Reducing Attrition in 90 Days: Strong Interpersonal Requirements

High attrition tends to be a common theme that runs through the contact center industry and the companies that operate within this space, but it does not have to be an accepted consequence of operating in this industry.

If a focus on improving key areas of the operation occurs within the first 90 days, the contact center is much more likely to be successful in its methods. One area that must be a priority is to ensure that employees hired to work within the contact center have strong interpersonal management capabilities, or they are likely to leave the job.


This is one of the most critical areas to be examined before hiring a person for the contact center. As a result, it can also take the most amounts of time and activity to identify areas of potential weakness and successfully right-fit the person for the job.

The first thing to do to ensure that the candidate can properly manage interpersonal requirements of the job is to adequately identify what these requirements are before even seeking out a person to fill the role. Once this is done, the hiring manager can conduct a behavior phone interview, simulation, role play or in-person interview that can help to evaluate the job candidate against these criteria.

A realistic job simulation provided for the candidate on-site can specifically provide the job candidate with real-time experience of taking calls as a front line representative. At this point, the hiring manager is able to evaluate the potential candidate’s strengths and weaknesses in managing these skills to determine if he or she is a right fit for the job.

The hiring manager will rely on the candidate’s self-selection forward into the process, but there are steps to help the candidate to make the decision. The manager could also offer the option of allow the candidate the option of listening to calls. In this process, it is critical to use agents that are trained to the recruiting process and can represent the organization well.

In this phase, it is important that the hiring or recruiting manager does not pass or fail the candidate, but instead allows the candidate to choose to go forward or exit the process. By doing so, the manager is giving the candidate ownership in the process and eliminating weaker candidates before reaching the hiring stage.

FurstPerson can help provide simulations and tools to make this process seamless for both managers and candidates.

 

Check back next week as we examine the impact when an employee’s interests and attitudes do not properly match the requirements of the job.