Call Centers

Employer’s Complete Guide to Call Center Assessment Tests

Many call center owners underestimate the role that service delivery plays in meeting their goals. If you’re one of them, you are making a big mistake because your service quality impacts your bottom line.

A Microsoft study showed that service is the deciding factor for 90% of customers when they decide whether to do business with your company. According to Zendesk, 61% of your customers will switch brands if they have a bad service experience. Many customers say they will go out of their way to do business with companies that offer excellent customer service, and 58% will pay more for superior service.

Why Customer Service is Important

Your customer service team is the face of your company and brand. When customers and prospects contact your business, the first person they interact with is most likely a customer service representative. For many people, it is the ONLY person they deal with.

Retaining existing customers costs about one-fifth as much as acquiring new customers, and 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits potentially by 25% because you invest less revenue and expend fewer resources on customer acquisition.

Your business will flourish if you retain good customers, but high attrition rates will stifle growth and hurt your bottom line. You will always be playing catch-up because your success rate while attempting to sell a product or service to an existing customer is around 60% to 70%. In contrast, there is only a 5% and 20% chance, respectively, that you will close a deal and convert a prospect into a new customer. 

The Current State of Customer Service

Although companies have increased their investment in customer service, it is still not meeting customers’ expectations. Studies show over 50% of consumers have not noticed improved customer service, and 23% say it has gotten worse.

The problem is largely because recruiting good customer service representatives is challenging. Call center agents wear many hats. They must be good multitaskers, have good time management, have excellent verbal and written communication skills, and be able to learn and understand the products and services their company sells. They must also be friendly and understanding and manage difficult (sometimes rude) callers tactfully and skillfully without losing their cool.

Another problem is HR professionals can no longer rely on traditional applicant screening techniques such as resumes and interviews to identify top candidates. Unfortunately, the information is often inaccurate because over 77% of applicants lie or exaggerate about their qualifications and experience.

This means a candidate with a seemingly perfect resume, who gets rave reviews during interviews, could fail miserably because they do not have the skills and experience for the job or are a bad fit for your company culture.

Since service quality is so important to customers, call centers worldwide use an industry-leading assessment solution like our eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM to create call center assessment tests that identify top candidates. Online assessment tests for call centers increase the chances of this happening because they show which candidates are best qualified and allow hiring managers to eliminate those who lack the required skills and experience.

What is a Call Center Assessment Test?

HR professionals often ask us, “What is a call center online assessment?” and how they can benefit by using one. We tell them that call center assessment tests help hiring teams identify and hire top call center agents by showing them which applicants have the required skills for a job. They can screen hundreds and even thousands of candidates and instantly see which applicants are qualified for a job and which ones should be eliminated from consideration.

Call centers also use assessment tests for call center agents to minimize hiring mistakes. Hiring errors are a manager’s worst nightmare because they are expensive, harm staff morale, and negatively impact productivity. Studies show the cost of a bad hire can range from $17,000 to $240,000 when you factor in recruiting expenses, incomplete projects, staff disruption, loss of customer goodwill, and the possibility of litigation. 

Using customer service call center assessment tests minimizes the chance of hiring mistakes occurring because hiring teams make decisions based on hard data instead of gut feel. They also help organizations ensure compliance with fair hiring practices and standards by minimizing the chance that unconscious bias could influence hiring decisions.

Once applicants complete and submit tests, HR teams can sort them by score and review cumulative scores and section-specific data. The results give them the information they need to create a shortlist of candidates who are capable of delivering the quality of service their customers deserve. 

What do Employers Look for in Assessment Tests?

The eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM provides call centers with access to an assessment library that contains hundreds of validated job- and subject-related skills tests. Some specifically pertain to call centers and customer service, and others evaluate abilities essential for call center agents. These are some assessment tests for call centers that you can use.

• Customer Service Skills Test: Includes questions that cover a variety of critical customer service skills, such as listening, empathy, problem-solving, and dealing with difficult callers.
• Basic Computer Skills: Tests computer proficiency to ensure candidates have solid MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint knowledge.
• Emotional Intelligence: Good for evaluating candidates’ empathy and social intelligence skills, whether they can interact well with customers, and their ability to use their emotions productively.
• Email Etiquette: Tests applicants’ ability to format and write email messages using correct grammar and spelling and shows you whether they understand basic email etiquette.

Call center HR professionals know that the best way to verify applicants can do a job is to ask them to complete tasks they would perform if hired. So, many include simulations in call center assessment tests, such as:

• Inbound and Outbound Call Center Simulations: Shows whether applicants can answer and handle customer calls and inquiries promptly and efficiently without getting angry or flustered.
• Multitasking Simulation: Confirms that candidates can handle multiple tasks simultaneously without compromising accuracy and efficiency.
• Chat Simulation: Shows whether applicants know how to receive and respond to customers’ chat inquiries promptly and politely.
• MS Office Simulations: Presents candidates with job-related tasks that require them to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

If a job requires extensive phone interaction with customers, foreign language abilities, or other skills that cannot be assessed effectively using a written online call center assessment test, HR professionals use video response questions. Video response questions prompt applicants to record and upload their responses so hiring teams can evaluate and rate their answers.

What are Seven Important Call Center Skills Every Agent Should Have?

Call center agents represent your company brand to customers and prospects and are often the only people they communicate with. So, they need to act as sales reps, consultants, customer success managers, technical support reps, and customer service agents—often all on the same call. These are seven skills you should look for when hiring call center agents.

• Understand Your Company’s Products and Services: Call center agents bridge the gap between customers and your company. So, they need a basic understanding of your products and services and fundamental knowledge of the organization to solve customers’ problems effectively. 
• Excellent Verbal and Written Communication Skills: Call center agents must be professional and personable. They should speak clearly and be able to use vocabulary that any customer can understand. They must be good listeners, able to size up situations quickly, and consider all possible solutions. 
• Resolute Patience: Call center agents must always maintain their composure regardless of how unhappy the customer is. It is their responsibility to help customers solve problems without taking any part of the conversation personally. 
• Unconditional Empathy: Empathy—the ability to identify with and understand others, is an essential quality for top call center agents. When call center agents listen and make the client feel understood, they can prevent a heated situation from escalating. 
• Problem-Solving: Call center agents encounter a wide range of issues, and they should be able to resolve them quickly. They should know how to use various tools and technologies to address and be willing to go the extra mile to solve problems and identify the best solution in a given situation.
• Time Management: Call center agents must solve problems quickly to meet customer demand, sustain key performance indicators (KPI), and minimize waiting time for other customers.
• Leverage New Technology: Call center agents communicate with customers by phone but increasingly use email, chat, texting, and online meeting platforms. So, they must have good basic computer skills and be adept at using technology.

Other Skills Call Center Agents Should Possess

Each call center has unique needs, and the skills required for a job depend on the tasks the employee will perform and the organization’s goals and objectives. However, these are some other attributes call center agents should possess.

• Active Listening: Call center agents with good active listening skills can fully concentrate and focus on what someone is saying. This is an important attribute because the better an employee can listen to customers, the easier it is to help them.
• Positive Attitude: Employees with a positive attitude can look at a situation favorably or with optimism. This is important in customer service because it shows professionalism and increases customer satisfaction. When employees are positive, customers also feel positive. It also gives customers a good impression of your business, which translates into better customer retention and more referrals.
• Resourcefulness: A good customer service representative solves problems. A great one takes the initiative and goes the extra mile by infusing a typical customer service exchange with memorable warmth and personality that makes customers tell their friends. It is not something you can teach. Applicants either have it naturally or do not.
• Adaptability: Customer service representatives often get thrown “curve balls.” Customers make requests that are not covered in your corporate policy and were not covered in training. So, they need to be able to think on their feet. 

What Types of Questions Are on Call Center Assessment Tests?

With the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM, you can choose off-the-shelf call center assessment tests or create a customized assessment by selecting questions from multiple assessments. You can even add your own questions. For example, if you need to hire a customer service representative with strong MS Word and Excel proficiency and good basic math skills, you can use questions from the online assessment test for call centers and add questions from MS Word®, MS Excel®, and Basic Math skills tests.

Whether you use pre-prepared call center assessment tests or build your own, remember that an effective online assessment test for call centers includes questions that pertain to the job requirements.

For instance, if the primary focus of a job is inputting and processing orders, you need a detail-oriented person with accurate typing skills. So, your call center assessment test should include questions from the Form-Fill Data Entry Typing and Attention to Detail assessments and relevant questions from the Customer Service skills test.

If the new hire will be responsible for managing customer inquiries and solving order and delivery problems, you need someone with good problem-solving skills, who is an excellent listener and can work with difficult customers. So, in this case, you should choose questions from the Customer Service Assessment, that assess listening, empathy, and problem-solving abilities, and include questions from the Emotional Intelligence skills test.

Get Started with Call Center Assessment Tests

Building a strong call center customer service team leads to better customer retention and higher profitability. Customer service quality improves when you hire better-qualified candidates. Online assessment tests for call centers help you identify top applicants who are likely to be successful in a customer service role at your company.

When you provide clients with exceptional service, they are likely to become repeat customers and loyal advocates for your brand, which helps you maximize retention and reduce customer churn. This is significant because acquiring a new customer can six to seven times more, making it better to retain existing ones.

Do you want to see how call center assessment tests help you build a customer service dream team for your call center? Contact us to request a demo.