5 Reasons to Improve the Recruitment of your Customer Relations Team

Think back to the last recruitments your company carried out for its customer service. Was it possible to find the qualified profiles the company needed, making sure they had the necessary skills for their work? Have these recruitments brought real success and contributed to bringing your business forward?

Among companies that recruit for their customer service, few have made any major changes to their recruiting methods in recent years. However, the quality of customer experience (CX) has gradually taken on a decisive importance when it comes to the perception of your brand by your consumers. And these days, customers have very high expectations of you. This is why the way your business recruits its customer relations teams has to adapt.

This article goes over the strategic importance of customer relations for any brand, their effects on the recruitment of the teams responsible for it and give you tips to improve your hiring process.

New Consumer Demands

According to a study by Genesys “While voice contact remains the most frequent channel for interacting with customer service, online chat has grown in popularity during the Covid-19 crisis. Now it’s used by more than a third of consumers in Europe. Moreover, roughly one in five European consumers (21%) also use chatbots and voice bots.

"When it comes to the quality of the customer experience, European consumers are demanding. More than 67% of them agree that a company only performs well if its customer service is excellent. At the same time, 40 to 70% of them note that interacting with customer service is often a source of stress. For companies in the customer relations sector, it has never been more important to understand the customers’ needs, to make their journey clear and intuitive, and to offer an interaction that demonstrates attention and empathy. "

These figures should bring companies to action, since there is an obvious correlation between the specific needs of customers and the recruitment process that candidates for these functions are confronted with. Consequently, HR departments must redesign certain operating practices as well as consider new ways of attracting, evaluating and training their new recruits.

The sometimes archaic recruitment practices

Most companies are still using old platforms for job searches, outdated application forms, and traditional interview techniques. Conversely, most modern recruitment and assessment services are helping uncover essential skills for a given job, such as interpersonal skills and language skills.

And this has real and tangible consequences that prevent many companies from achieving their full potential and limit their profitability. As such, the approach to recruiters has to evolve in order to ensure that the new talent in the company has the skills they need not only today but also in the coming future.

How do you know whether your company can improve its recruitment process for its customer service agents? Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Do you have any innovative tools to publish your job offers and to direct/manage your recruitment process?
• Does your company test for language skills with each potential new recruit?
• How does the company evaluate their interpersonal skills (written and oral)?
• Does your company have tools in place to avoid processing applications manually? 
• Is your recruitment process connected with operational processes (training, talent management…)?
• Has your company updated its interview questions in the last 12 months?

If you answer ‘no’ to these questions, it’s important for your company to begin redesigning its recruitment process starting today.

The Impact of the Covid pandemic

When it comes to customer relations, everything indicates that some changes from the Covid-19 pandemic are here to stay.

According to a recent survey by Salesforce “82% of consumers plan to continue to contact customer service at the same rate as they did during the pandemic, and an additional 10% state that they will contact customer service even more frequently. However, only 36% of customer services feel completely ready to handle an increase in contact and assistance.”

The pandemic has forever changed the ways that consumers expect customer services will be available to them. However, not all companies have made such a switch despite the need to offer consumers more personalized and more human interactions.

The concrete result of these lasting changes is the need to change and adapt the hiring processes and mission of customer service in your business in an equally long-lasting way.

The decisive importance of human relations and linguistic fluency

The language barrier remains a major pitfall for customer relations. When the customer service contact is passed on to a human agent, the latter must possess sufficient language skills in order to provide satisfactory answers to each customer, both orally and in writing.

With a direct impact on profitability: In the Common Sense Advisory survey, nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents stated they were more likely to make a second purchase if after-sales assistance/service was offered in their native language.

Thus, rapidly changing your company's recruiting practices should enable you to boost your potential not only in your domestic market, but also in international markets. But this requires a new approach to recruiting and meeting the high expectation for language skills, especially for customer service teams.

The future of your business is at stake

You get the point here. The staff you hire for customer service has a real impact on the future of your business. As a result, taking the time to build strong teams and allocate the right resources to them will be an investment in your business for the future.

In the aftermath of Covid-19, the quality and excellence of your company’s customer service is a determining factor in retaining your consumers now more than ever.

Additionally, when setting up in foreign markets, having the appropriate language skills is an indispensable element for your business to establish itself in these new markets.

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Does this article speak to you, and do you want to change your recruitment practices for your customer relations teams? Are you wondering about the implementation of interpersonal and language and skill assessments for your candidates? Don’t hesitate to contact us. An expert in recruiting customer relationship profiles will be happy to talk to you.