When it comes to filling your open call center positions, there are many factors that you need to consider. Experience and training are both important, of course, but to ensure that you are hiring the best possible candidates, you need to assess each applicant’s skill level in areas most relevant to the job. While resumes were once the main way companies could gauge these skills, they presented some problems. According to Indeed, around 40% of job seekers are believed to have lied on their resumes, and nearly three-quarters of all employers have caught an applicant in a lie.
Even if the applicant tells the truth about their training, you still need to verify that they have the skills they claim, especially if they have been working in a different industry.
eSkill’s Talent Assessment Platform allows you to easily assess each applicant’s JobFit, or suitability to the role, by looking at their skills and knowledge base using eSkill’s call center skills tests. While there are several different skills each call center employee should have, perhaps the two most important skills for your employees are computer skills and listening skills.
Why Computer Skills Testing is Important for Call Center Jobs?
While it seems like computer skills are desired for almost all positions these days, it is surprisingly easy to overlook their role for call center employees. Much of the work these employees do uses soft skills like empathy and communication, but call center agents must also have strong computer skills to navigate the many software applications they may be asked to use daily.
According to VentureBeat, approximately 46% of all customer service interactions are automated — and that number is expected to climb to 59% in the coming years. With the increasing use of artificial intelligence to assist in customer service, call center employees will be dealing with more technology than ever.
That is why adding computer skills testing to your hiring process is important even in jobs that may focus more on soft skills. With eSkill, you can choose from a vast library of more than 800 pre-made tests to find the one best suited to your needs. Or, you can create your own skills test by hand-picking questions focused on the skills most important to your specific job opening.
How to Add a Listening Skills Test for Call Center Agents to your Hiring Plan?
While computer skills are important, call center skills tests tend to focus on soft skills. The experts at eSkill have been refining their approach to soft skills testing for years, finding ways to quantify soft skills, so you can easily compare candidates by looking at their results side by side.
Perhaps the most important skill for call center agents is listening, which is why you should add a call center listening skills test to your hiring process.
Creating a listening skills test for call center agents is a breeze with eSkill’s customizable testing platform. You can begin with the Customer Service test — which has a significant listening skills component — and add or remove questions to better target your specific needs. Or, you can choose individual questions from several different tests, Including Business Communication, while also adding company-specific material.
Another useful function of the eSkill Author platform is designing video response questions. You can create call center listening skills tests that require applicants to record their answers via video. Responses can then be scored using parameters that you determine so that you can focus on specific skills.
Video response questions are a great way to learn more about a candidate’s personality, including communication skills. Your team can grade candidates responses asynchronously, allowing each person to work on their schedule without having to be in the same room at the same time to talk with a candidate in person.
The benefits of Skills Testing with eSkill
With eSkill, you can quickly pinpoint which candidates will most likely succeed in your call center. Rather than sort through hundreds of resumes, you can use eSkill’s intuitive dashboard to sort candidates based on their test scores. Even better, you can look within each test result to find more details about how the candidate performed.
Another benefit of skills testing is that you are much less likely to fall victim to unconscious bias. Because you can compare each candidate’s test results objectively without being biased by other factors, you limit the chances that external factors might play a role in your hiring decision.
