A while back, Coca-Cola Enterprises officials decided that they needed a more efficient internal hiring process for their call center, so they turned to call center management software provider Knowlagent , with the intent of enabling recruiters to focus on candidates with the highest likelihood of success.

Because in addition to staffing for seasonal peaks in summer months, Coca-Cola Enterprises hires between 150-250 agents each year to keep up with openings in its Florida center, according to Knowlagent officials.

As might be expected, turnover during new hire training at the center was high and the company needed a better screening and selection process to identify quality candidates.

"The interviewing process was very time consuming and approximately 60 percent of the recruiter's time was being spent with candidates who did not ultimately receive an offer," Knowlagent officials said, adding that of those agents who were hired, "roughly 20 percent were leaving the company during new hire training."

According to a Beagle Research case study on just this topic, "for such an operation to be successful the agents would need to be cross trained in both selling and service practices. Second, the primary requirements dictated the need to recruit high caliber people and to nurture them to deliver the kind of performance the situation demanded."

And third, Beagle found, "training and nurturing would be never ending tasks if they expected the operation to perform at a consistently high level. Fourth, and finally, they needed a robust technology backbone to support the people who would make the operation a success."

Knowlagent Hiring gave recruiters objective data about candidates early in the hiring process prior to a phone screening and face-to-face interview: "Candidates were provided with a realistic job preview and job overview before they decided for themselves to continue with the screening process. This allowed CCE to quickly identify quality candidates who were most likely to succeed."

As Knowlagent officials described it, candidates were filtered through the Knowlagent Hiring process and monitored for interview-to-offer ratio, attrition during new hire training, new hire graduation rates, time to proficiency, and overall job performance. Results were compared to metrics under the previous process.

So how did it work? Ninety days after implementing Knowlagent Hiring, CCE had already shown tremendous improvement. Newly hired agents who were selected through the new process hit the floor at higher performance levels. Additionally, since using Knowlagent Hiring, there was a 44 percent improvement in interview-to-offer ratio.

To download a free customer case study and learn more about how Knolwagent improved Coca Cola's call center operations, click here .