It is the beginning of another year and it is time to start with some new strategies for talent acquisition and recruitment teams. Numerous trends from the previous year will persist and exert influence on the talent and recruitment domain.

Here, we will emphasize a few of these trends, such as skills-based hiring, the ongoing power dynamics between employees and employers, and the undeniable impact of AI.

Although the trends are not new, the field of talent acquisition will continue to evolve rapidly. There will be a greater emphasis on transparency, encompassing technology, data, and policy perspectives. Job seekers and candidates will have increasing demands and expectations.

It is expected that 2024 will bring stability and gradual growth. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses and talent acquisition professionals to remain adaptable and make necessary adjustments.

The increased emphasis on data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies

The increased emphasis on data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies has led to a greater focus on embracing real-time analytics. By utilizing technology that enables recruiters and hiring managers to execute results-focused strategies, HR leaders are ensuring that their candidate management system solutions work smarter and faster. In order to act on data related to recruiting speed and efficiency, HR leaders are investing more in analytics and reporting for their hiring teams.

By utilizing recruitment software with built-in talent analytics and leveraging data in decision-making, hiring teams are able to effectively recruit for various roles in a scalable, repeatable and efficient manner. Real-time data that provides insights into candidate status and progress on key recruiting metrics, such as time to fill, sourcing effectiveness, and offer acceptance, allows hiring teams to make informed decisions and improve their work.

Companies that fail to develop data-driven recruiting strategies in 2024 will face challenges in attracting top talent, while those that leverage analytics will have a competitive advantage.

Hiring based on skills

Hiring based on skills, rather than past experience, is becoming increasingly important in 2024. This shift not only promotes diversity, equity and inclusion, but it also brings significant benefits to organizations by expanding the talent pool.

As businesses strive to bridge various skills gaps, particularly in areas like generative AI, they will prioritize acquiring and developing the necessary skills. This approach enables them to align with the long-term strategic direction of the organization. Additionally, interim hires will play a crucial role in upskilling teams and allowing businesses to test new roles before making permanent hires.

The emphasis on skills goes beyond technical expertise. Job postings and internal opportunities will highlight both technical and leadership skills. This means that jobs will likely reassign roles to uncover hidden potential within their workforce, leading to more lateral career moves. While the current focus may appear short-term, recruiters will still value leadership skills to avoid future skill gaps at the top.

A shift in the job market landscape

In recent years, we have witnessed the coexistence of two distinct worlds. Firstly, there was the recovery phase following the pandemic, which brought about a significant surge in hiring. However, this was followed by an economic downturn that resulted in a substantial contraction of the market.

Regrettably, the creative, digital and tech industries bore the major impact of this downturn, experiencing layoffs, restructuring and hiring freezes. Consequently, the transition from abundance to shortage felt exceedingly drastic, leaving businesses struggling with challenging economic conditions, a shifting customer base, and an increasingly demanding workforce.

On the whole, the market has now re-established a balance reminiscent of the pre-pandemic era. As a result, employers are still actively recruiting, although with a greater sense of caution and diligence. Similarly, job seekers have also displayed a degree of hesitancy. However, individuals are indeed open to exploring new opportunities. While candidates remain receptive to new prospects, the job market is likely to remain relatively volatile.

Embracing the potential of young talent

Embracing early career hiring has become a strategic move for organizations looking to secure a competitive edge in the evolving job market. While certain professional roles still require college degrees, recruiters are now expanding their reach to include candidates who are still in high school or pursuing non-traditional higher education paths.

Entry-level hires often come with lower salary expectations compared to their more experienced counterparts, making them an appealing choice for companies operating on tight budgets. Moreover, organizations recognize the value of diversifying their talent pool. By tapping into a broader range of candidates, companies can foster innovation and achieve their diversity, equity and inclusion goals more effectively.

However, young hires today seek not only professional growth, but also a workplace that prioritizes inclusion, work-life balance and mental well-being. Employers must rise to the occasion and provide the necessary support, empathy, and emotional intelligence to meet these evolving needs. So early career hiring presents a unique opportunity for organizations to harness the potential of young talent. By embracing this approach, companies can not only benefit from cost-effective hiring but also cultivate a more diverse and inclusive workforce that thrives on empathy and compassion.

The role of AI

The rise and navigation of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation were major topics in 2023, particularly in relation to generative AI. Over the past year, we have witnessed how these advanced technologies have begun to reshape various aspects of the workforce, allowing users to streamline processes and increase efficiency.

Despite the widespread discussions, only some businesses felt adequately prepared for AI and were actively investing in it. This indicates that there is still a significant amount of exploration and adaptation required for most organizations. Finding the right balance between leveraging these technologies for maximum benefit and addressing various risks such as security, privacy, usage, quality control and regulations will pose a challenge for businesses.

From a talent acquisition standpoint, one of the key tasks will be effectively harnessing the power of AI in the hiring process without dehumanizing it. While these tools can swiftly sift through thousands of resumes and identify essential skills for a job opening, it is the human touch that truly discerns whether a candidate is the right cultural fit for a business, taking into account the subtle shades that AI may overlook.

Customer service is a broad term that covers a large number of tasks. It may include everything from answering phones at a hotel to providing social media support for a large corporation.

As you tailor your CV to meet the needs of the customer service job you want, you should focus not only on the support skills you have to offer, but how they directly relate to the industry you want to work in.

Where Customer Service Matters

Customer service skills can make or break companies in some industries. In these places, no matter how great the product is, the service affects the consumer’s view of the company. A restaurant can hire the greatest chef in the world, and still have poor reviews because of the service the customer receives.

Here are the industries where customer service is arguably as important as the product offered:

• Restaurant, food and beverage
• Retail
• Hospitality and travel
• Financial services

As you tailor your resume or CV for these industries, you can compensate for industry skills you may be missing by highlighting your extra experience or training in customer service. For example, your experience working with customers in a restaurant can be emphasized in a way that compensates for your lack of experience in management if presented the correct way.

How to Place the Emphasis on Your Customer Service Skills

Once you’ve narrowed down the industry you want to work in and start identifying jobs you want, it’s time to tailor your CV to focus on the most important customer service skills in that industry. The following tips can help you do just that.

Include Customer Service Based Keywords

Buzzwords in the customer service industry include things like active listening, customer engagement, supported, improved, solved or assisted. Including these words in your resume or CV brings attention to your skills. As you use them, quantify them and use them to enhance your personal experience. Here are some examples:

• Solved communication issues by implementing active listening training for 20% of the entire company.
• Supported management in efforts to increase productivity by motivating employees through improved rewards programs.
• Increased customer engagement with weekly social media question and answer sessions.

Highlight Key Performance Indicators

Often referred to as KPIs, key performance indicators give employers a quick view of how you improved a situation at a company. Customer service has a long list of KPIs that recruiters look for. As you create your tailored customer service CV, focus on your success in these areas.

• First response time: This is the time between when a customer first requests support and when they receive it. This metric shows how prompt you are in responding to customers.
• Average resolution time: This is the time it takes between receiving a customer complaining and resolving it. If you have shorter resolution times, it shows your problem-solving and communication abilities.
• Consistent resolutions: This is the consistency of your resolution ability, and shows that your fast conflict resolution skills transfer from one job to another. This is just as important as the average resolution time because it shows how reliable you are in managing customer issues.
• Escalation rates: This shows how often a problem is escalated to a supervisor or someone with more knowledge rather than resolved by the initial contact. The lower your escalation rates are, the more effective you are at quickly dealing with customer complaints.
• Customer retention rates: This is one of the most important numbers in customer service, and is basically the number of customers you retain. If you’ve worked in an area where you had exceptionally high customer retention rates, it should be a focal point of your CV.
• Net promoter score: This number shows how likely current customers are to recommend a business to their friends and family. Promoters are divided into three categories: detractors, passives and promoters.

These are just six examples of KPIs used in customer service. While many think of service jobs as simply “feel-good” experiences, the numbers are actually extremely accurate when it comes to showing how good you are at your job.

Highlight these things within your CV. Ask previous jobs for the numbers they’ve tracked when it comes to your work there. Did your company have higher customer retention rates during the time you were there? Was your average resolution time faster than most? Did you respond quickly to complaints or concerns? If a recruiter has to choose between industry knowledge and good customer service skills, these are the numbers they will consider.

Show Your Stability

Customer service jobs have high turnover rates in many industries, and turnover is a huge expense that companies deal with. Employees often deal with burnout if they constantly face angry or dissatisfied customers. This is where the product offered meshes with the people who face customers every day to determine if a business will truly be successful.

Highlight the length of your employment or commitment to past tasks. Did you finish a degree or certification program that required commitment? Were you employed at jobs for long periods, or did you have good reasons for leaving? In all industries, recruiters want to know that their customer service professionals plan to stick around and invest in the business. In your CV, you can subtly show them you are a safe bet to hire by highlighting your commitment to the other aspects of your education, work history and skills.

Know Your Job Goals

There are many ways to be involved in customer service. As consumers move more toward online purchases rather than brick and mortar shopping, the field expands even more. As a customer service representative in any field, tailor your resume to the job you want. Email support, self-service support, live chat support, interactive voice support, web commerce support, social media support, telephone support and on-site support are all examples of customer service jobs. Make sure your CV reflects the job you not only want to do, but are most qualified for.

89% of consumers said they are more likely to buy from a business again if they have a positive customer service experience.

Improving customer service is easier said than done, and typically involves potentially costly employee training. What if employers could improve customer service by changing how they hire new customer-facing employees? One company just released a report demonstrating how skill-based hiring technology improved the on-the-job performance of new customer service representatives.

Start by Hiring for the Right Skills

Within the world of new customer service representatives, there are both top and bottom performers. In the performance study released, over 5000 candidates were analyzed who were hired for customer-facing roles using a skills-based hiring assessment. The customer service employees (versus those hired for sales roles) were identified and then categorized by top and bottom performers.

While customer service performance can vary by role specialty, industry, audience country, products, etc., there were common skills among all the top customer service representatives. These included:

• Acknowledgment
• Delivering difficult messages
• Paraphrasing
• Positive language
• Speaking fluently

The report tied the presence of these soft skills to the rep’s performance based on customer KPIs. Candidates who had the lowest skill scores were the bottom performers and those with the highest skill scores were the top customer service representatives. That means that companies can determine who will be a top customer service agent during the pre-hire assessment phase, just by screening for the right skills!

Decreasing Attrition with the Right Reps

What about a company’s attrition rates? The average call center attrition rate is as high as 38%. This report found that candidates who possessed those top customer service skills were also less likely to leave their respective companies. In fact, it was reported that:

“For every 1 customer service top skilled employee, 27.3 bottom skilled employees attrit.”

Each organization will have a unique set of hiring circumstances. For example, customer service can be done by in-house teams or outsourced, and service may be available by phone, chat, or even social media. There are so many factors that can affect attrition (80% of new hires who had a poor onboarding experience said they planned to quit). Still, it’s encouraging to see such conclusive and consistent results around the performance of highly skilled customer service reps.

Customer support is a role where a company’s employees are a representation of your organization.

The experience of your customer with your product or organization is directly dependent on the kind of service they receive from your customer support representatives. Below, I have laid down some factors that can help you understand what makes a candidate a potential customer service representative for your organization and how to identify and hire them.

Qualities to look for in a customer support representative

Empathy

Handling support tickets and customers of different kinds can be quite challenging. So, one of the most essential qualities to look for is a high level of empathy. Without it, reps can break quickly, reflecting badly on the company. It is also important to look for the customer service representative’s ability to anticipate a customer’s need in advance and go the extra mile in proactively offering the solution.

Creativity

Being a great customer service representative isn’t just about their ability to solve problems for the customer, but being able to find easier and more clever ways to do so. And that creativity also extends to how they respond to a situation. The phrasing of a response makes all the difference.

Communication skills

The ability to communicate effectively with the customer is key. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you should look for vocabulary and language skills. Effective communication is all about making sure the communication with the customer is simple and easy to understand. For example, at times, it makes more sense to say that the issue will be resolved in 4 hours than explaining the technical issue in depth.

Job Description

The next and most important question is, what exactly makes for a good job description? First, a self-explanatory title that is also SEO friendly is essential. Before you write the job description itself, you have to do a great deal of research. Make sure you understand the kind of role you’re hiring for, figure out what has worked and not worked in the past, and structure your job description in an easily understandable manner. To have the largest reach, you can advertise on online job market platforms such as Lensa.

A good job description should answer the following:

• What the customer support job entails (technical or non-technical skills)
• What are the possible OKRs and KPOs for the job
• What are the day-to-day activities
• What are some of the must-have and nice-to-have skills
• If there any specific tools or software they need to know (educational background, past experience, and any unique company requirements)

Screening Applications

This process is very important because you want to make sure you are picking the best candidate possible. When screening applications you want to read between the lines to get a hint of the applicant’s personality. If they’ve missed out on a must-have skill, you required in your job description, that is your cue to skip their resume.

Check if their past experience matches your expectations. Look out for typos and tonal writing to understand the kind of emails an applicant would send to your customers. Check if they made an effort to customize rules and responsibilities to suit the company’s objectives and if it makes your life easier. A good way to check their persuasion skills is to see what kind of explanation they have for gap years or unexplained employment.

Interview

During an interview with a potential new employee, you want to determine the quality and fit of each candidate to the best of your ability. A good way to judge your candidates is to look at how they’ve demonstrated their technical expertise in the past.

Ask them to cite examples of where and how they’ve done this. For instance, a classic customer service representative interview question is: “Can you give me an example of a time when you’ve had to explain something complex to an angry customer? What did you do, and what was the result?”

To get an understanding of how a candidate thinks on their feet, it’s good to ask a surprise question such as; “How did you prepare for this interview?” or even; “Describe yourself in one word.” Asking these questions might give you a chance to explore the creative side of a candidate and give you an opportunity to have an honest and insightful conversation.

To know more about a candidate’s technical capability and soft skills, you can put them to the test by giving them simple tasks to resolve, asking them to explain complex features or issues in simple language, and/or having a mock call to support a customer.

Finally, find out how they respond to setbacks, as that’s a good indication of whether or not they will bounce back from disappointments. A good place to start is to ask them what their biggest failure was and what they learned from it.

Hiring Decisions

Pro tip: If you’re convincing yourself to hire a candidate, don’t hire them, they should have convinced you.

These are the criteria you will want to follow when determining the future of a candidate with your company.

• Are they serious about joining your team?
• Are they willing to learn on the job?
• Will they fill in the gap in your team?
• How quickly can they get started on the job?
• Will they be a good fit for the company culture?
• Do you think you can help them chart a growth plan for their careers?

Bottom Line

A customer support team is the face of a business. No matter how big or small your company is and no matter what industry you are in, it’s important to spend time hiding the right kind of people. Even if you have a great product or service, your team is going to help you stand out by retaining existing accounts, bringing in new customers, ensuring customers are onboard, and increasing revenue, so it is critical to assemble a good team.

As a small business owner, generating leads and sales, keeping costs low, and marketing and retargeting consumers for future sales are just some of the difficulties you face.

Dealing with logistic issues and customer concerns may sometimes be at the bottom of your list, but customer service is crucial in all phases of your customer’s interaction with your brand.

Customer service extends from the first interaction with your customers to troubleshooting and addressing concerns long after the purchase has been closed.

For example, restaurants hire a host or hostess as the first person to interact with guests as soon as they walk into the restaurant.

Training them to say hello and offer warm greetings helps set the mood for the guests.

As the wait staff greets the customers at the table is the second time your employees interact with your potential customers. Having your wait staff and hosts offer friendly, engaging interactions sets the mood for the dining experience.

If there’s an issue during or after the dining experience, having a personable and engaging manager helps assuage the guest’s concerns and alleviates further problems.

For more traditional business interactions with consumers, having a front-facing team that handles the customer interaction and a dedicated customer service team to deal with potential issues after the fact is essential.

Skills for Your Customer Service Team

Consider your team training, and there are some skills you want your customer service team to be able to handle.

These skills can be taught with proper training, and reinforcing these behaviors when interacting with customers is essential.

The training you provide is the foundation of your staff providing proactive customer service, which mitigates some post-action customer services problem solving, creating a better customer experience.

• Empathy when listening
• Easy, engaging communicator
• Use of positive language
• Create possible suggestive selling options–upsells, cross-promotional items, discounts, etc.
• Flexibility in offering solutions
• Sense of ownership in transactions with customers
• Self-responsibility in handling solutions to issues

Recruiting A Superior Customer Service Team

Excellent customer service is the linchpin of your brand, so how do you offer outstanding customer service?

Finding and retaining your customer service team is challenging. Finding and retaining superior customer service talent is even more complicated if you aren’t strategic in finding, training, and keeping your team.

Recruiting good talent is a process that yields dividends in the future. To ensure that your customer service is on point, you must develop a philosophy that embraces superior customer service while holding true to your business’s core principles.

When recruiting talent, you need to be communicative about your needs,

Upfront Communication: It allows you and the potential employee to determine the feasibility of working together. Second, it will enable you to outline the role, expectations, and opportunities that are in front of the potential team member. Third, it will outlay what they can expect from you and the employer, what you can offer them in salary, job roles, and more.

Highlight Growth Opportunities: Offering realistic growth opportunities is an excellent motivator for employees and highlighting those opportunities in your initial interviews is a great way to attract potential top talent.

You can share detailed processes with potential team members that show pathways toward advancement, significantly attracting many job seekers and serving as an incentive for attracting and retaining good talent.

Have A Detailed Job Preview: Being able to lay out a realistic day-to-day expectation for the role that you’re attracting talent for is a significant highlight for many candidates. In fact, people often leave a job due to the realization that the workload wasn’t what was expected, either too much work or insufficient to keep a certain level of job satisfaction.

To create a detailed, realistic job preview, survey people already operating in that role within your organization and incorporate their thoughts into your discussion with potential new hires. Of course, for startups and the creation of new departments within your organization, you may need to go outside your organization to survey. Still, this step is crucial in helping create the framework you’ll use to recruit more talent.

Have A Good Employer Ecosphere: Having incredible growth opportunities and realistic job expectations for potential hires is essential. Still, if the culture and environment around the organization are subpar, it can lead to a harmful effect that negatively impacts attraction and retention.

It’s essential to create a professional work environment but also one where people enjoy working. It’s said that people don’t quit jobs but bosses.

That statement is saying between the lines that people who leave are claiming that the job role wasn’t what they expected, didn’t feel valued in their position and that the environment around their job wasn’t strong enough an ecosystem to keep them engaged.

The power of the work ecosystem is crucial in attracting and retaining top talent, regardless of the industry. It’s especially vital in providing an environment to foster superior customer service.

As you interact, interview, and attract potential new hires, you’ll want to create a screening process that may include outsourcing employee background check services, detailing the job role as accurately as possible, and creating an environment that enhances the customer service philosophy critical to your organization.

The systems you put in place will streamline your opportunity to attract, retain, and hire superior customer service members, furthering your brand’s reputation and potential growth.

No matter how brilliant a business idea, inevitably, the greatest challenge to building a successful business is finding the right employees to run it.

Talk to any level of business owner, whether seasoned or just starting out, and most will agree that hiring effective team members can make or break a business.

For entrepreneurs, hiring can be particularly challenging. When you are building an organization from scratch on a shoestring budget with tightly competing priorities, finding the right teammates may seem as likely as winning the lottery.

Despite the multitude of online platforms that streamline the hiring process, hiring as we know it is still broken. Finding that perfect employee is critical but the process is very time-consuming – from creating a job description, screening candidates, rounds of interviews and checking references – and time is an entrepreneur’s most precious commodity. Once you have narrowed it down to the right candidate and negotiated terms, developing and implementing a thorough training (while imperative) is labor-intensive.

Of course, supervising a new employee requires hours of dedication, coaching, and support, as well as quality control. And despite your best efforts, results still may vary. Some employees will still leave after you’ve invested in building them up.

Our company faced these hurdles too, but then we found a way to make it work for ourselves that was so successful we made it our core offering going forward. Enter Wing Assistant. What makes Wing Assistant different? Wing leverages technology and combines it with irreplaceable human capabilities, resulting in a superior customer experience as a remote labor supplier.

Wing alleviates an entrepreneur’s main employment challenges by addressing the trifecta of finance, time, and quality control constraints. Our business model is similar to hiring a human resources team, training department, on-going supervisor, and quality assurance division in one 45 minute interview, for a low monthly subscription fee and based on your needs. With Wing’s AI technology, a business owner can ensure ongoing employee and output quality without applying the intense time or micromanagement often required otherwise.

In a typical employment setting, a manager would be hard-pressed to monitor the minute details of their employees’ interactions – and even if they had the time or tools to do so, that level of micro-management would create an overwhelmingly stressful work environment. Wing’s tech team developed a proprietary algorithm that identifies quality control concerns during interactions between the customers and their virtual assistants. The concerns are documented and rated and Wing flags the issues for the quality control team and supervisors. Supervisors can address the concerns in real time with the virtual assistants, providing instant feedback and corrective action plans for improved output. Studies show that lack of trust at work are a serious issue and will likely result in high turnover rates (and an article from Entrepreneur.com uncovered a link between micromanagement and higher employee mortality rates).

Wing understands the value of human interaction, even as technology tremendously speeds up identifying quality issues. If virtual assistants were simply informed of their errors by a chatbot, there would be no opportunities for learning or even discussion. However, occasionally the algorithm over-identifies issues that the virtual assistant is able to explain. Supervisors are trained to instruct, coach, and support their virtual assistants to ensure they understand and continue to improve in their roles. With Wing, AI plus personalized review and supervision create a highly effective solution for employers.

Wing’s advances have turned hiring for the better. With a low overhead cost and a team dedicated to producing quality results, entrepreneurs can focus on the elements of their business that only they can spearhead, helping them to head towards exceptional growth.

About the Author

Diane Meehan is currently the Head of Customer Success at Wing, where she recently joined after several years guiding mom entrepreneurs toward their business goals as the Director of Customer Success at Pepperlane. Previously, she was consistently ranked in the top 5% of Paint Nite licensees across the country and grew her social painting business to over
$6 million in sales in less than 5 years. As a mom to three daughters, she is particularly skilled in time management, organization, and eye-roll interpretation.

Creating a great customer experience starts with understanding and improving the employee experience. Here’s how companies can navigate these challenges during the Great Resignation.

The Great Resignation has launched employee experience into the spotlight: a record 4.5 million Americans left their job in November 2021, breaking the previous record, which was made only two months earlier in September 2021. According to a Pew Research study, many are leaving jobs where they felt disrespected. Of course, this has had a negative effect on customer experience for many companies. Many companies are experiencing pressure from three sides: training new employees on the foundations, while more experienced employees leave, all while call volume continues to increase.

Employees now desire more flexibility in their lives. They want to be viewed for the quality of the work they’re delivering, not by when and how they’re delivering it. According to Pew Research from January 2022, 60% of Americans currently working remotely say that when COVID-19 is over, they’d prefer to continue working from home all or most of the time. In most cases, there’s no need to be in the office to be a valuable contributor to the organization.  To stay competitive, employers will need to be more flexible in providing work-life balance, and in where employees work.

People’s lives have been upended over the last couple of years. What they knew, how they worked, and when they worked completely shifted, and they had no say in it. This has led to a few key changes in what a good work environment looks like—and employers need to pay attention. If you’re concerned about the effect the great resignation will have on your customer experience, you need to think deeply about your employee experience. People want to feel cared for; they want you to understand their needs, and they want to be appreciated. If you don’t want your employees to leave, show them you genuinely care about them.

How to support and retain employees

1. Give Employees Information

Employees do better at their job when they have access to the right information, like a 360-degree view of the customer they are serving. What has the customer called about in the past? What products or services is the customer using? Generally, a customer calls a contact center when they are having a poor experience or a problem, so arming that employee with as much information as possible to resolve it will help that employee do their job well. Giving employees access to this information also improves the customer experience. Instead of repeating information to a string of agents or wasting forever on the phone.

2. Give Employees Freedom

How many times have you called into a contact center and felt like the other person on the end of the line was reading from a script? Too many constrictions are bad for employee morale. Give your employees the freedom to ‘go off script’ and really connect with customers on a human level. Zappo’s famously gives each agent $100 a day to fix problems for customers. They don’t always use it, but they know it’s there if they need it, and it gives them the ability to win over a customer for life. As long as it’s not breaking the law or breaking the bank, trust your employees to build that customer loyalty.

3. Give Employees (And Customers) Better Technology

With technology, it can be tempting to just do what your competition is doing or focusing on improving one single interaction channel–but throwing technology at the problem isn’t the answer. You have to base any technology decisions in an understanding of what will actively improve your customer and employee experience. For example, around 76% of consumers today prefer some kind of self-service option. Giving customers the ability to self-serve allows your employees to focus on the customers who need that extra personal touch.

Whether it’s a better CRM that helps employees access customer data, or automating simpler processes so that employees can focus on challenges that need a human touch, evaluate any technology decision based off what your employees and customers want and need.

Companies are always thinking about their north star for customer experience. So why not focus on the north star from an employee experience?

Improving customer experience in your organization goes beyond introducing new technology solutions–it also requires a fundamental mindset shift, an audit of internal processes, and strategic organizational changes. Any conversation about customer experience has to start with employee experience. The two are inextricably linked: Your employees have invaluable insight into what might be getting in the way of providing a great experience for your customers.  No matter how much you study what your customers want, you’ll likely miss key information if you aren’t consulting with employees as well.

It takes commitment to really change the customer experience. It’s no small effort—but if you start by understanding the experience of employees who interact directly with customers– whether those interactions are happening in-person, through email, or through a call center—you’ll have the insight you need to make real change.

About the Author

Kate Kompelien, director of customer experience solutions, Avtex.

Kate is a Customer Experience leader at Avtex, which designs, orchestrates, and enables CX. Kate focuses on coaching and educating across the design process. She has pioneered first-of-a-kind CX design processes (insights, mapping, behavioral research, design, and measurement) for Fortune 500 companies and services organizations.

Kate understands the importance for companies to differentiate in highly competitive markets and she drives change by listening, communicating, and collaborating while delivering exceptional output that results in increased revenue, improved customer loyalty, and aligned decision making.

Considering the number of companies with similar offers and the fact that many face-to-face interactions are going digital, your brand must compete to remain authentic and maintain the trust of its clients.

Technology helps simplify tasks, but your front staff is still your most valuable resource when it comes to connecting with customers. Your ability to fill frontline positions with the right people directly impacts the perceived trustworthiness of your business and its long-term success.

You may have the best omnichannel CRM solution, revolutionary products, and the strongest brand image, but if your public facing employees are unable to consistently rekindle the romance that seduced clients in the first place, you might be up for a breakup. Whether on your brick-and-mortar retail floors or behind their computer screens, your customer facing workforce is your best asset, not only to welcome clients into your brand’s universe but also to activate product and stories that create long lasting relationships resulting in additional sales.

Most competences demanded from a frontline agent can be learned through training. However, they will be of limited use if your representative is lacking the essential ingredient to any successful human interaction: empathy; the capacity to place oneself in another’s position. This ability naturally puts empathetic individuals in a customer-centric perspective. It enables them to understand the client’s feelings, needs and motivations and is a crucial factor in building lasting trust resulting in customer loyalty.

Job hunters able to wear a courteous demeanour during an interview or for 8 hours a day for a limited period are plentiful. Individuals naturally inclined to help others and systematically able and willing to see things from the client’s point of view are less common. With studies showing that empathy is declining over generations, identifying your ideal future front staff will require all your attention. This said, it is worth the effort when considering the consequences of recruiting a mismatch.

Adding a seemingly competent person lacking empathy to your organisation is like placing a piece of rotten fruit beside perfectly good fruit, the rot will spread. It will compromise the morale of your team, lead to reduced engagement and productivity, increased absenteeism and eventually, employee turnover. Sooner or later, this will result in customer defection and significantly impact your success.

So how do you go about finding and keeping the empathetic jewel cut for your front staff job opening?

Detecting empathy in a person is no exact science and your gut feeling and emotional intelligence are essential when searching for the right match. Nevertheless, the following tips can help predict what hides behind an applicant’s perfect manners and appearance:

• Empathetic people often have an open posture, a calm and grounded attitude and they are fully present in the discussion, giving all their attention to you, what you say and how you say it. Their presence puts people at ease, and they have a serene, confident, and benevolent tone of voice Their smile is deep and sincere.

• As active listeners, they often pause, node and repeat what you say. Humble by nature, they are more likely to ask questions than put themselves forward.

• They are patient, notice small details in their surroundings and enjoy deep meaningful conversations.

• Comfortable with silence and eye contact, they will wait for their turn to speak and often pause and look inwardly before speaking.

• They think in terms of alternatives, use nuanced language and positive, cooperative words like: together, common, collaborate, contribute, joint effort, synergy, teamwork, assist, rather than superlatives describing themselves and their achievements.

With all the benefit associated with empathy in business, should you include it in your company culture? A successful business strategy should focus on what creates value for customers and employees. If empathy is missing from your business’s values, you are unlikely to attract job applicants naturally inclined to help customers or retain employees possessing this quality. Clients are willing to pay the price to receive appropriate care and employees feeling cared for spontaneously become brand ambassadors. Therefore, this happily ever after combination seems to be an excellent alternative to develop a healthy culture able to consistently drive profitability.

About the Author

Sebastien Baranyai is a customer experience specialist with 15 years’ experience collaborating with companies ranging from start-ups to major luxury brands.

Gen Z are thought to be the leading generation behind the Great Resignation of 2021: the phenomenon that saw millions of workers quitting their jobs.

This generation has a different attitude towards the workplace, the type of careers that attract them and what their priorities are.

Less focus on longevity

In a jobseeker survey carried out by Bankrate, it showed that over half (55%) of American adults were planning to switch jobs; of this figure, 77% of these were Gen Z – aged between 18 and 24. It is perhaps unsurprising that the younger generation do not see jobs with the same prospects of longevity as previous generations.

Entering the workforce at a time of great instability, bleak job prospects and job losses at an all time high, it is easy to understand why Gen Z and millennials have been labelled the “most mobile participants in the workforce”.

What skills do Gen Z have?

Gen Z are known to be the most technologically savvy generation, having grown up in a totally digital age, says Gen Z experts, Imagen Insights.

Deloitte found that among Gen Z there is a greater prevalence for an all-rounder profile, one that has cross-sectoral skills. These can include, but are not limited to, digital and technology skills, competence with analytics and data, business management skills and design and creative skills.

Data from Firstup showed that on average, Gen Z workers have experience with more than five types of enterprise software applications, making them well-equipped for multiple roles. They tend to have far more knowledge of technology than previous generations as well as being experts in social media.

What types of careers are Gen Z looking for?

According to the data from Firstup, Gen Z are most interested in careers involving business, healthcare, and tech, not dissimilar to their Millennial counterparts. On the other hand, manufacturing and retail were found to be the least appealing.

Glassdoor found that software engineer was the most in-demand job for Gen Z job seekers accounting for 19% of total job applications made by Gen Z users across a 3.5 month period. There seems to be a general gravitation towards tech jobs with particular interest in companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

What are workplace priorities for Gen Z?

One of the key differences for Gen Z is their attitude towards work and their workplace priorities, which is important for any employers to know if they are looking to attract and retain Gen Z talent. Gone are the days of traditional employee benefits or even attracting talent based purely on salary.

It is clear from multiple research studies that Gen Z wants to feel that they have a purpose and that the company cares about their personal development and well-being. They look for a sense of community and want to be surrounded by like-minded individuals. Gen Z also comes from a place of scepticism, according to Firstup, worried about being taken advantage of in the workplace. More than ever before, authenticity of a company is a key factor for jobseekers.

In terms of job perks, common factors that Gen Z prioritise are “work environment” and “flexible hours”; Bankrate found that flexible work arrangements were the top priority for Gen Z (62%). With regard to work cons, “long hours” and “low pay” were the most commonly found keywords across Glassdoor reviews.

Ross Daniels at Calabrio looks at the recently published 2022 Agent Management Value Index Report from analyst firm Ventana Research, for insights into how to structure software selection processes – to help organisations pose the right questions to get the right answers.

In its recent report, Ventana Research came to the conclusion that, “The pandemic created the circumstances for a complete reassessment of the tools and processes used in contact centres to manage agents”. Based on this insight, it is likely that many organisations will be considering business improvement projects and software selection processes to enable the changes driven by hybrid working, increased demand and employee churn.

Unless you use the most relevant selection criteria and pose the right questions, you can easily choose solutions which aren’t right for your operation, can’t address the most pressing issues and won’t prepare you for the future. Selection of the right platforms and technology is vital for the success of a modern business, however, it is not an activity that is undertaken regularly. Often the solution choices and technology options evolve so rapidly that the criteria used in previous selection processes become outdated and no longer fit for purpose.

With this in mind, it is great to see analysts, with close to two decades of experience, providing independent advice on how to structure RFI/RFPs and the selection processes for Agent Management solutions. The 2022 Agent Management Value Index Report “provides a baseline of knowledge that organisations can use to evaluate vendors and products, to manage and improve agent management processes.” Access the report reprint here.

A process for evaluating vendors

Ventana Research believes that “business improvement efforts should be based on best practices that research indicates deliver value quickly”. The analyst firm has developed what it calls the Value Index which can be used to evaluate agent management business systems and tools. It advocates using the index as part of a structured approach to ensure the right choices are made to provide the required results. 

In its Value Index for Agent Management, Ventana Research evaluates software against seven key categories, of which five are product experience related and two cover customer experience. The categories are:

• Usability
• Manageability
• Reliability
• Capability
• Adaptability
• Vendor Validation
• Total Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment (TCO/ROI).

Ventana Research used its own index categories to evaluate solutions from 18 vendors and I’m pleased to say that Calabrio was placed in the leader tier as an Exemplary Vendor and a Value Index Leader for Capability, Usability and Manageability.

Build the categories into selection processes and weight them as needed

The Index categories are also useful to build into your own organisation’s RFI/RFP software selection process. The categories can be weighted to match their importance to specific needs. In this way, you can evaluate and score solutions, and vendors objectively against common criteria to help drive a structured and documentable selection process. This step provides the evaluation tools necessary to move from a long list of vendors and solutions to a shortlist which can be evaluated in depth to make the final selection.

An ordered, transparent and auditable selection can be useful to:

• Speed up the selection process itself
• Reduce the cost of the selection
• Drive a common understanding across your organisation
• Gain sign-off from Purchasing and Senior Management for the selection made
• Provide criteria to measure success.

The Ventana Research report provides an evaluation of vendors and a methodology which can be used in your own evaluation and selection processes.

A framework for a technology-driven business improvement project

The report also outlines eight steps which should make up a technology-driven business improvement project.  These include the importance of establishing technology evaluation criteria and how to evaluate and select the right technology to match the specific business requirements of your organisation more efficiently and accurately. The report in particular helps readers to complete these two phases.

Download the report to help you ask the right questions

As operations reassess the tools and processes used in contact centres to manage agents, it is vital to ask the right questions to gain the right answers. To learn more about how your organisation can utilise Ventana Research’s approach, go to Calabrio’s reprint of the Agent Management Value Index: 2022 Vendor and Product Assessment to download your own copy.

About the Author

Ross Daniels is Chief Marketing Officer at Calabrio

Calabrio is the customer experience intelligence company that empowers organisations to enrich human interactions. Through AI-driven analytics, Calabrio uncovers customer behaviour and sentiment and derives compelling insights from the contact centre. Organisations choose Calabrio for its ability to understand customer needs and the overall experience it provides, from implementation to ongoing support. Find more at calabrio.com and follow @Calabrio on Twitter.