Do you feel the HRs' hiring block too? It's time to embrace the advanced customer service skill tests! A tiringly-long hiring process is a cue enough to change the usual method of hiring. And how you engage with your existing and future employees. 

Today's consumer market demands progressive customer service. It has become important to hire candidates who are fit for the role as technology advances. In this situation, it is better to put effort into SMART WORK, rather than giving into regular, hard work.

This article aims to provide you with clarity on how to improve customer service levels. How to utilize digital resources and adopt smart hiring… Embracing the ever-changing world around you will enable you to stay up-to-date.

Let's Suppose…

There are two companies, presumably A and B.

Company A employs competent customer service executives using visual-based psychometric assessments. It facilitates the assessment of specific role-based characteristics and aptitudes for the job. Company B, however, sticks adamantly to lengthy and time-taking traditional hiring techniques. They strictly believe in the one-to-one interview process.

As a result, after hiring the candidates, Company B was least aware of the strengths and weaknesses of its employees. And hence, they administered ‘not so effective' training sessions. These barely showed any effect on their skill set or altered their mind frame.

On the other hand, company A received a detailed report from the evaluative customer service assessment. They could successfully arrange relevant training courses and toolkits. These effectively nurtured the new hires to perform better in the company.

For Company A, one wise hiring decision led to the development of a good CSE team. In contrast, Company B's customer support team performed poorly.

The new team of CSE  hired in ‘Company A' helped them decrease the call handling time. And also contributed in increasing C-SAT Scores through efficient engagement. While the job performance of Company B went down in contrast.

Who does not want to keep their customers happy? Therefore, Company A in this scenario has the most desirable and ideal organizational setting for a progressive HR manager. It's evident that company A has a better customer and producer relationship than company B. 

But where can you access these modern hiring tools?

In case you were wondering, PMaps is the right destination for you. A diligent group of organizational psychologists develop the pre-employment assessment at PMaps. Using these online assessments makes customer service hiring easy, accurate, detailed, and time-saving.

PMaps Solutions: CSA And eVA Pre-Employment Test

These excellent visual-based recruiting tools assess the right skills in a combination that can benefit you! It evaluates the job-specific aptitude and voice accent proficiency of your candidate with ease. You can find the best candidate by using customer service cognitive ability tests and voice and accent tests. 

The CSA evaluates 5 important traits of the aspiring customer service agents such as empathy, presence of mind, emotional control, conscientiousness, and achievement orientation. And eVA assesses the speech delivery and fluency of your applicants with specific grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, and pronunciation. Let's dive deeper into their functions and importance.

CSA-Customer Service Skill Tests Your Fittest Candidate

Empathy-

A little warmth and empathy can make the customers comfortable expressing their struggles. A study in 2020 shows a positive correlation between employee empathy and customer satisfaction. It plays a vital role in the approach while dealing with customer complaints.

Hiring an empathetic candidate will help you improve your customers' experiences.  The customer-centric behavior will also increase customers' engagement, leading to better bonding. 

According to a study in 2021, customer bonding plays an important role in retaining trusted customers. Therefore, good customer service skill tests measure the applicants' ability to handle customers' moods.

Presence Of Mind-

The focus on providing quick, easy, and unique solutions determines the efficiency of a CSE team. Fast-paced customer service often delivers the message of a prompt CSE team. The enthusiasm to face clients makes the role of CSE more genuine and effective. In fact, 76% of customers expect to engage immediately with a CSE as soon as they reach out.

Fast response from a customer care agent imprints an impression of well-organized professional space. 89% of customers tend to associate further when they are attended immediately on their initial inquiry. Therefore, fast thinking and decision-making are significant factors in the PMaps customer service skill tests.

Emotional Control-

The ability to manage and regulate oneself individually and socially helps the agents ‘stand out' while facing clients. Adjusting well with the customers' moods and intentions is a must-have trait for all CSE aspirants.

However, it is not easy to deal with one's personal emotions and operate unaffectedly in a professional setting. It takes courage to say, “I can understand how disturbing it can be. Let me resolve it for you.”

And “We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We will work to fix the issue as soon as possible.” when the other side is extremely angry,  beyond usual tolerable levels. High emotional control will help the agents recover from these encounters easily.

Achievement Orientation-

An enthusiastic agent can enhance the standards of customer service in the organization. If each member of the CSE team contributes, it improves overall performance, approach and dealing with your clients. An ideal customer service team must be achievement-oriented. They must be internally motivated, driven towards higher goals, futuristic and visionary.

Setting goals and coping with global customer support standards are the primary concerns of support agents. It is not easy to identify ideal candidates through in-person job interviews. Therefore, smart psychometric assessments filter the best hiring options for you. The customer service skill tests eliminates biases through scientific analysis of their personality and potential.

Conscientiousness-

Conscientiousness helps customer support agents execute their dealings professionally and ethically. According to research conducted at Rice University, conscientious customer agents deliver better performances. The strategy of dealing with the customers in a detailed and pre-planned manner always brings  targeted results.

Through PMaps, you can compare your applicants and filter out your ideal ones with the help of our advanced customer service aptitude test. 

A good customer experience is key to successful customer retention and network expansion. Hire your dedicated customer service agents wisely.

Voice and Accent Assessment – Customer Service Skill Tests For Language Proficiency!

Grammar-

It is very important to get your candidates checked for language proficiency. Especially grammar, as this foundation of communication is  based on the accurate forming of sentences. You definitely do not wish to have a customer care agent who picks up the call and says,

“Hello, Sir. How you are? How I can help?”

Not only will it be difficult for your customers, but it will also create a bad brand impression. In customer service, being polite only works well when you can deliver structured statements.

Vocabulary-

Are your customer service agents aware of local terms and terminologies?

This helps the agents develop bonds with their clients. This can become a major problem when you are hiring Gen-Z candidates. Why? Because today's generation is more inclined toward the use of short forms and abbreviations.

However, customers are either Millennials or even older. To keep the conversation going, both sides need to be aware of this tendency. It's not the customers' responsibility to do this.

‘Sorry' and ‘Thank You' are only a couple of examples.

Again, there are particular phrases mostly used by customer service agents to handle angry customers. The agents must also be fluent in business languages in order to be able to provide the best customer support.

Comprehension-

What matters the most for a team of customer service agents?

It is to understand the customers of the company. Customer service personnel need to have an in-depth understanding of the products. Also about the organization's mottos and ethics in order to be able to interpret and solve customers' problems. An agent cannot deliver satisfactory targets with all awareness if they fail to understand the speech used by the client.

The candidates must have the Triple-A-Listening Skills to be able to perfectly comprehend:

• Attitude

• Attention

• Adjustment

These skills ensure effective communication with clients. Engaging in client-agent conversations becomes hard in the case of telephonic and virtual support. The availability of wide exposure and modern reach can be a bonus. But, only if CSE hires are open to advancement and comfortable with the digital interface. 

Fluency-

“We are…mm…we will…try to…umm…solve your…problem” (Imagine that your customer service agents say this).

Chances are, your customers are not patient enough to deal with abrupt pauses and lengthy discussions. A valuable long conversation on the concerned topic can give your agents a bonus point for helpfulness. But, a conversation that is uselessly dragging on may cost you the loss of a valued client.

Most customers expect instant solutions to their problems. Therefore, 67% of customer loss is avoidable only through solving concerns promptly, reports Ameyo Stats.

This is because slow-witted customer agents often engender frustration in their clients. The combination of humor, general intelligence, and politeness will help you establish a strong bond with your customers.

Pronunciation-

Lastly, what impacts a conversation with a customer is pronunciation. Depending on the birth region of an individual and the surrounding, there can be differences in pronouncing a syllable. This happens because certain muscles are not actively performing due to a lack of habit.

Another issue can be confusion between two similar-sounding syllables. The pronunciation of a good customer service agent must be clear and understandable. Customers' pronunciations, however, are not controllable nor predictable.

So, why not use common sense in the latter case?

Final Words

PMaps CSA and eVA hiring tools help you secure all the ideal skills for customer service so that you can take a sigh of relief and relax. The PMaps reports will help you organize the required training and resources. Also, you can shortlist the frontline candidates that will lead the team of new hires. 

A detailed, upfront evaluation of candidates protects you from certain customer service gaffes. After all, everything comes down to the quality of the workforce employed by your company. Hire your candidates wisely through the pre-hiring test and reach your customers wholeheartedly!

Tell us about your problems on a short 30 minutes call and let us introduce our  best customer service skill tests to you. Visit our client-friendly website to learn more about our diversified HR Tech services.

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