If you need to hire team members to interact with the public, you may wonder about the best approach. After all, it’s relatively easy to evaluate hard skills, but soft skills are key to customer service, and they’re not as easy to discern. Still, there are a few tips you can follow to help identify candidates who can give excellent customer service.
Behavior-Based Interviews
A job interview should be an open dialogue between two people that helps both determine whether the position is the right fit. But too often they merely show which candidates are good at interviewing. Change it up by focusing less on specific skills or “strengths and weaknesses” type questions, and more on open-ended questions that illustrate behavior.
For example, you might ask about a time when the candidate had to work with someone they disliked. Or you could ask about projected future behavior, such as, “What would you do if a customer demanded a full refund?” Just remember to look for the general behavioral patterns in the answer, even if it doesn’t follow your company’s specific procedures.
Check with Your Current Employees
When you have a new candidate come in for an interview, ask others in the company to note their thoughts. Was the person polite to the receptionist? Did he thank the parking garage attendant? While many people know how to behave in an interview, these smaller interactions with others can speak volumes about their potential in a customer-facing role.
Check Your Assumptions
Even in today’s world, unconscious bias can be a real problem in the workplace. You may have a subconscious “type” – in gender, age, appearance, or even physical abilities – that you assume would make the best customer-facing team members. In reality, though, typecasting is a poor way to choose employees, and it could even open you to discrimination lawsuits. Focus on personality, and you may be surprised by which candidates surface as the best choice.
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