Almost 65% of a typical company’s revenue is from repeat business, and a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25% to 95%. Additionally, customers are81% more likely to make subsequent purchases from your company if they had a good experience during their first interaction with your company.
As businesses know, building customer loyalty and improving retention starts with a top-notch customer service team, which is why many of them use a testing solution like the industry-leading eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM and its customer service representative assessments.
How Customer Service Representative Assessments Help Companies
Customer service representatives are the face of your company and brand and are essential to building a loyal customer base. These are a few ways customer service associate assessments help you hire top candidates.
Expedite Initial Applicant Screening: Instead of wasting hours manually reviewing resumes, HR teams can rank candidates by customer service associate assessment scores and instantly identify the ones who are best qualified.
Customize Assessments: Businesses can tailor customer service representative assessments to match their job roles. They can choose pre-prepared customer service associate assessments from the eSkill Assessment Library and add and delete questions or create customized skills tests by selecting questions from multiple assessments.
Minimize Risk of Hiring Errors: Hiring mistakes kill productivity, harm staff morale, and are expensive. The cost of a bad hire starts at $17,000 but can be more, including recruiting expenses, staff disruption, loss of customer goodwill, and potential litigation.
Reduce Unconscious Bias: Customer service associate assessments minimize the impact of unconscious bias in hiring because hiring decisions are based on hard data instead of gut feel.
What Skills Do Customer Service Representative Assessments Measure?
Top customer service representatives have varied skills, and service-related jobs differ by organization. However, customer service agents typically need the following skills.
Empathy: Applicants need to understand why people feel the way they do. If a customer has a problem, displaying empathy shows that the service agent sees why the customer is upset and that the company cares and wants to help.
Problem-Solving: Candidates with good problem-solving skills are good at rectifying issues in a difficult situation. They can identify the problem, understand the underlying cause, find a solution, and take action toward a resolution.
Communication Skills: Candidates who are good communicators convey messages effectively, both verbally and in writing, which is important because unclear communication can cause misunderstandings and confusion, leading to incorrect orders and lost business.
Active Listening: Applicants who are good listeners can concentrate and focus on what a customer is saying. Active listening is an important attribute for customer service representatives because it is easier to help clients if you take the time to listen to them and understand where they need help.
Patience: Customer service representatives have to be patient because they are often forced to deal with angry customers. Patient people are good at working through complex situations without expressing frustration, anger, or other negative emotions. They remain calm and collected and show customers they want to help, even if the caller is angry.
Positive Attitude: Employees who act positively make customers feel positive, too. They look at situations favorably and optimistically, which is an important attribute because it shows professionalism and increases customer satisfaction. A positive attitude gives customers a good impression of your business, translating into better customer retention and more referrals.
Emotional Intelligence: A great customer service representative can relate to all types of people but is especially good at managing frustrated people. They intuitively understand the other person’s point of view and know how to empathize with them instead of taking things personally.
Resourcefulness: A good customer service representative is an excellent problem solver. A great one takes the initiative by infusing warmth and personality into a typical customer service exchange and inspires customers to tell their friends. It is not something you can teach. Candidates either have this ability naturally, or they do not.
Technical Knowledge: Customer service representatives may get messages from people who are considering purchasing one of their company’s products. Therefore, the representative should be able to talk knowledgeably about their company’s products and services and explain their benefits.
Adaptability: Customer service representatives need to be able to think on their feet because they often get thrown curve balls. Clients may make requests that are not covered in your corporate policy or during training. So, they need to be prepared to handle unusual requests.
Get Started with Customer Service Representative Assessments
Customer service representative assessments provide hiring teams with measurable data about candidates’ skills, abilities, and aptitudes. This enables them to recruit candidates who can help them improve service levels and improve customer retention.
Do you want to see how customer service associate assessmentscan help you build a strong customer service team? Contact us to request a demo.
