"The Easy Way To Weed Out the Bad Apples When Recruiting Customer Support Personnel"

There's no doubt that recruiting your Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) represents a sizeable and recurring cost to your center. Since CSRs have often been noted as having a relatively high turnover rate, the need for better methods of recruitment has never been greater. Some companies give sign-on bonuses to applicants who are established leaders in their field. Others provide a bonus for those employees who stay with the company for a specific period of time, ensuring that their initial investment in the employee's training is returned. Still others have no methods in place to decrease the turnover rate, either because for their type of center the rate is lower than the national standard, or because they simply pass along the costs associated with a high turnover rate to their customers.

A company in Danbury, Connecticut has a potential solution to the many pitfalls of the high employee turnover rate for call centers. The Job Applicant Screening Simulator, or JASS, is a software package that allows your CSR applicants to fill out an application online, automatically noting where prerequisites and other important requirements are met or fall short, then runs your applicants through a simulated call center environment, answering simulated calls and entering caller information and information on the nature of the call into a simulated call tracking system. The software then provides scores in five key areas, comparing the applicant's scores against a "proven CSR's scores."

The system, which was developed with Purdue University's Multimedia Magic, is designed to screen applicants while at the same time exposing them to a realistic simulated environment of a call center. Eight simulated scenarios are presented to the applicant for four different types of incoming calls: 1) The caller has a problem that needs to be resolved, 2) The caller has a question, 3) The caller has a complaint, and 4) The caller has a request.

Scoring on each scenario is presented in the following five key areas: accuracy, logic, listening skills, learning, and empathy to the caller's situation. In addition, other areas are measured, such as the applicant's typing speed in words per minute.

Rosanne D'Ausilio, President of Human Technologies, the company in Danbury that sells the tool, reports that many companies who have used JASS have already recovered their investment in the system many times over. Recruiting, screening, and training costs companies between $8,000 and $12,000 per new applicant annually. When you combine the expense with turnover rates of between 30% and 60%, with 40% being first year terminates, it is easy to see where the investment pays off.

And companies who have purchased the system are pleased with its results. CIGNA Healthcare, of Bloomfield, CT, purchased the system for its new service center in Charlotte, NC. They report that new hires are now better suited for the job. Their past applicant selection process was expensive and labor intensive, and the new JASS system automates the process. Applicants can use the system at any time, and the results have saved CIGNA money and time, as well as reduce the turnover rate.

We reviewed the JASS demo CD sent to us from Human Technologies to give you a feel for how the system works. When we first ran the demo, we were presented with several options, from viewing a slide show on the background of JASS, to actually receiving a simulated incoming call, where we would then be scored based on our results.

After viewing the slide show, we opted for the test call. First the demo took us through some brief instructions on how to handle the simulated call, using another simulated call in conjunction with the instructions. We found the instructions to be very straightforward, and in no time we were ready to take on the "real" call.

The call we handled was a complaint on some bad potato chips a customer had purchased. By making selections on what we wanted to say to the caller, we were able to uncover where and when the chips were purchased, as well as the lot number on the packaging itself, which we promptly entered into our simulated call tracking system, along with the caller's name, address, and phone number. Once the call was completed, we were able to review our scores against the scores of a proven CSR.

It was also interesting to have several different people handle the simulated call, then compare how well they performed against each other. The scoring results clearly showed that some people are better suited for customer service than others.

If CSR turnover rate is a concern of yours, the JASS system is an ideal way to make sure that the applicants you hire are better suited for the position. It goes without saying that the money spent on your CSRs' training will go a lot farther if they stay at your company. The JASS system may be the tool you need to reduce turnover and save time and money as a result.

The JASS system allows your CSR applicants
to handle simulated incoming calls





Scoring Results are compared against
a proven CSR's scores

For more information on the Job Applicant Screening
Simulator (JASS), contact:

Human Technologies
22 Chambers Road
Danbury, CT. 06811
Phone: (203) 000-0000, Fax: (203) 000-0000