The decision to hire the right frontline employees is often an easy one - name a company that wants to hire the wrong people? The challenge comes when it’s time to decide on who these people are and how you’re going to attract them.
While this type of decision has always been difficult, today’s environment makes it even harder. VoC is a hot topic and there’s no shortage of brands that want to improve and/or maintain their reputation – and require the employees to help them do this.
While every company’s needs and styles are different, use the following three abilities as a framework to guide your selection process and find the right frontline employees for the job.
1) Their ability to understand your business
If this guide was limited to one piece of advice, this would be it - If a potential employee can show an understanding of what you do and, more importantly, what you stand for as a business, then they’re more likely to be a good cultural fit.
Areas to consider on this include:
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Do they ask good questions during the interview process?
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Do they reflect your core brand values and culture?
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In the process of answering their questions, are you learning more about them as a person?
When they’re done asking their questions, a great technique is to switch up the roles and see how they’d perform when speaking to a customer. Tell them to pretend you’re a customer who has a complaint (make it specific to your organisation) and have them walk through the approach they would take to resolve your problem.
If you feel comfortable with the approach they take, there’s a good chance they’ll be a strong fit for your organisation.
2) Their ability to understand how they can impact your customers
Your goal shouldn’t be to fill seats in your Contact Centre. Instead, it should be to build a team that means your VoC programme thrives.
A vital part of this is an effective alignment between the programme and how your potential employee sees their role. The truth is that if your potential employee doesn’t see the impact that they can have on a customer, then there is no chance you’ll have alignment.
While you may not be hiring them to change the whole organisation’s approach to customer service on day one, an effective new employee is going to need to understand how their actions can really make a difference to your customers.
3) Their ability to deal with the unexpected
Nobody plans to fail. But, at the same time, plans rarely go completely to plan. Even with support from call scripts, process documentation and guidance from colleagues, helping customers will often throw frontline employees into new situations.
Whether answering a call or starting a web chat conversation, there’s no way of knowing for certain what will happen. Even with notes from previous conversations and a detailed log history, there aren’t any guarantees. And, while a strong strategy will mitigate the law of unexpected consequences, there’s no avoiding them.
Remember, as well, the unexpected doesn’t have to be negative. It’s just as likely for the positive to surprise. So having frontline employees with the ability to remain cool and collected, regardless of what is thrown at them, will help you ensure you have the team you need behind you.
Hiring is a major decision with big consequences. Look for these three abilities to help you find the right frontline employees that will make a real difference to your customers.
Once you've gone through the hiring process you need to make sure your frontline employees stay engaged, that's why we created the 'Six Top Tips For Employee Engagement In The Contact Centre' where we highlight the most common complaints made by Contact Centre Agents and tips to help you stay on top of your game!
