The average call center attrition rate has hovered around 30% for the past several years now, and 2020 was about the same despite the market disruption. However, in light of evolving customer expectations and the increasing complexity of customer service representative roles, contact centers are reconsidering where they set the bar for acceptable turnover. Call centers are up against some enormous challenges post-pandemic:
According to the Harvard Business Review, contact centers saw a 50% increase in difficult calls in 2020. Customers needed more help getting things done as business models swiftly changed with the shutdowns.
40% of customers stopped doing business with a company in 2020 due to poor customer service. Customers are making it clear they won’t tolerate longer wait times or call center agents’ inability to resolve their issues right away.
90% of customers prefer omnichannel service. To stay ahead of the market, call centers need the technology to provide excellence in omnichannel service and call center agents who can digest larger amounts of customer information faster and think quickly to resolve customers’ complex issues.
To respond successfully to these emerging challenges, call centers need team members who are customer-focused, fast-thinking, technically proficient, and team members who will reliably come to work, day after day, and make the most of their training in creating simple, fast, and satisfying customer experiences. Call centers can hire the right team members and reduce attrition through better call center recruitment.
Ready-to-implement call center hiring plans
Call center recruiters can ensure they’re getting it right with Modern Hire’s Call Center Hiring Blueprints. The Blueprints are recommended workflows built around scientifically validated, job-specific assessment and interview content. The Call Center Hiring Blueprints provide an end-to-end hiring process and personal hiring experiences for candidates pursuing roles such as:
- Call Center Manager
- Call Center Collections
- Call Center Sales
- Call Center Service
- Call Center Sales and Service
- Call Center Financial
- Call Center Customer Service
Predicting on-the-job success with call center candidates
A crucial part of Hiring Blueprints is Modern Hire’s Virtual Job Tryout.™ These pre-hire assessments concentrate on job-specific competency measures identified as predictive of new hire success through decades of Modern Hire research. With these assessments, recruiters don’t have to guess which call center candidates can evaluate data from multiple sources of information to make sound service decisions. Through objective, valid measurement, candidates can multitask effectively, simultaneously entering caller information while monitoring a call queue. They also know which candidates are more likely to stay on the job. Virtual Job Tryouts enable recruiters to focus candidate selection on predictive data to hire candidates who will be productive and stable in call center roles.
Another strategy for reducing attrition is providing candidates with a realistic insight into call center roles. Virtual Job Tryouts create that insight through job simulation exercises and honest job previews. Candidates can better understand if they are the right fit for the job before accepting an offer.
This strategy offers recruiters an additional hiring advantage during the current workforce shortage, too. Even if a candidate has never worked in a call center before or hasn’t for quite some time, both the candidate and hiring team can better understand fit for today’s call center roles with the pre-hire assessments.
Seamless candidate experiences
Each Call Center Hiring Blueprint has a recommended workflow made up of three or more of the following stages that take place on Modern Hire’s virtual hiring platform:
- On-demand text or phone screen
- On-demand realistic job preview
- On-demand job specific Virtual Job Tryout assessment
- On-demand video interview
- Live phone interview
- Live face-to-face interview
For candidates, the experience is timely, virtual, and seamless. For instance, the recommended workflow for call center sales roles begins with an on-demand text interview, followed by a Virtual Job Tryout and an on-demand interview. From there, candidates are invited to schedule a live interview with an automated scheduling tool. This workflow enables recruiters to efficiently engage with any number of call center candidates and auto-advance qualified candidates to the next stage.
The hiring workflow starts with a Virtual Job Tryout for call center managers and incorporates a live phone interview before the final stages. Candidates can advance through a hiring process that offers multiple opportunities to showcase their competencies. The Modern Hire platform allows recruiters to give and ask for feedback from candidates efficiently as well. Each workflow is designed to help recruiters identify best-fit candidates with high precision and deliver a fair and engaging experience that leads to great hires. Recruiters and candidates can participate in every stage of the workflow remotely.
If you’d like to learn more about improving call center hiring and reducing turnover, read this success story of a call center that aimed to better evaluate candidate fit and predict new hire retention with Modern Hire.