements, tuition benefits, etc.) to every candidate. Deploying a technology that informs your candidates, communicates job requirements and gives them the option to self-opt, filters uncommitted applicants and adds accountability to your hiring process. - Assess the candidate.
Agents who do not have the skills or personality traits to succeed in your call center will leave (on their terms or yours). Avoid these attrition risks by performing contact-center-specific skill and personality assessments on every agent before an offer is made. - Assess before you invest.
Investing time and resources into a candidate before you even know if they have the skills or personality to perform the job makes little sense. Move assessment to the beginning of the hiring process to improve recruiting efficiency, enabling your recruiters to focus their time and efforts on quality candidates. Choose a technology that does not charge per assessment, to remove the cost barrier of assessing all candidates. - Don't settle.
Recruiters still need to find the right-fit employees (the proverbial needle in the haystack) or attrition will skyrocket when the economy turns around. With the direct cost of attrition at $6000-$8000 average per agent, not to mention the impact on customer service, you want to ensure you don't leave yourself vulnerable.
By Roy Jackson, director of product management at inContact. Roy has over 10 years of contact center experience, with a specific focus on workforce optimization technologies, and counsels companies on the best way to incorporate technology into the hiring process. More information about the inContact Hiring solution can be found at www.inContact.com
April 16, 1:00 Eastern: Optimizing Collections Performance with Interaction Analytics. Presented by NICE Systems. Strong collections performance is even more critical and more challenging to accomplish than ever before. The technology of interaction analytics enables companies to develop a detailed understanding of collections performance, at both the individual and group levels. It also provides quantitative insights into the underlying drivers in order to make decisions that positively impact results. Join experts from NICE as they present a case study of a large bank that leveraged the power of interaction analytics.
April 21, 1:00 Eastern: Proven Cost Reduction Strategies: How To Maximize the Value of Your WFM Investment. Presented by InVision. In this session John Frehse, chief strategist at Core Practice, will lead a short discussion about foundational labor issues including the importance of properly defining a schedule and a look at pay policies. Next, strategic scheduling initiatives will be shared including how to manage variability.
April 23, 1:00 Eastern: Mid Market Contact Center Blueprint: Minimize Contact Center Headaches and Achieve Business Success. Presented by Avaya. Leading industry analyst, Ian Jacobs from Datamonitor will provide valuable insight into key developments in communications technology which can help contact center managers address the unique pain points of the mid sized business, specifically focusing on the need for flexibility and ease of management while coping with limited financial and personnel resources.
April 28, 1:00 Eastern: Customer Conversations: Effective and Practical Customer Self-Service Strategies in a Tough Economy. Presented by Voxify. Bill Meisel, well known industry analyst, moderates a thought-provoking conversation with leaders in customer service to find out how customer self-service strategies have changed in this difficult environment. Customers will discuss their strategies and how they plan to survive the recession and come out ahead of competitors.
Sallie Mae to Add 2,000 Jobs to U.S. in 18 Months
Sallie Mae said that it will bring 2,000 jobs to the U.S. within the next 18 months as it shifts call center and other operations from overseas.
TeleServices Direct Reverses Call on Layoffs
"We've been doing some belt-tightening and going throughout the company to become more efficient. We've been trying to cut expenses and not have to close and lay people off. We don't have any plans to close now. We think we can proceed. It's not a stay of execution."
Toshiba Expresses Confidence in Choice of Lebanon as Location for Call Center
"What impressed us most was that they kept a call center running even when a war was going on," said Santosh Varghese, in praise of what he referred to as proof of the adaptability and passionate professionalism of the Lebanese. According to the extensive studies it carried out in the region, Lebanon outshone them all in terms of both cost and quality, even in comparison to Dubai.
Call Centers Calling for Qualified Workers
The hiring shows that, in some cases, companies aren't cutting back on customer service, said iQor spokesman Chris Dorval. "I think particularly during tough economic times, people are concerned about caring for their customers," Dorval said. "That's the first line in retaining a customer base and the revenue they have."
Verizon's Irvine Office in Need of 100 Agents
Verizon Wireless put out the word that the company is looking to fill 100 customer service jobs at its Irvine call center, with starting wages beginning at $14.90 per hour and extra pay for bilingual workers.
Bandwidth a Key Component of VoIP Services
Raymond Shaw, president of the Association of TeleServices International, said companies need to be cognizant of bandwidth availability. If there isn't a dedicated connection between a business and its VoIP provider, he said transmission delays can occur, causing bad reception or jumbled communication.
CRM: The Essential Guide - Five Principles for CRM Success
When CRM deployments do not meet expectations, it is often due to a lack of clear business strategy or executive sponsorship, poor technology fit, inadequate planning, or a combination of these factors. This guide provides insight to help you take a more customer-centric view of your business and avoid common pitfalls related to CRM implementation.
Who Are My Best Customers?
If you manage sales, marketing, or customer service, you want to know who your best customers are. This whitepaper describes just a few of the ways that you can use analytics to better understand your customers. Ultimately, you will build stronger relationships with the customers you value most and decrease the costs of serving less valuable customer segments.
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."-- The Last Lecture
Contact Professional magazine provides useful management tools and resources to the contact center professional. Written for executives, managers and directors of contact centers, the editorial focuses on real world solutions to issues faced on a daily basis. From hiring and training to technology implementation, each article emphasizes ROI and increased efficiency within the contact center.
CP Wire, the electronic counterpart to Contact Professional, is delivered biweekly and focuses on daily obstacles facing the contact center professional, offering firsthand opinion and expertise in a brief, entertaining format along with the latest news affecting contact centers around the world.
Some links in CP Wire are time-sensitive. These links may move or expire as the news changes throughout the day. Sponsorships or product announcements appearing in CP Wire are paid advertisements and do not reflect actual CP Wire or Contact Professional endorsements. The news and advice reported in CP Wire or Contact Professional magazine does not necessarily reflect the official position of CP Wire or Contact Professional magazine. The information contained herein has been obtained from services believed to be reliable.
Click here to continue receiving this e-newsletter, or to receive a complimentary subscription to Contact Professional magazine.
Click here for information regarding your privacy.
Click here to unsubscribe from CP Wire.
We're always looking to improve CP Wire, the Contact Professional website and Contact Professional magazine. The best way we can do that is to get feedback from you, our readers. Click here to let us know how we're doing and how we can help make your job easier. We look forward to hearing from you.