Did you know that 93% of customers will go out of their way to do business with companies that deliver superior customer service? When you provide an excellent service experience, your customers often become loyal to your brand. In fact, 58% of customers say they would be willing to pay more for excellent service.
According to a Zendesk survey, 61% of your customers will take their business elsewhere if they have a bad service experience. A study conducted by Microsoft shows service is the deciding factor for 90% of customers when they consider doing business with your organization.
Your organization’s success depends on your ability to earn repeat business because almost 65% of a company’s business normally comes from repeat customers. Even a 5% customer retention increase can boost profits by 25% to 95%.
Due to the significance of customer service for organizations, many companies implement a skills testing solution like the industry-leading eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM to identify and hire top customer service talent.
What is a Customer Service Assessment Test?
Customer service agent assessments can be used to identify top applicants for service-related jobs by showing which applicants have the required skills, as well as eliminating the need to spend hours manually reviewing resumes.
Once applicants complete their customer service agent assessments, HR teams can review cumulative scores and section-specific data, giving them the information they need to create a shortlist of candidates.
Customer service agent assessments also help organizations reduce the risk of costly hiring errors that can kill productivity and harm staff morale. The cost of a bad hire starts at $17,000 and only goes up from there, including recruiting expenses, staff disruption, loss of customer goodwill, and potential litigation.
Customer service agent assessments minimize the risk of hiring mistakes because HR professionals make decisions based on hard data instead of gut feel. They help companies maintain compliance with fair hiring practices and standards, which minimizes the chance that subjective bias could influence hiring decisions.
How to Create Customer Service Agent Assessments
Customer service agent assessments are written and validated by subject matter experts (SMEs) and reviewed by one or more other SMEs. The review process is critical because it ensures that assessments provide relevant and accurate information about candidates’ abilities and that they comply with federal and industry fair hiring laws and standards.
Each customer service agent assessment includes questions in multiple formats, such as multiple-choice, true/false, simple select, and select all that apply. The topics covered vary depending on your job requirements. The following are sample use cases.
Once candidates have completed their customer service agent assessments, members of your hiring team can review the results. Candidates who score high enough—according to your standards—move to the next step of the hiring process, and the others receive a message thanking them for applying.
Examples of Customer Service Agent Assessments
The eSkill Assessment Library contains hundreds of validated job- and subject-based skills tests. The ones you will want to use depend on the job you are trying to fill.
The Customer Service Skills Test is used to screen applicants’ adaptability, communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and collaboration skills.
The Chat Simulation and Emotional Intelligence Skills Test are popular choices because knowing how to use common Chat applications and work with people effectively is important in every industry.
Due to the ubiquitous use of computers, skills tests that measure computer proficiency are popular with hiring teams. The MS Word®, MS Excel®, and Data Entry Operator skills tests are examples of customer service agent assessments you can use to measure these skills.
You can build your own assessments by adding and deleting questions from off-the-shelf tests and choosing questions from multiple tests. Let’s say you are hiring customer service representatives for a medical organization, and they need strong computer skills and good math skills. In this case, you could build an assessment using questions from the Customer Service, MS Word, MS Excel, and Basic Math skills tests and add questions from the Medical Terminology Skills Test.
Get Started with Customer Service Agent Assessments
Implementing an assessment solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM will improve the quality of the candidates you hire, ultimately leading to better customer satisfaction and a lower churn rate.
Do you want to see examples of customer service agent assessments you can use to build a service “dream team?” Contact us to request a demo.