Underwhelming customer experiences often lead to instantaneous brand abandonment, making it more crucial than ever to recruit and retain quality service agents. At the same time, a highly competitive marketplace has led to shallow talent pools and constant turnover for these positions. As internal and external recruiters struggle to maintain both quantity and quality staffing levels, the game-changer of automation offers hope.
It’s become clear that the decades-old approach of manually weeding through resumes and cover letters has gone the way of the flip phone. The same goes for conducting and evaluating piles of customer service agent skills assessments -- and devoting massive amounts of labor time to the constant wave of interviews needed to fill the pipeline. The “do-it-by-hand” recruiting process has simply become too slow and cumbersome to keep up with demand.
A sophisticated automated recruiting platform removes the inefficiencies holding your organization back. The sheer number of FTEs you need to hire can be overwhelming when done manually – there truly are not enough hours in the day. Automating these laborious processes allows you to identify and hire far more candidates in far less time.
This newfound efficiency allows your recruitment resources to focus on tasks that require a human touch. Efforts like creating marketing programs that drive the right types of candidates into the mix, planning or attending recruiting events, and conducting one-on-one sessions with top performers. So you can get your best and brightest human resources folks doing what they’re great at, instead of getting blurry-eyed reading piles of resumes.
Not only does AI-based recruiting improve your ability to deliver the quantity of service agents you require, it also greatly improves your outcomes in terms of quality. AI software allows you to go to a granular level in identifying strong, reliable customer experience professionals. The ability to hire not only more agents, but better skilled ones, helps companies retain those fickle customers who are one poor experience away from swearing off the brand – and, of course, posting their displeasure on social media.
Recruiting strong, well-vetted agents starts with the ability of AI platforms to create thorough candidate profiles. The technology can generate better matches for hiring companies by collecting the types of identifying data that accurately predict the likelihood of a candidate’s success. These platforms can aggregate candidates efficiently and zero in on the ideal people for the job based on their profiles. By providing a highly customized screening process, you have the advantage of a sophisticated set of assessments to determine early on whether candidates meet key criteria.
The software guides the candidate through the intuitive completion of a range of carefully constructed assessments. These evaluations identify precisely what tasks the prospective employee is qualified to perform – including a range of pertinent capabilities, from typing skills to problem-solving abilities to a particular language fluency required. This deep-level information offers the ability to screen for any custom needs. Data that would be next to impossible to collect manually.
Data collected from the candidate profiles automatically builds a list of individuals who meet the criteria established by the hiring company. Recruiters receive a shortlist of well-vetted agents who are ready to work. Once a candidate has been selected, the efficiency of AI continues throughout the onboarding process. The new agent receives regular email touchpoints to ensure clarity of expectations and to keep them engaged as they await their first day.
The AI platform manages the entire onboarding process, providing real-time visibility into the status of the agent’s background check and drug test to ensure there are no delays. While the automated process plays out, a live representative reaches out to the new agent personally to answer any questions. Because as amazing as automated recruiting is, a human touch is even better.
Clearly, a better job match favors both employer and employee. Many other aspects of automated recruiting work to the benefit of both sides as well. For one, AI-powered systems offer the ability to “game-ify” the application experience to make it more engaging and more convenient for candidates to complete. Jobseekers are less likely to get frustrated and just head back to their rideshare gig -- which means more candidates in the pipeline.
AI software also eliminates the biases that even the broadest-minded recruiters have, even if not consciously. Because the technology is blind to subjective considerations, it is solely evaluating the aptitudes of the candidates. There is no judgment of demographics like age, gender, or race. The result is more opportunities for more people, while hiring companies gain a deeper, more diverse pool of candidates they may have otherwise missed out on.
And in the constant battle against attrition, these robust AI-generated profiles are a powerful ally. Hiring companies have deep visibility into the individual’s true fit for the job, rather than simply adding anonymous bodies who temporarily fill hiring quotas but are not long-term solutions. The candidates feel more comfortable with the role they are entering, greatly increasing the likelihood that they will stay with the company.
The advantages of automating the recruiting process also drastically reduce the timeline from first contact to start date – getting your new agents up to speed and on the job sooner. The steady flow of information to the new customer experience team greatly reduces the likelihood they fail to report for work on their start date.
AI software removes the subjectivity and inefficiency of manual recruiting processes, allowing hiring companies to keep up with the demand for not only a higher number of new customer experience representatives – but more highly skilled ones as well. You’ll have the right people with the right training ready to work, right away.
To learn more about Automated Recruiting Software, visit CXNinja. Get Ninjas.