Accelerate how you recruit multilingual candidates with Pipplet: the story of customer-relations specialist Odity

Odity, an expert in outsourced customer relations with operations in several countries, wanted to increase efficiency and reliability in how it chose its multilingual partners. Odity chose Pipplet to ensure that its candidates were fluent in both spoken and written English, with tangible benefits for the recruitment process and the quality of customer relations.

Odity Group is an expert in all forms of customer relations and knowledge, providing customized outsourced customer service to more than 250 brands worldwide, and in 20 different languages. The group's clients are international brands, including some in the luxury-goods sector and others in the consumer-goods sector. To ensure customers an impeccable quality of service, accurate assessment of oral and written proficiency in foreign languages is a crucial step in recruitment of Odity's future employees.

Key stats:

• Headquartered in France
• Present in 9 countries (France, China, United States, Italy, Belgium, United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan, and Madagascar)
• 2,000 employees
• 250 clients in the luxury, premium, banking, and insurance sectors

Charlotte Joubier, Odity’s Chief Experience Officer, explains how Pipplet has saved valuable time for its sourcing teams and helped them to better meet customer expectations.

Language proficiency evaluation: a challenge for efficiency and customer reassurance

In a sector that has seen soaring staff turnover, sourcing employees skilled in multiple languages requires patience and planning.

“In the past, recruiters handled language tests in person,” explains Charlotte Joubier. “This posed two problems:

• The assessment remained subjective, since it was tied to the recruiter's own impressions and mastery of the language.
• What’s more, we had no documentation. If a client raised a serious concern with meaning or syntax, we had no proof of the employee's level of fluency at the time of recruitment.”

Confronted with these challenges, Odity wanted to streamline its language assessment to save time and have proof of language proficiency to present to its customers when needed.

A “turnkey” solution, deployable on a large scale

In early 2021, Odity tested Pipplet and one of its competitors. “Now, we’re very happy to work with Pipplet,” Charlotte Joubier. “It’s a pleasant, easy-to-use tool.”

Pipplet's teams have built a customized test to meet Odity's specific needs—especially for its luxury customers. Already used in two countries, it will soon be adapted in all languages for use in the group's various markets.

“This test is very useful for our important recruitment decisions. We can more accurately assess the level of candidates’ language skills before recruiting. On the candidate's side, some candidates declare that they are fluent in the language, whereas the test shows that their level is more intermediate; this gives them a clear and objective vision of their level and the progress they need to make.”

“It’s also a tool that facilitates decision-making on training or coaching programs based on each candidate’s profile. In fact, if we have a crush on candidates who are still a little ‘green’ in terms of language skills, we sometimes suggest that the client make an exception—even if that means we need to provide additional training.”

Another of Pipplet's strengths is that the test assesses both written and oral language skills. “Our teams provide written and oral customer support; the same people handle both to better manage the flow. It's not an option: every candidate has to be equally good at speaking and writing English.”

An integrated tool upstream of the recruitment process

Pipplet saves Odity's recruitment teams valuable time with their candidate selection. “It’s integrated from the very start of the recruitment process,” explains Charlotte Joubier. “When a CV fits with our expectations, we send the candidate the Pipplet test before even scheduling a meeting. If he or she passes the test, we then talk by phone to evaluate the way the candidate expresses himself or herself. Only then do we proceed with the in-person interview.”

“Using Pipplet upstream is proving to be very efficient, as we used to have to haul in candidates to take tests on site. That took time and resources; obviously, we work much faster now!”

Thanks to Pipplet, Odity also has a recorded written and oral evaluation of the candidate's language level. “With each candidate's file, we have access to their evaluation report, their overall score, and details of their answers. This allows us to measure tangible skills as well as understand how they organize their ideas and arguments.”

Finally, having a reliable language assessment tool has proven to be an asset that Oddity can tout to its own prospective clients.

Pipplet's response to Odity's challenges

After almost a year of using Pipplet, Odity says the results have been very pleasing. Odity’s teams have become more efficient in their recruitment process and now have proof of their employees' level, certified by a trusted third party. The responsibility of assessing language levels no longer lies with the recruiters, with a stronger guarantee of quality. With a tool like Pipplet, they can focus on the quality of the customer experience and the optimal organization of teams across languages. Pipplet also allows them to consider diversifying the number of languages offered within their teams without risk, thereby strengthening their overall competitiveness. Moreover, they can use the same solution to test the level of their current employees for internal training and development!

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Want to see how Pipplet can help your own recruitment efforts? Contact us today to discuss how our language assessments can fit into your recruitment process.

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