Background

With the growth in mobile phones, portable music players, pay for TV services, and other technology driven products, the technical support representative is becoming a critical job family and call type for many contact center organizations.

Hiring for these individuals is a difficult challenge due to the unique combination of problem solving ability, problem solving interest, and capacity to work with technology products required for these positions.  FurstPerson implemented a technical support representative hiring solution for a telecommunications firm with over 4,000 Technical Support Representatives (TSR).  The firm was seeking to improve new hire fit with the job, call quality performance, and retention improvement.


Solution

Leveraging our Research and Consulting team, FurstPerson conducted a job analysis to understand the performance gaps that the client was experiencing within the Technical Support Representative position.  Starting with the key business outcomes and performance metrics, FurstPerson’s research and consulting team broke down the TSR job into key tasks and competencies.  Then, the job tasks and competencies were linked to the critical job performance metrics. 

FurstPerson then recommended four assessments that are delivered via the 1stHire assessment platform:
  • AutoScreen® Plus – predicts work habits
  • CC AIMS – predicts work attitudes and work skills
  • CC Audition® - simulation that predicts work ability and skills
  • 1stSolve – cognitive ability test that predicts work ability
The client uses call quality and average handle time to evaluate production performance.  Using these metrics, FurstPerson conducted a validation study by reviewing performance and retention results of over 2,000 hires for the Technical Support Representative position.

Results

Based on the analysis, FurstPerson identified that new hires who do not meet the baseline performance requirements for Average Handle Time and Call Quality have a 2.7 times higher 0 to 90 day attrition rate.  This statistic suggests that more people may leave because they cannot perform the TSR job, recognize their limitations, but leave voluntarily before they are termed or put on a written action plan.
      
However, this term will show up as a voluntary term not an involuntary term related to the performance issue.  With most call centers experiencing 60 to 70 percent voluntary attrition, this key data point suggests that a healthy percentage of voluntary attrition is really performance driven.  Implementing a predictive assessment solution geared towards measuring the potential to perform on the job will help reduce both turnover and improve new hire job performance against key metrics.

The following chart provides a summary of the conclusions:

call quality and AHT

FurstPerson was able to demonstrate the following:
  • Candidates who pass the FurstPerson assessment solution outperformed the baseline performance requirements for Call Quality and Average Handle Time on average.
  • For example, new hires that pass the assessments had an Average Handle Time 30 seconds faster than the performance baseline while maintaining or exceeding Call Quality performance standards.

In addition, FurstPerson was able to demonstrate that by adopting the Technical Support hiring process, this organization can reduce annualized turnover by 30%.

  • With turnover costs at $4,500 per hire, this has the potential to save the organization $6 million in turnover costs.
  • Supervisors rated TSRs with higher scores (versus lower scores) on the FurstPerson assessments at a 29% higher rating for Technical performance and 36% higher rating for Overall performance.
  • The savings in attrition plus the productivity gain with reduced AHT results in a significant return on investment for this organization.
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