Category: Customer Experience

Has this ever been done before?

Why not?

Did it work?

Why not?

If it’s new and useful, what problem is it solving?

Why has the audience rejected similar innovations in the past?

One day, this market will change. What will cause that change to happen?

Finding your next great call center agent — someone who will help your contact center succeed— is no easy feat. Asking these call center interview questions will help you find the best agents to help the organization excel.
Hiring the wrong agents can be detrimental and costly. 27% of employers said that just one bad hire costs more than $50,000. Good contact center managers instinctively know this, especially since 95% of a manager’s success resides in selecting the right people.
It’s key to ask the right questions during the interview, ones that help determine whether a candidate possesses certain competencies. But not everyone understands which questions to ask, and more importantly, what answers to look for.
Types of Interview Question for Call Center Candidates:
We’ve split these job interview questions into three sections based on the type of interview question to make it easier for you to find what you need. Click to be taken to that section:

Personal Call Center Interview Questions
Practical and Skill-Based Call Center Interview Questions
Interview Questions for Call Center Supervisors
Closing Interview Questions for Call Center Candidates

Here are the top call center interview questions you should be asking to hire the best customer service representatives.

Our Best Call Center Interview Questions Are:

Tell me about yourself
What do you like to do for fun?
How would your previous team/manager describe you?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
What enticed you to apply?
Why are you leaving your current role?
What are the key factors that make a call center successful?

Tell me about a time when you had to handle an unreasonable or angry customer.
What procedure do you follow when a customer contacts you?
Tell me about a time when you received constructive criticism
Describe a time that you needed to know or learn something new and how you got that information.
Tell me about the toughest decision or biggest work challenge you had in the last six months?
What have you done to promote great customer service?
What achievement are you most proud of?
How do you handle working in a contact center?
How many people have you managed in the past?
Can you talk about a time when you escalated a call and how you handled it?
How do you go about onboarding a new employee?

Tell me about a time one of your call center agents was underperforming and how you addressed it.
Does this role still line up with your expectations based on the advert?
Do you have any questions for me?

Personal Interview Questions for Call Center Candidates
1. Tell me about yourself
Take a few minutes at the start of the interview to let the candidate talk about themselves. Instead of jumping right into questions, this approach gives the candidate a moment to relax and be at ease.

Let the candidate tell their story before jumping into all the specific questions. That helps to get the candidate comfortable, and it also gives you an overview of who they are. A good answer will explain why they left one organization to go to the next and what they learned from each venture.
2. What do you like to do for fun?
If they say things like “hanging out with friends and watching movies,” they probably aren’t the go-getter type you’re looking for. Great talents have a passion outside of the office.
Perhaps they like to cycle, play guitar in a band, or have a side gig — what better way to show a hard work ethic?
How to Effectively Set Goals with Your Call Center Team
In any event, while “hanging out with friends” is a good social trait, you should certainly look for the candidate that offers more to this answer.
3. How would your previous team/manager describe you?
The candidate should provide examples and situations that reflect their descriptions. See if they describe a good culture fit for your contact center.
4. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Ideally, the person you hire can grow in your organization. If you’re hiring an agent and their goal is to be involved in management in the next five years, it shows you that they’re motivated to grow and lead. That is a great way to hold on to talent!
5. What enticed you to apply?
Now that you know a bit about them and their background, it is good to understand why they are interested in this particular role. Why are they excited about working for your call center?

Look out for specific keywords in their answer. Assuming this is a role for a contact center agent, responses like “customer-facing” or “problem-solving” might be great keywords for you. It also shows you how well they understand the role.
6. Why are you leaving your current role?
This question is crucial. The answer needs to demonstrate a good reason for the decision. The candidate should also remain positive and show what they learned in their last role.
If the candidate is currently employed, it’s important to understand why they are moving on. Answers like “I’d like to learn more” or “it’s time to spread my wings” are great, but not if they’ve only been at the job for a few months.
7 Things Great Call Center Managers Do Every Day
Watch how often the candidate jumps from job to job, as this can be a bad sign. If they quickly shame the company, this also shows a lack of loyalty and professionalism.
Practical Call Center Interview Questions
7. What are the key factors that make a call center successful?
This question helps identify candidates with great potential, even if they haven’t spent much time researching the company. Now it’s time to understand what they know about the contact center industry as a whole. It also gives you a chance to see what ideas they will put forward to make your contact center successful.
8. Tell me about a time when you had to handle an unreasonable or angry customer
Every agent has experienced a negative phone call with a customer. How they handled it and what they learned is essential to career growth.
If they have any experience working with customers whatsoever, they will have a story to tell for this one. It’s important to see what kind of story they choose to share and how they handle tough customer questions.

Ideally, they’ll explain how they were the hero in terrible customer interaction. You want to hear that they could remain calm and go out of their way to make the customer happy even if they weren’t pleasant to work with. Ideally,  their manager was thrilled with the outcome too.
9. What procedure do you follow when a customer contacts you?
The appropriate answer to this will vary depending on your contact center and industry. Still, any confident agent will be able to give you a rough outline of how to resolve common questions and problems. It should sound something like this:

Greet the customer and introduce yourself.
Ask the customer how you can help them.
LISTEN to the customer. EMPATHIZE. LISTEN.
Help the customer to find the best solution.
Check the customer is satisfied and if they need anything else.

10. Tell me about a time when you received constructive criticism
It’s always interesting to hear how people handle constructive criticism. This question is tough, but you can usually tell by how the candidate tells the story if the criticism was well received. If the candidate says something like, “I appreciated the feedback,” then it’s likely they don’t get defensive when given advice.
11. Describe a time that you needed to know or learn something new and how you got that information.
Any call center job requires agents to undergo intensive training in either the product or industry they’re working with. Your candidates must be not only comfortable learning but actively looking to learn more about the products they provide service for.
5 Creative Ways to Manage Agent Shortages in Your Contact Center
The best candidates will be happy to talk about the various times they’ve had to learn something new and will often go about this voluntarily. They should also be able to demonstrate an ability to take the initiative to find out answers for themselves.
12. Tell me about the toughest decision or biggest work challenge you had in the last six months?
This is a very challenging question, so make sure to give the candidate time to think it over.

There’s no right answer here. Just let the candidate tell their story, and hopefully, the challenge had some merit. It’s a good opportunity to gauge what the candidate considers a tough decision.
13. What have you done to promote great customer service?
Their answer about what makes a successful call center should have covered the importance of q
uality customer service, so let’s dig a bit deeper.
Get an understanding of specific actions that promote great customer service. Do they have a sense of what this means in practice? How have they incorporated that into their behavior and phone manner?
14. What achievement are you most proud of?
What a candidate is most proud of can tell you a lot about them as a person. Perhaps it was solving a difficult customer complaint – this shows they are passionate about helping people or say it was achieving an award – this shows they are motivated by recognition.
15. How do you handle working in a call center?
Working in a call center is a high-pressure, high-stress, fast-paced environment that can be monotonous at best and abusive at worst. You need to make sure your agents can handle the day-to-day stresses of life in the contact center.

Use this question to determine how your candidates deal with the relentless, often negative, emotional load they take on during customer calls.
Interview Questions for Call Center Supervisors
16. How many people have you managed in the past?
Whether they’ve managed a couple of employees or a large team of reps, they should be able to talk a little about that experience.
7 Tips for Success from Call Center Professionals
If necessary, prompt them to expand on the management techniques they’ve tried out in the past and how they have tried to hone their communication skills and management style through experience.
17. Can you talk about a time when you escalated a call and how you handled it?
The purpose of this question is to get the candidate to demonstrate that they were able to solve the problem and improve the customer experience at the same time.
Look for top candidates who talk about how they use these experiences to create teachable members for the rest of their team.
18. How do you go about onboarding a new employee?
Getting onboarding right is crucial for success. You want to make sure your call center’s new manager understands the importance of a good onboarding process and how to deliver one.
Look for candidates that highlight the importance of setting expectations, practical training, and creating ongoing opportunities for improvement.
19. Tell me about a time one of your call center agents was underperforming and how you addressed it.
Feedback and performance assessments are crucial for managing any business, particularly the call center. You want to know how this person delivers feedback and how they respond to a disengaged or struggling employee.

The best candidates to be your contact center manager will talk about how they spoke to the agent to get to the bottom of the issue and work with them to form a plan to resolve it.
Closing Call Center Interview Questions
20. Does this role align with your expectations based on the advert?
Writing a concise and accurate job description is hard. This question is your opportunity to ensure that your advert aligns with your expectations for the candidates. Are you putting out the right ad to entice the right people?
21. Do you have any questions for me?
This question is a good opportunity to see how much they know about your business. Maybe they’re asking about your client base or what the work environment is like – these are all great questions!
7 Things Great Call Center Managers Do Every Day
Bad questions would be jumping right into compensation or, worse, not having any questions prepared at all. The first shows you that they’re mainly interested in money and not the opportunity; the latter shows you they aren’t serious about the role.
Great Call Center Interview Questions Make Great Call Centers
Out of more than 6,000 hiring professionals worldwide, more than half said they had felt the effects of hiring someone who turned out to be a poor fit for the job or did not perform well.
A successful call center manager needs to understand that the first step to training the right agents is hiring. Remember the words of Steve Jobs,
“The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.”

The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. – Steve Jobs #managemet #hiringClick To Tweet

As candidates prepare and practise their responses, interviewers too should be compiling critical questions and thinking about the best answers.
It is also important to have a mix of canned questions that are significant to the success of the role while leaving room for some conversational questions. If you can develop a dialogue in the interview, you’re more likely to build rapport, leading to faster decisions and better outcomes.
It’s also important to remember that employees need continuous nurturing. After hiring the candidate, make sure you devote time to ongoing relationship building. Have regular meetings to make sure they’re happy and are meeting their goals.
 The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

I am the Customer Experience supervisor for a large dairy. Customer Experience is new to our organization and we’re just getting the department up and running. We’re at a place where we’re ready to get some feedback from customers and I’m curious what methods other organizations are using to survey. For example, do we start with our largest customers and take an 80/20 approach? Or do we make it more wide spread? What methods do we use for surveying? After call survey? In person interview? Email survey? I’ve setup ideation sessions with a core group from my organization but I’d like feedback from others with experience in this area since this is new to our organization. Please let me know if you have recommendations, suggestions etc. Thank you in advance!
submitted by /u/Barnsr01 [link] [comments]

My friend Christina, who works in IT, called me last month thrilled about her new role: “I’m a Chief Happiness Officer”, she said. “Is that even a role, “I thought, but I promptly replied, “Congratulations, well done!”. I was confused. I had been led to believe that happiness is the fruit of success, not a…
The post What will corporate happiness look like in a hybrid work environment? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Do you have a script? Most of us do.

Here’s a new piece of software. Do you immediately read the manual front to back? Dive in and see how it works? Tense up in fear and distaste?

She’s going to give you some feedback. Is your first reaction to be defensive, or to lean into the goodwill that’s being offered?

We’re going to fly somewhere for a meeting. Do you get stressed about all the preparations of showing up at the airport with everything you need? Are you filled with curiosity about how to spend the evening in a new city before we head back?

These scripts are everywhere. If the ones you have are working for you, you’ve discovered a reliable way to succeed and find satisfaction as you do.

But if they’re not, it might pay to spend the energy to approach the next cycle, ‘as if’.

The script might not be your fault. It might have taken a really long time to become ingrained. And it might be getting in the way.

What if you could leave the script behind, just this one time? It might take a lot of focus and effort, it might be incredibly difficult, but just once might be do-able.

The thing that gets us stuck isn’t us. It’s the script that we’ve decided is our only option.

Call it out. Realize that it’s not the only option. A script doesn’t always feel like a choice, but until we realize we’re running one, it’s unlikely we can do the hard work it takes to change it.

Rewrite the script, rewrite the outcome.

 CX Summit returns on January 27, to navigate us further in the world of Customer Experience. Don’t miss your chance to learn from the leading voices in the CX industry. Apply today!   What can you expect from the event?   Live from 10 countries, with more than 30 global CX gurus and leaders presenting ways to create, deliver and optimize the best customer experiences. As well as answering the…
The post Take part in CX Summit 2022 appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

From organizing call center agents to employing the right technology and developing a customer experience strategy, there are plenty of moving pieces in the successful operation of a contact center. Getting all those nuts and bolts to run in perfect harmony is often referred to as call center workforce optimization (WFO).
Although it sounds technical, WFO is just a fancy way of speaking to the management of all things call center-related in a way that boosts agent productivity and overall call center performance—however, there is a lot involved in developing a successful WFO strategy, and we have you covered with all the details.
Industry Report: State of the Contact Center 2022
What does call center workforce optimization look like?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this one. Really, your WFO will be different depending on the industry, size, and needs of your call center. Some call centers find it easier to go with one single workforce optimization solution that fits all their needs.
Oftentimes, this can be quite expensive and doesn’t always contain everything a call center needs either, in which case, combining different technologies and strategies and ensuring they flow together is your next option.
How do I get started?
First, you need to understand the areas that contribute to the operation of your call center. Next, you should ensure they’re working together like a well-oiled machine. Here are some different areas you might want to keep in mind:
Workforce management quality.
Workforce management relates to the forecasting of call volumes to properly schedule call center agents. Having more or less staff at the right times can decrease overall contact center costs, improve agent productivity by decreasing burnout potential, decrease wait-times for customers, and more. Some call centers managers take care of these tasks manually while others choose to use specific call center software for workforce management.
5 Tips to Prevent Call Center Agent Burnout Before it Begins
Agent onboarding and training.
Keeping agents interested in their work can be a challenge, but with the right onboarding and training strategies, they’ll constantly be learning new information. Focusing on overall agent engagement is a great way to ensure your staff is happy at work—and customers will be able to tell the difference during their interactions, too.
Customer experience.
When hiring and training new agents, be sure to stress that your contact center is customer focused. Introduce your customer experience strategy to newbies and offer refresher courses on customer service to established agents. Consider providing customers with an omnichannel experience, where they can choose whether to reach out by phone or online via chat. You may even decide to use social media messaging and comment monitoring as another means of convenient customer assistance.

TIP:
Customer surveys (often called customer satisfaction surveys or CSats) can help you determine your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to customer service.

Agent and customer interactions.
Management should always be actively involved in call monitoring to keep customer service standards high and ensure agents are meeting the needs of their customers by going above and beyond. Call center software that provides customer interaction analytics is available, but this task can also be performed by managers, as long as the findings are recorded and kept private.
Analytics and reporting.
To gain insight into where your agents and call center performance stand, keep a pulse on a variety of key performance indicators (KPI). Technology like the Fonolo Portal can help you track important stats that will help you determine what’s working and what needs to be improved for call center success.
Call center technologies to optimize your workforce:
Visual IVR.
If your contact center doesn’t already use a Visual IVR system, it’s time to invest in one. Similar to a traditional IVR, this technology guides your digital users through a navigational menu to connect them with the right support agent. This encourages your customers to reach out through your website or mobile app, saving your phone line for more urgent and complex queries.
Voice Call-Backs.
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs smooth out call spikes, lower abandon rates, and improve the customer experience overall. Agents will have more time to be focused and productive and feel less overwhelmed on busy days, which improves agent engagement as well.

DID YOU KNOW?
Call-backs and Visual IVR are a powerful duo in the contact center. You can use scheduled call-backs to escalate digital users to the voice channel, minimizing risk of abandonment.

AI chatbots.
Convenience is key when it comes to achieving high CSat scores. Online chat functions offer customers a quick way to resolve common or smaller issues and AI chatbots take pressure off agents by reducing call volumes and eliminating the need for agents to monitor online chats.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

The ostracod is extinct. Over millions of years, with good reasons at every step, it evolved to become the creature it was.

And when we add up all of those little steps, we end up with a creature that was no longer fit for its environment.

Organizations develop like this. So do work practices, cultural systems and “the way we do things around here.”

I’m sure there was a really good reason twenty years ago for all the steps that are now involved in the thing you do right now, but your competitor, the one who is starting from scratch, is skipping most of them.

Every day we get a new chance to begin again. And if you don’t, someone else will.

Why do bikes stay stable when you ride them (and fall down when you stop)?

A tiny reason is the gyroscopic stability of the wheels, but the real reason is the forward momentum of the rider. And we learn the first day we’re on the bike that forward motion is essential or we’re in trouble.

In our fast-moving world, it’s easy to get hooked on personal velocity. What’s in your inbox? Did someone follow you in the last ten seconds? Where’s the beep and the beep and the beep from your last post?

Perhaps we talk faster, interrupt, talk over, invent, dissect, criticize and then move on to the next thing. Boom, boom, boom.

Don’t want to fall off the bike.

But life isn’t a bike. It works fine if we take a moment and leave space for the person next to us to speak.

Are you going fast without getting anywhere?

We can get hooked on systems that want us to get hooked, on platforms that use our effort as their product, our emotions as fodder for their next milestone.

Doing something new simply because we’re worried that the old thing we were doing a minute ago isn’t fast enough is a waste. The crowd might enjoy it, but in the long run, it diminishes our contributions and our joy.

I could just as easily write about the person who is stuck, sitting in the back of the room, the corner of the Zoom, looking for deniability and a place to hide. That person with no velocity has ceased to contribute and might be in as much pain as the person who’s doing nothing but maintaining high personal velocity.

Somewhere in between the two, as in most things, is the place we’d like to be.

Forrester has recently released a guide entitled: “Journey Maps and CX Transformation”, which goes through how to use existing journey maps as methods to create investments, interest in CX, and boost performances. The guide will cover such topics as:   How journey maps can act like springboards.  Working on CX projects that will have a greater…
The post Forrester’s guide: journey maps to kickstart CX transformation  appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.