Natalie Redman, Author at unremot.com

Top 7 Tips for Hiring the Best Customer Service Professional for your Company

Are you in the process of hiring customer service professionals for your company? Read through these 7 tips to get the best candidates.

The hiring process for any business big or small is an important one. It’s the difference between an employee who sticks around for a year, to someone long-term.

A lot of recruitment drives can be poorly managed. They can lack detail. As a result, they hire individuals who might not be best suited for the role.

With that being said, there are some useful tips that this article will share. It will help your company hire the best customer service professionals. Due to the pandemic, there are plenty of applicants to choose from. So as a business it’s important to be more diligent when hiring in 2021. Here are seven tips for hiring the best customer service professional for your company.

1. Create customer support scenarios to assess performance

For the second or third stage interviews, it may be wise to try performance-based scenarios. This can require you to set up different customer support situations. The employee will then be expected to act out how they’d handle it.

By conducting these scenarios and seeing how the candidate would react. It should give you an indication of how good they are for the role itself.

If a physical scenario isn’t possible, then a customer service test is useful. This can be great for seeing which candidates handled it correctly.

A person might look good on their resume alone. However, it’s still necessary to see their experience in action. Otherwise, they could turn out to be a bad fit. These are just two examples of how you can find potential in the candidate.

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2. Be clear on the job description and expectations you have

Be clear and concise with the job description and expectations you have as a company. This can often be where recruitment can fall at the first hurdle. They’ve not thought enough about what the business wants and needs from new hires. Be thorough in detailing what’s expected from them as customer service professionals.

Each vacancy can cost a company on average $500 dollars per day. It’s money wasted if you’re not spending the time creating the right job description.

When drafting up a job description consider this. Whoever is writing it should have knowledge on what duties are needed for the role. This is also the case for the experience that’s needed. The same goes for key skills that the applicant will require.

A top tip for job descriptions is to be very specific. Make sure any expectations are made clear before you hit publish on the job listing.

Also Read: Performance rating scale | A priceless list of tips to succeed

3. Identify and incorporate your company’s values for customer service

Every business will have a different set of company values and morals. This can be in relation to the organization as well as the workforce and customers.

It’s important to be mindful of selecting customer service professionals who align with your company’s values. There may be customer service professionals who have experience. However it’s with previous companies that don’t operate in the same way as yours.

Be sure to remind those during the hiring process that the core values matter. Your business values need to align with theirs. It’s not just about a potential hire being the right fit for you but vice versa.

Core values within a business or individual aren’t something that can always be adapted to. To avoid the risk of them not complying, ensure they agree with company values. If not, you may have to terminate the contract sooner than necessary.

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4. Hire those with a drive for customer service or track record

Depending on your customer service team, you could hire people with little to no experience. However, there are going to be some whereby you need experience. That, or a proven track record of providing customer support in some way.

70% of consumers make a choice to support a company that delivers great customer service. Your company may not be able to hire someone without proven experience in the field. The risk of losing customers may be too great. The customer service professionals are very influential part of a customer’s decision on the business. It’s the difference between staying with a business or leaving it for green pastures.

Be sure to take a look at the employee’s previous experience in customer service. It’s also necessary to make contact with their references when offering a job. It’s not always the case, but lying on a resume is more common than you’d think.

According to a study by Zippia, 30% of people exaggerate their resumes. Surprisingly, mostly never get caught. References are a useful thing to utilize when proving the employee’s capabilities in the role.

Also Read: Employment background check | A complete guide

5. Find methods to help test their personality

Experience and skills are a critical part of hiring a customer service professional. However, personality matters too. It’s essential to assess the fit of their personality to the company dynamic. They need to be the right match.

If your team tends to be social butterflies, an introverted person won’t be right. Every company is a little different when it comes to company culture. It’s useful to know what your own company culture is when hiring. That or the person hiring needs to be informed of what to look for.

A good way to find out someone’s personality is to conduct behavioural-style assessments. This can be a great way to check they’re a good fit for company culture. The Meyers-Brigg type of assessment can prove useful. You could also ask personal questions before the interview. This could be what hobbies they enjoy or to give a brief insight into their life so far.

Be sure to look at the results and take on board how questions are answered. It should give you a good indication of whether or not they’re the right match. Personality is an important factor when hiring customer service professionals. Don’t forget to incorporate it into the interview where appropriate.

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6. Prepare for the interviews and choose questions carefully

Good interview prep is going to be handy when it comes to the interviews themselves. Without that interview prep, you could end up hiring the wrong candidate.

To pick the best customer service professionals for your company, consider a good mix of questions to test the interviewee.

Simply asking them to explain what the company does is useful. It’ll tell you whether they bothered to do any research prior. This is a good indication of how much they care about the company. No research is likely a red flag to go no further with the candidate.

There’s a balance between too many interviews as there is with too many questions. It’s good to be wary of how long your interview lasts. Do a practice run with a fellow colleague to see how long it takes. Whilst you want to get all the relevant questions answered, too many and it’s exhausting.

Ensure the same questions are asked and an interview sheet is used for each interviewee. This will help your organization to refer back to your notes when reviewing candidates. With so many interviews happening, it can be easy to forget one or two.

Also Read: Remote interview guide | Everything you must know

7. Retrieve feedback from those you hire and don’t hire

Finally, one of the big mistakes that companies make when hiring is feedback. Companies often don’t get feedback from the candidates they hire. The same goes for the ones they don’t hire during the recruitment process.

Getting feedback on the hiring process, provides insight into what worked and what didn’t. Like any part of the business progression, the more you learn, the better. When it comes to recruitment drives, there’s room for improvement. Don’t let valuable feedback slip through your fingers.

It’s worthwhile putting together a feedback form that the candidates can fill out. For those who aren’t hired, it’s good to offer this. This can be in exchange for your feedback on the candidate. Helping out one another is good to do for recruitment especially.

Improved knowledge on how effective or ineffective your hiring is, will help for future recruitment. It may also positively impact the quality of hires you make for the company. All of which is going to directly influence the company’s success moving forward.

Also Read: Remote onboarding |HR’s guide to welcoming new employees

Put in effort when hiring a customer service professional

There’s certainly a temptation to do a ‘copy and paste’ style recruitment drive. However, each hiring process can be different depending on the job and what’s required. It’s vital to put in the effort, resources and finances to hire the right people.

Customer service professionals are integral to your business. So they should really be getting the star-quality treatment when it comes to recruitment drives. Be sure to have a detailed job listing. Know what questions to ask and how to assess the candidate’s potential. With these methods of hiring, you should see plenty of talented individuals coming your way.

Natalie Redman

Freelance writer for many clients including Skale, Natalie has two years of copywriting experience. Natalie has a wide range of experience copywriting for web pages for businesses across many industries. She’s also an owner of two blog websites and a Youtube content creator.

Employment Contracts | Why employment contracts are critical for remote workers in 2021?

Remote work

Employment contracts are supercritical for remote workers. This blog explains, why. Read on!

Employment Contracts

Within any organization, there may be a need for remote workers. Due to the recent pandemic of COVID-19, the percentage of people working remotely has increased to 34.4% in 2021.

It’s important that businesses are still playing by the book when it comes to employment contracts and the laws in place to protect themselves and the employees in question.

But why are employment contracts so critical for remote workers? In this article, we’ll be exploring what a typical employment contract looks like and why it’s useful to have them in place for your employees.

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What does an employment contract for remote workers look like?

Whether you have a lot of employees working remotely as a result of the pandemic, or it’s perhaps one or two, a new employment contract might be needed. That or you’ll want to update the existing one to cater to the new surroundings and structure to the working day. A typical employment contract for remote workers will have the following,

1. Employee location and working hours

This will mention where the employee will be based and the number of hours that are necessary to work. A requirement to take breaks should also be included in this section. Both employee and employer have the right to terminate this home working agreement should they deem it applicable at any point.

With remote working, it’s very easy for office hours to become blurred, so this is an important part of the contract to focus on in detail.

2. Reimbursements

There should be a mention of reimbursement of expenses when it comes to that of the employee’s utility costs. As employees will be working from home, they’ll need to rely on their own utility services. Typically, there will be a certain amount mentioned that the employee gets to reimburse their bills.

3. Equipment supply

The company has the responsibility to provide all the work equipment and tools needed for the employee to work successfully from their remote location. This also includes ensuring the equipment too.

Providing the right equipment for your staff is critical to them doing their job effectively and with fewer issues.

4. Health, safety, and confidentiality

The employee should be made aware of compliance when it comes to relevant health, safety, and security guidelines that are in place. Confidential information and data protection must be provided, particularly when remote working has more vulnerabilities to its security.

And finally, there should also be a mention of no other changes when it comes to the employment terms and conditions, for example, pay, holiday, and pension contributions.

Knowing exactly what’s needed in the new or updated contract can help protect the company’s interests and the employee’s too. There are plenty of employment agreement template options available online to utilize if you’re having trouble defining the contract’s layout.

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Why are employment contracts so important for remote workers?

With the content of the contracts themselves now understood, why is it so important to have updated or new employment contracts? Remote working is a different environment from the traditional workplace and therefore certain assurances need to be made.

By not having something in place that assists both the employer and employee, it’s likely to cause a lot of trouble should something go horribly wrong.

1. Protects both parties under a legally binding agreement

As both parties sign the employment contract, it’s protecting both under a legally binding agreement. Now if it were necessary to do so, either party as mentioned above, could choose to terminate this contract if homeworking was no longer needed.

Without this type of legally binding agreement in place, you’re risking a lot and an opportunity for either party to take advantage of the other.

This is why having a detailed contract is also important and care must be taken to include anything and everything that’s required to protect the rights of both the employee and employer. There’s also the opportunity to dispute anything that either party may have a problem with.

2. Avoids miscommunication by outlining everything clearly

It’s wishful thinking to expect that communication within a business is clear and concise, 100% of the time. In fact, 57% of employees report not being given clear directions in the workplace. Miscommunication leads to mistakes and things going wrong, which ends up having a direct impact on the business in some way or another.

Whether that’s through the quality of your customer experience or a loss in finances. It pays to be attentive to communication in business, not just for the business but for your remote workers too.

With that being said, an employment contract will help provide all the information clearly to the remote worker. There might be a remote working situation in place already and so sending over a contract is better than having a brief chat over the phone or going back and forth on emails.

A contract in general can provide little room for miscommunication because both parties should have read the terms carefully before signing. If they signed without reading it properly, then that accountability for not doing so lies with them.

3. Maintains confidentiality and data safety

Confidentiality is a big one because there have been occasions where data breaches have occurred. Whether it’s the company’s own data or that of their customers, it can often lead to a big fallout and a lack of trust in the company when customers are affected. According to Cobalt, there are over 2,200 attacks that happen every day in the US alone.

That’s nearly one cyber attack every 39 seconds. Employment contracts especially in the case of remote workers are essential to maintain confidentiality with everything they access. As the employer, it’s the responsibility of this party to ensure all equipment and security measures are secure and that the same level of security

4. Keeps your workforce happy and supported

According to SnackNation, an employee that’s happy within the workplace is likely to be 12% more productive as a result. Keeping your workforce happy and supported is a must and it’s one of the benefits that come from having this type of contract in place.

Employees want to feel properly supported, particularly when it comes to a new working environment that perhaps they’re not used to. In the US alone, the percentage of people working from home reached heights of 44%, according to Statista.

Although some employees have experience working remotely, others might be completely new to the situation. A legal contract that both the employer and employee have signed, can certainly provide some reassurance that everything is being done legitimately.

By keeping your workforce happy and supported, you’re going to keep staff turnover rates low. This is going to be something you want to be wary of during these uncertain times in particular. Losing staff is only going to mean more time, effort and financial burdens are incurred as a result.

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Helpful resources for creating employment contracts

If you need assistance and resources for creating employment contracts, then here are some helpful suggestions for you to look through.

1. Bonsai for contract templates

For contract templates, Bonsai is a great platform for all types of contract templates for employees. They have a range of different employee templates depending on the industry and type of job required.

Making sure that every detail is added into a contract is critical and platforms like Bonsai, it can help ease this pressure. Every industry is different, so it’s beneficial to use templates that have been made with the industry or job in mind.

2. Understand the law with CIPD

The legalities of the contract are another important one and so having an understanding of the law and terminology is key. CIPD is a great resource for those who are looking to define any legal queries that remain unanswered.

This is helpful for both parties, particularly for the employee who might not have much legal knowledge, to begin with.

3. Speak to your legal aid

As mentioned above, there may be certain elements to the contract that need further clarification. Most employers will have access to their own legal aid, whilst a remote worker can always utilize human resources within a company.

Seeking advice and guidance from legal aid will help clarify anything that’s uncertain. They can also go over the documents before either party signs to ensure everything is clear and concise.

For everything else, depending on the country your business operates in, there are various governing bodies available at your disposal. This can be helpful in addressing anything else that needs attention and ensuring the contracts align with the national laws in place.

4. Introduce or update employment contracts

Employment contracts are an essential part for remote workers and many businesses will want to take a look at those existing contracts in place. There will likely be one or two contracts that, since the pandemic, are now outdated.

It’s not worth the risk to either you or your employee, to simply operate as normal without taking a look at what needs to change in the contracts.