A Sponsored Article by HireIQ
Your customer service professionals form a customer’s first—and sometimes lasting—impression of your company. They need to possess excellent communication, language, active listening and critical-thinking skills in order to deliver an exceptional customer service experience and achieve your company’s customer satisfaction performance goals.
Predicting a new-hire’s performance and tenure potential before that candidate is hired can yield significant results, not only in reduced recruiting labor and costs, but in ongoing employee retention, engagement and achievement against key metrics. Predictive hiring analytics, a rigorous system that continuously measures key characteristics of CSP candidates and compares them against known excellent performers at fixed tenure milestones, has proven to help companies reduce their attrition-related costs while improving operational performance.
One well-established method of predicting a candidate’s performance potential is to analyze emotions that are exhibited by the candidate during the telephone-screening phase of the recruitment process. Significant organizational research concludes that emotion is a leading indicator of performance, tenure and leadership and has significant impact on performance at the individual, group, and organization level, particularly:
- Members of a workgroup who exhibit similar emotional characteristics demonstrate higher customer service performance and lower absenteeism.
- Leaders literally set the tone for their workgroups—their positive emotions are strongly correlated to higher customer service performance.
- Emotions are “contagious” and an employee’s disposition can be detected by customers, resulting in service quality evaluations that reflect that disposition—both positive and negative.
- Positive emotions are associated with reduced absenteeism and propensity to turnover; conversely, negative emotions are associated with increased absenteeism and actual turnover.
- Positive emotions are an indicator of enhanced conflict-resolution abilities—often needed with difficult customers and helpful in customer support roles.
Furthermore, the display of positive and negative emotions is a leading indicator for employee engagement. According to the Gallup Organization, there is a real and measureable relationship between employee engagement and key organizational outcomes. Gallup reported that the difference in performance between engaged and disengaged organizations could be substantial:
- 10% difference in customer loyalty
- 22% difference in profitability
- 25%–65% difference in annualized turnover
- 37% difference in absenteeism
A person’s emotions are not easily measured using traditional cognitive, behavioral or personality assessments, nor is it easily faked. However, it can be easily detected by analyzing a job applicant’s voice for these key factors. This increases the importance of the early stage telephone screen in determining a candidate’s suitability for a particular job and his or her likelihood of excellent performance and long tenure.
In a practical, contact center context, HireIQ has developed an emotions-based, predictive analytics approach that is specifically designed to predict a candidate’s performance and retention potential during the hiring process. Customer-reported results using this approach are remarkable:
- 84% reduction in time-to-fill open positions
- 111% increase in days on the job at termination
- 60% improvement in critical 90-day retention
- 56% increase in agents achieving their FCR objective
- 37% improvement in agents meeting or exceeding their CSAT objective
Employing a rigorous, predictive analytics approach early in the hiring process has myriad positive downstream effects. Early identification of candidates who are more likely to be long-tenured and excellent performers will result in improved bottom-line performance, increased customer satisfaction and retention, and an improved competitive position.
About HireIQ Solutions, Inc.
HireIQ Solutions, Inc. enables companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience by improving their hiring decisions, reducing time-to-fill, reducing recruiting costs, and increasing talent performance and retention through its online virtual interviewing software, novel predictive analytics solutions, and structured feedback between recruiting and its stakeholders. For further information, please visit www.hireiqinc.com. Follow HireIQ on Twitter @hireiqinc.
About the Author
Kevin Hegebarth is VP of Marketing and Product Management for HireIQ Solutions, Inc. He has held executive marketing, product management and business development leadership roles with leading companies serving the recruiting, hiring, performance and customer contact market. He is a frequent contributor to industry publications and has spoken at numerous industry events. He can be reached at [email protected].