The Hiring Pipeline in the Support Center Brian Flagg, Š 2011 Introduction A support contact center has two principle assets, a robust and well managed knowledge base, already covered in a previous article (Flagg, 2011), and talented people. Support centers typically invest significant time and organizational commitment into the training and development of specialists, supervisors, and managers, and the job of the support center leader is to ensure the time and commitment is not wasted. Whether an internal help desk or service desk, or a customer-facing product support center, the front-line specialists are the face of the overall support organization or even the entire company. Furthermore, front-line specialists are the talent pool for center supervisors and management, and for senior support technicians elsewhere in the support organization. As a result, a well-designed talent management or leadership program is important for the support center and definitely needs to include, and begin with, the front-line specialists. However, there is a significant risk in hiring what is typically an entry-level interviewee with little experience from which to drive a decision to engage in a long-term relationship as an employee of the company. Interviewing time and energy, credit checks and background checks all expend organizational resources. Given the level of attrition in a typical contact center, the hiring costs can be significant. A better approach to the open hiring of new employees is to utilize a staffing company, or several companies, to be the talent feed using a ‘try before you buy’ approach to staffing. This approach has many benefits. In addition to viewing the behaviors and measurements for a new specialist for several months before needing to make a hiring decision, the staffing firm owns the interviewing and hiring costs, and the majority of the risk.
This article assumes that a support center organization has already realized the importance of hiring employees for the front-line specialist positions, and will address the advantages and disadvantages or challenges associated with a ‘try before you buy’ staffing strategy.
A Better Hiring Process Given that the front-line specialists in your support contact center represent the face of your contact center to your customers, a steady supply of talented, competent, customer-friendly specialists are needed on the front-line. Consequently, you want a hiring process that ensures the best specialists are hired into your organization. Unfortunately, a hiring process extensive and exhaustive enough to capture only the best specialists would be far too expensive and time-consuming for most support centers. Hiring also presents risks and potential additional costs. A problem specialist can present the support center with a host of challenges and difficulties. Once an employee, a specialist will typically enjoy the protection of the company’s human resources department. The handling of a problem specialist will take the supervisor away from the coaching of desirable employees, and may cause the organization to embark on a protracted termination process, expending further organizational capital. Furthermore, a problem specialist can be a negative influence on others, and can impact the level of satisfaction of each and every customer he or she comes into contact with. To reduce the costs and risks associated with the hiring process, the use of a temporary personnel or staffing firm is an excellent approach. The staffing firm bears the costs of advertising for the positions, scheduling and conducting the interviews and follow-ups, background and credit checks, and the initial induction training. As the principle business of the staffing firm is, after all, staffing, the hiring process is efficient and executed at a lower cost than in the support center, whose chief mission is to handle support contacts.
From the standpoint of the staffing firm’s contribution to risk mitigation, several decisions are needed depending on the center’s aversion to risk. Should the staffing firm hire the specialists as employees, or as contractors? Should the staffing firm provide supervision or management, or should the staffing firm specialists be supervised or managed by support center leadership? What criteria must a staffing firm specialist meet to be considered for hire by the support center? Reducing Risk Many choices must be made when designing a talent management strategy that includes a staffing firm, or firms. Having the staffing firm provide its own supervisor(s) and management has its advantages. The staffing firm is responsible for schedule adherence, coaching or counseling, and specialist-based Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. If you are using more than one staffing firm, the firms are therefore isolated so that support center leadership can best assess each staffing firm on their merits, and even perform champion-challenger evaluations to ensure you are getting the best staffing firms for your center. If you do choose to have the staffing firm provide leadership, I strongly suggest as a good practice that the leadership of the support center interview and approve the staffing firm’s leadership candidates. A drawback to having the staffing firm provide leadership is that what you are really looking for is a staffing pipeline, in other words, to have the best of the staffing firm specialists be hired into your support center. If the staffing firm’s specialists are isolated and not supervised or managed by your leadership team, you will have a more difficult task of assessment when the time comes to consider a staffing firm specialist for hire. Furthermore, there will always be some difference between the supervision and coaching the staffing firm leadership provides and that provided by your contact center leadership. This can be alleviated by enacting a development period, or a period of time a candidate is moved under one of the support center supervisors for closer scrutiny and additional coaching. During the development period, the specialist remains an employee or contractor of the staffing firm, and thus if they do not perform well,
can be released without going through your company’s termination process. If you choose to implement a development period, physically move the specialist from the area of the floor designated for the staffing firm to the area under the control of your supervisor. This will ensure integration with the team should the staffing firm specialist ‘make the grade’. Finding a staffing firm that will hire the specialists as employees is important for ensuring the firm is invested in your success. Because with the hiring of the specialist the staffing firm assumes the risks of hiring a problem specialist, they will be much more diligent in their hiring process. Additionally, the employee of the staffing firm is engaged with the firm much more than if hired as a temporary or contractor. Terminating an employment agreement takes much more consideration than simply deciding to move from one contracting firm to another, and hence you will have a more stable workforce. Another very important consideration is the criteria to be used in the decision to move a staffing firm specialist into a development period or to decide to hire the specialist. You want to have feedback from the staffing firm supervisor and your development period supervisor, and you may also want to get feedback from some of your specialists. Clearly, individual metrics are key criteria to be considered. Be sure the metrics chosen are directly related to a specialist, such as schedule adherence, on-call resolution rate, and average talk time. Scores from your Quality Assurance team should also be considered, as should customer satisfaction. Timing is also a consideration. You want to have enough time with the candidate specialist with the staffing firm and under the eyes of your leadership team during your development period. A six month on-board to hire is recommended, and needs to be negotiated upfront with your staffing firm. Your principle goal is to reduce the risk associated with hiring a specialist, and the pipeline approach with a staffing firm as your partner is an excellent way to minimize this risk.
Finding the Staffing Partner Contract firms typically do not want to take on the hiring and initial training costs, and the risks associated with hiring, only to give up their best people 4-8 months later. Finding the right partner is crucial, a partner that will work with your leadership team. However, a staffing firm will need incentive to be a willing partner and talent feed. If the pool is large enough, the business alone may be enough incentive for a staffing company. Otherwise, there are several ways to incent a staffing company to provide an adequate talent pool. The best approach is to move incentives to the back end of the process. For example, if your company offers a hiring bonus to employees for referring the right candidates for hire, try to get this bonus applied to the staffing firm upon hire. If not, budget your own incentive program. Another approach is to pay slightly above market rate for the staffing firm specialists. This will add cost to your bottom line, but choose a pay rate that is an incentive, but still below what you would pay in hiring costs. There are intangible incentives you should include as well. For example, become a reference account for the staffing firm. This is of no cost to you but may have significant benefit to the staffing firm. Another benefit to the staffing firm is an extended contract. Be willing to be considered as a long-term partner.
Conclusion Your specialists are the face of your organization or company, and it is imperative that you have the best possible specialists providing service to your customers. Staffing firms can reduce the costs and risks associated with hiring your best possible specialists. You should choose a staffing firm that is going to be a longterm partner for you, so that both you and the staffing firm benefit from the relationship. A win-win in the staffing area will ensure a steady pipeline of muchneeded talent is available to your support center.
Bibliography Flagg, B. (2011, March). Strategy in the IT Contact Center. Retrieved from Support Center Excellence: https://sites.google.com/site/brianflagg/