Your customer service team is the heart and soul of your business. They are directly responsible for customer retention and shaping the opinion the public has of your brand.
If your business employs underperforming talent in these roles, your customers’ experiences will suffer, and, internally, your company will be starting a negative feedback loop of workplace toxicity.
So what can you do?
Asking behavioral interview questions that prompt your interviewee to provide specific situational responses is the best way to determine the high-value attributes that are engrained in their character.
Key attributes to evaluate during an interview are:
Emotional Intelligence
Why is this important?
Emotional intelligence is a little bit different than standard intelligence. Individuals with high EQs are more empathic and can easily put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
This is critical in customer-facing roles due to the frequent interactions with customers –each with unique personalities and circumstances.
Behavioral Questions:
- Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker or manager? Explain in detail the situation, how you handled the situation and what was the outcome.
- Tell me about a specific time when someone criticized your work/performance. Explain the situation in detail and share how you responded to that person and what was the result?
- Tell me about a time a customer made you upset? How did you handle the situation?
Motivation
Why is this important?
When motivation is influenced by external factors, this can lead to leads to feelings of resentment in your employees. These employees will then incorporate these feelings into the interactions they have with your customers and members of your staff. On the other hand, an self-motivated person will always be looking for ways to increase their productivity and the productivity of their team.
In short, the more self-motivated a workforce is, the higher their production output and overall customer satisfaction rates will be.
Behavioral Questions:
- Tell me a time when you discovered an issue with a process at work. What steps did you take to rectify the problem?
- Sometimes our workload can be stressful and unmanageable. Describe a time when you recognized that you were unable to meet the workload demand or a deadline. What did you do?
- Tell me about a time you had to learn something new at work. What was the situation and how did you approach learning something new? How did it make you feel?
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The Wrap Up
When building out your customer service team, it is important to look beyond the resume and assess the skills of the person sitting before you in the interview room.
As a hiring manager, you must first decide what the most important attributes and skills are for your business and develop detailed behavioral interview questions to determine if an applicant will add value to your team.
An interview process that screens for these qualities will eliminate the risk for attrition, safeguard against poor customer experiences, and protect your company’s culture before toxicity can take hold.