Cliché as it may sound, but the success mantra for businesses (big or small) is “Customer is King”. Strong customer engagement and retention strategies are needed for sustained business growth and success. A strong and proactive customer service and support team is the key to superior customer engagement and retention. It is equally important to have a sound hiring strategy for recruiting customer service and support personnel. The assessment must evaluate job-related skills and competencies, personality traits, and reasoning abilities of candidates before hiring. Pre-employment customer service assessment tests are extremely useful hiring tools that give the complete picture to HR.

Roles in the Customer Service and Support Function

Handling and resolving customer queries and complaints is the primary function of the customer service and support department. In addition to this function, this department also provides onboarding assistance, troubleshooting, and email support. Various roles in the customer service and support department are created based on the needs of the business. The main roles and corresponding responsibilities in this department are listed below:

• Customer service representative: the responsibilities of this role are resolving customer issues, handling returns, taking booking orders, and providing information about the company’s offerings.
• Call center agent: answering inbound calls, processing transactions, resolving complaints, and generating customer’s interest in products and services are some of the responsibilities of call center agents.
• Customer service supervisor: supervising the work of subordinates and facilitating onboarding and training of new service agents are two main functions carried out by the customer service supervisor.
• Customer service manager: the customer service manager supervises customer service teams, onboarding and training of new trainees, and also contributes to the hiring process.
• Customer support engineer: companies that require technical support for troubleshooting product issues, diagnosing technical issues, and identifying solutions require a customer support engineer.
• Customer support representative: the responsibilities of customer support representatives is to respond to customer queries and resolve product/service issues.
• Customer success manager: the main focus of a customer success manager is on long-term business success by establishing strong customer relationships and enabling them to leverage the company’s offerings.

Must have Skills in Customer Service Personnel

Building strong customer relationships is important for any business. Customer service and support personnel are in charge of handling customer queries and complaints and creating awareness about new products and service offerings. To carry out their duties successfully, customer service personnel must have the following skills:

• Patience and tolerance: handling irate and dissatisfied customers is part of everyday work for customer service personnel. Patience in hearing their issues and tolerating their angry/frustrated remarks is an essential trait that customer service personnel need to have.
• Communication: excellent verbal and written communication is a must for customer service personnel. Effective resolution of customer queries and complaints requires clear communication of the proposed solution.
• Conflict resolution: Customer complaints need to be resolved quickly and efficiently by customer service personnel. They need to have good problem-solving and negotiation skills to do that.
• Listening skills: primal to resolving customer issues is to listen to them carefully. Good listening skills help customer service personnel to understand the issue in detail and propose effective solutions.
• Empathy: customers reaching out to customer service are facing issues with usage of the product or malfunctioning of the product. Empathizing with frustrated customers is a must-have trait for customer service personnel.
• Product Knowledge: a thorough understanding of the product or service is a must for customer service personnel. Sound product knowledge helps in faster and more efficient resolution of customer issues.

All about Customer Service Assessment Tests

Relying on conventional hiring methods like written tests and interviews runs the risk of wrong hires, lengthy hiring processes, and biased hiring decisions. Wrong hiring decisions have a ripple effect on the organization’s performance, costs, and growth. Hiring customer service personnel without the necessary skills has adverse effects on the customer relationship, which ultimately leads to the loss of customers.

Pre-employment skill assessment tests are an objective way of evaluating candidate skills and personality traits that are required for performing the job efficiently. Customer service and support skill assessment tests ensure that candidates are evaluated on all the important skills and are a perfect fit for their respective roles. Online customer service skills assessment tests can be conveniently administered by simply sharing the test link through email to the candidate. The candidate can take up the test in a secure browser environment at a convenient place and time.

Key Features of Customer Service Assessment Tests

1. Easy administration:

Customer service call center assessment tests can be easily administered by the hiring team by sharing the email test link. The candidates simply have to click on the link to take the test.

2. Fraud and Cheating prevention:

Online activities of candidates can be monitored while taking up the customer service skills assessment test so that they cannot indulge in fraudulent practices.

3. Reports and analytics:

Customer service online assessment tests provide reports and analytics about the candidate’s performance immediately to the hiring team. The right customer service assessment tools enable data-driven hiring decisions.

4. Customer service and support skill assessment tests:

Help the hiring team to conduct quick and effective hiring at scale. Pre-employment skill assessment solutions like SkillRobo enable the recruitment team to hire the right candidates for roles across various business functions and industries. A thorough evaluation of the candidate’s strengths and areas of improvement helps in planning training programs to fill the skill gap.

Conclusion

Armed with the right customer service assessment tools the hiring team can make the right hiring decisions. SkillRobo offers fully customizable pre-employment skill assessment tests for a variety of roles across industries. The skill library can be customized according to the role for which the candidate is being evaluated. Online customer service skill assessment tests from SkillRobo can be used to screen candidates with top skills and competencies, and those that would fit into the company’s culture. Wrong hires would be a thing of the past with pre-employment skill assessment solutions like SkillRobo.

To experience the efficient and seamless hiring across roles and business functions, Sign Up for the free trial of SkillRobo.