Contact Centers: Eight Ways to Improve Your CSR Recruitment and Hiring Processes, Part 2

Providing the best possible customer service means hiring the right customer service reps (CSRs). Continued from last week’s issue of Idea Factory, here are four more tips on developing a better hiring process for CSRs, offered by The Ascent Group, a Kite, Ga.-based management consulting firm specializing in customer service operations and improvement, in its white paper “Improving Front-line Recruitment .”

5. Recruit for the position and the schedule. If your contact center uses a combination of part-time, temporary and full-time employees, recruit for each type of labor separately, as a different pool of candidates may be interested in each schedule, write the white paper’s authors. For example, retirees, stay-at-home parents and college students may prefer a part-time schedule.

6. Maximize Internet resources to increase the number of qualified candidates. While you already may use your corporate Web site to post job openings, use it to accept online applications and impart your company’s culture and expectations to candidates, The Ascent Group notes. If you use Internet job-posting boards, be prepared to handle the increase in applications, and develop a screening process to reduce the number of unqualified candidates -- before they submit applications.

7. Solicit employee referrals. “By tapping into [employee referrals] as a source for open positions, organizations achieve greater loyalty, lower turnover, and improved productivity and profits,” note the authors. Employees also are more likely to refer qualified candidates if they’re rewarded for successful referrals.

8. Streamline the hiring process with an applicant tracking system. As you begin to collect online or electronic applications and resumes, an automated screening process can help you identify potential candidates. While you’ll still need to evaluate and interview candidates to find the right people for your contact center, an applicant tracking system can help you manage resumes and applications, as well as create a paperless process via your Web site.

For more, visit http://www.ascentgroup.com.