When the unemployment rate is high, posting a new job listing for a customer service representative could result in a deluge of resumes and applications. This means you could need to screen hundreds of applicants to find the ones who are well-qualified and weed out the ones who do not have the required skills and experience. Customer service pre-employment tests help you create a shortlist of candidates so you can quickly advance the best candidates to the next stage of your interview process.
Why Use Customer Service Pre-Employment Tests?
Using assessments for customer service jobs is a good way to identify top candidates and help you decide who not to interview, but they also help you in other ways. Here are some of the advantages of using customer service pre-employment tests.
By using customer service pre-employment tests, you can shorten the length of time it takes to hire a new employee. Assessments for customer service jobs tell you which applicants have the skills and the personality traits that make them a good fit for the position and enable you to focus on interviewing top candidates. This saves time and effort both for you and for the candidates who are not as good a fit. Beyond that, a more efficient hiring process increases candidate engagement and makes it less likely that good candidates will disappear.
Not everyone who applies will be suited for the customer service position you are trying to fill, but it is hard to sort through all the resumes and find the ones that appear to be a good fit. You also minimize the chance that discrimination or unconscious bias will occur. Interviewers naturally add bias to the selection process, which means you could miss good candidates. Customer service pre-employment tests help eliminate the possibility of this happening because they are completely objective. They do not consider a candidate’s academic background or previous work experience. They do not evaluate gender, race, religion, or any other personal characteristic that might be used unfairly against an applicant. This objectivity ensures a compliant hiring process and helps you avoid any potential lawsuits.
Many assessments for customer service jobs require applicants to complete simulations that provide insight into what it would be like to work for your company, and what the job might be like on a day-to-day basis. This gives candidates the opportunity to opt out of the interview process rather than accept an offer of employment and quit soon thereafter.
Employee turnover is always a problem, especially when it comes to customer service positions. It increases recruiting costs and can damage your company culture. By hiring people who are well-suited to the position you are trying to fill and a good fit for your company culture, you can decrease your rate of employee turnover as well as your time- and cost-to-hire.
Customer Service Pre-Employment Test Options
Customer service agents need to have a good mix of hard and soft skills. Hard skills are directly related to an applicant’s ability to do a job, such as knowledge of specific computer applications and the ability to communicate clearly. Testing hard skills is very straightforward because you are testing what a candidate knows. These are examples of customer service pre-employment tests that assess hard skills.
Communication skills are extremely important in customer service, no matter what the industry or market sector. The ability to understand and communicate complex ideas accurately and articulately is a priority for customer service agents.
Communication skills go beyond the spoken word. A good customer service representative must be able to write clear, concise notes and enter information quickly and accurately. If notes about an interaction are not entered correctly, the next representative the customer speaks to may have trouble helping the person due to a lack of information and history.
If incorrect prices and discount amounts are entered on orders or shipping costs are calculated incorrectly, you lose money, and relationships with customers can suffer. This is why customer service representatives need good, basic math skills.
Soft skills are qualities that are desirable in a customer service agent, such as good listening and problem-solving skills. They are harder to measure because they assess personality traits. These are examples of assessments for customer service jobs that assess soft skills.
Every customer service interaction will be different from the last one. The ability to be flexible and “roll with the punches” comes with the job description. Flexibility is a strong indicator of how successful a potential customer service representative might be.
No person is an island, especially in customer service. In a customer service role, you need to work well with team members. Not everyone works well with others, and many people prefer to work alone. It is better to find that out through pre-employment testing rather than after the person is hired.
Customer service jobs are notorious for being stressful. If someone is not very comfortable in stressful situations, they probably will not be happy or work effectively in this type of work environment.
Customer service pre-employment tests can help you find better agents faster and easier, and who are more likely to stay with your company. Request a demo today.