Have you considered adding basic customer service skills tests to your hiring process but are unsure if it is the right move? If you want to screen candidates faster and more efficiently, hire smarter, reduce employee turnover, and improve service delivery, you should require all candidates to complete a customer service skills assessment test.
Customer Service Quality Impacts Client Retention
Keeping current clients loyal to your brand is far more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Additionally, customers who have a positive experience with your business are more likely to recommend it to a friend or talk about your services on social media.
Conversely, bad customer service experiences can ruin client retention rates. According to Zendesk, approximately half of customers will switch brands after a single bad customer service experience. This figure climbs to 80% following a subsequent negative customer service experience.
Product-related issues are unavoidable, no matter how careful you are regarding quality assurance. However, if your company develops a reputation for being responsive to customer concerns and quickly correcting problems, you can increase customer retention.
Bad Hires Are a Major Source of Organizational Disruption
Many organizations underestimate how disruptive hiring “mistakes” can be to business operations. Choosing the wrong candidate for an entry-level position can cost thousands of dollars. The costs associated with a bad hire for a managerial position are much higher and can exceed $120,000 depending on salary, recruiting expenses, and other factors.
Talent Partners, an executive recruiting firm, created a rough breakdown of the hiring costs for a sales manager earning $100,000 a year. According to their calculations, hiring the wrong person for this role and then employing them for one year before terminating them would cost approximately $560,000.
You may be wondering how a bad hire could be so detrimental to an organization. To answer that question, you must look beyond salary and examine various other factors. Bad managerial hires are particularly costly because these individuals can negatively impact the performance of an entire team.
If you hire a manager with poor emotional intelligence who lacks customer service skills, their negativity could cause customers to leave and could also impact employee morale.
Requiring customer service skills assessment tests during your hiring process helps you avoid these problems by providing hard data about candidates’ skills and abilities. By using assessments such as Management Skills, Emotional Intelligence, and Change Management, you can quickly weed out candidates who lack essential leadership skills and reduce your risk of making a bad hire.
Your selection process for non-managerial customer service-related positions could include skills tests such as Multitasking and Chat Simulations, Customer Service, and Attention to Detail.
Traditional Hiring Practices Are Inefficient
Given the current talent shortage, you must hire as efficiently as possible. If your company has an inefficient screening process, and it takes you weeks to reply to candidates, you could miss opportunities to hire top talent. This means you might be forced to settle for second-tier applicants or leave vacancies unfilled.
You can significantly reduce time-to-hire by requiring applicants to complete customer service skills assessment tests. Your HR team will be able to reduce screening time to days or weeks instead of months and determine which candidates to interview based on proven, measurable data.
A fast, efficient hiring process also makes your company a more appealing destination for job seekers. Applicants are not willing to endure a long, drawn-out screening process since there are no guarantees they will be offered the position. The best candidates will probably receive other offers and will no longer be available when you contact them. Skills tests eliminate this problem and encourage more job seekers to apply.
Customer Service Skills Assessment Tests Work
Customer service skills tests are a proven and effective method of screening and evaluating candidates and provide your hiring team with the quantifiable data they need to make informed decisions. They are simple to implement, can be administered remotely, and eliminate the need for candidates to visit your business for screening interviews.
Are you ready to explore the benefits of adding customer service skills assessment tests to your hiring process? Contact us to request a demo.