Do Contact Center Owners Need Online Assessments for Call Centers?

HR professionals readily agree that it is difficult to recruit good contact center representatives. Good agents must have a variety of skills. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are necessities, and they must also be superior multitaskers, and need to be good at managing their time effectively. They need to understand their company’s products and services and be able to discuss them with customers. Most of all, they must be pleasant and agreeable and be able to keep their cool with difficult (and sometimes rude) callers.

A recent HubSpot study shows that 61% of consumers will change brands if they have even one negative experience. So, contact centers implement industry-leading assessment solutions like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM and use assessment tests for call centers to identify top applicants for customer service positions.

Why Use Online Assessment Tests for Call Centers

Contact center owners can no longer rely on traditional candidate screening techniques. Reviewing resumes and scheduling interviews are no longer effective hiring tactics because over 77% of applicants exaggerate their qualifications and experience on their resumes.

This means a dream candidate with a perfect resume, who sounds ideal during an interview, could be your worst nightmare and cost your company thousands of dollars. According to the US Department of Labor, a bad hire costs 30% of an employee’s first-year earnings. The problem is more widespread than people realize—turnover costs US companies $1 trillion annually.

Online assessment tests for call centers minimize the risk of hiring mistakes because they reveal which applicants are best qualified. The HR team can then focus on top applicants and eliminate those who are unqualified. Using assessment tests for call centers also minimizes the chance that subjective bias will influence recruiting, which helps your business avoid legal complications.

How to Use Assessment Tests for Call Centers

eSkill provides many online assessment tests for call centers, which recruiters can use to measure candidates’ communication and listening abilities, empathy, adaptability, and problem-solving abilities. Questions are normally multiple-choice, simple select, select all that apply, true/false, and open answer.

HR professionals can use pre-prepared assessment tests for call centers or build customized online assessment tests for call centers and modify them to meet their needs. For example, if customer service representatives are responsible for inputting and checking orders, recruiters can use questions from the eSkill Call Center Operator and Customer Service skills tests and add questions from the Form-Fill Data Entry Typing and Attention to Detail skills tests.

If the job focuses on answering customers’ inquiries and solving problems, HR teams can build assessment tests for call center agents with questions that measure communication, listening abilities, and empathy and include questions from the Problem-Solving and Emotional Intelligence skills tests.

Which Online Assessment Tests for Call Center Should You Use?

eSkill clients have access to an extensive library that contains hundreds of validated job- and subject-related skills tests. Some specifically pertain to call center operations and customer service, and others can be used to evaluate related abilities. These are examples of assessment tests for call centers that recruiters use.

• Call Center Operator Skills Test: Evaluates candidates’ ability to answer customer inquiries, resolve problems and complaints, and explain the value of products and services.
• Customer Service Skills Test: Assesses critical customer service skills such as listening, written and verbal communication, empathy, problem-solving, and dealing with difficult callers.
• Basic Computer Skills: Measures computer proficiency and verifies candidates have good knowledge of MS Office® applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Emotional Intelligence: Evaluates candidates’ empathy and social intelligence skills, whether they interact well with customers, and their ability to use their emotions constructively.
• Email Etiquette: Verifies that applicants can create email messages using correct grammar and spelling and confirms that they understand email etiquette best practices.

HR teams know the best way to ensure applicants can do a job is to observe them in job-related situations. So, they include simulations such as the following in online assessment tests for call centers.

• Inbound and Outbound Call Center Simulations: Indicates whether applicants can handle customer calls and inquiries promptly and efficiently without getting irritated or rattled.
• Multitasking Simulation: Shows you whether candidates can manage multiple tasks simultaneously and complete them all promptly, accurately, and efficiently.
• Chat Simulation: Confirms that applicants can receive and respond to customers’ chat inquiries promptly and politely.
• MS Office Simulations: Presents applicants with typical, on-the-job situations that require them to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Some attributes, such as verbal communication and foreign language skills, are difficult to measure using written assessment tests for call centers. So, HR professionals include video response questions and request candidates to record and upload responses. This enables them to evaluate and rate the answers, along with other hiring team members.

Get Started with Assessment Tests for Call Centers

Online assessment tests for call centers help contact centers avoid costly hiring mistakes by allowing HR teams to identify top candidates who will be successful in a job role and assimilate well into your company culture. Hiring better-qualified candidates helps you improve service quality and delivery, which results in better customer retention and higher productivity. It also helps you reduce employee turnover and build a cohesive team.

Do you want to see how assessment tests for call centers can help you hire top contact center candidates? Contact us to request a demo.