Finding the best people for a typical contact center can be challenging even in the most difficult of times; it does take a special breed of personality to take the stress while being confined to a tiny cubicle, and stay at it for a year or more.

 

The bar is set even higher when centers depend on individuals who have top-echelon service and knowledge pickup and retention hard skills and soft skills like compassion.

 

Beryl is a healthcare-exclusive teleservices firm that must jump over that bar for more than 450 clients, including hospitals and health systems, handling over 7 million customer interactions annually. The firm, based and has its contact center situated in Bedford, Texas, fields 320 employees of which 194 are agents, which it refers to as ‘Call Advisors,’ supervised by 13 team leads.

 

Beryl has a five-week screening process, which extends into new hires’ first days with it that is so rigorous that out of every 125 applicants only four make it through for a 1:30 hire to applicant ratio. Yet, it has a turnover rate of just 26 percent compared with up to 200 percent for many centers. It also has an average agent/supervisor ratio of 15:1, which is 50 percent to 100 percent lower than that commonly found in other centers, demonstrating both greater efficiency and professionalism.

 

“Our clients are extremely pleased with their caller’s experiences and interactions,” said Andrew Pryor, Beryl’s vice president of human resources. “Those experiences make up what we call the Circle of GrowthSM. We invest first in our staff, their careers and morale. In turn, they delight our callers, which create a positive experience for our clients. Clients then give back to our business so that we have more money to invest in our employees, completing the circle.”

 

Is Beryl onto something here? Would making contact center work more challenging to obtain and worth while, and by regarding and treating contact center agents as professionals, be the answer to turnover issues?

 

Pryor outlines that his company’s low hire to applicant ratio is attributable to four major challenges that his company readily meets: These are:

 

1. Finding “compassionate” call advisors

 

“We have a unique challenge as a healthcare call center -- we need to screen for compassion,” Pryor said. “Our Call Advisors may take calls from people who have just been diagnosed with a life-changing condition, or callers trying to find a physician for an elderly parent in another state.”

 

Beryl realizes that you can’t teach compassion, says Pryor, so it tries to ‘hire’ for it through its screening process. This starts with an initial phone interview. The first question its recruiters ask is, “Define the term compassion.” It then screens out applicants who believe compassion is defined by parameters such as, ‘helping those who deserve it. 

 

The behavioral based screenings and interviews are based on the book, High-Impact Interview Questions by Victoria A. Hoevemeyer. During the hiring process Beryl asks compassionate-based behavioral interview questions such as: 

During this initial call, Beryl is listening for voice tone, diction and speech pattern. Once an applicant has passed the phone screening they are invited to its campus for a series of computer-based technical assessments on spelling, computer knowledge, navigation, data entry and listening skills. The assessments are administered through a partnership with Kenexa Prove It.

 

Both sets of assessments: behavioral and technical have been very successful at washing out unsatisfactory applicants.

 

“The result of our pre-employment testing is that approximately 30 percent of our applicants are not able to meet our employment standards,” Pryor said. “Since implementing behavioral-based interviewing, we screen out approximately 40 percent of applicants who are not able to articulate their skill sets or who do not meet our [requirements].”

 

2. Screening for endurance and comfort in the contact center environment

 

Once an applicant has successfully completed the first round of behavioral-based interviews, they are invited to sit with a current Call Advisor. With this, they get an hour long side-by-side observation or ‘realistic job preview.’ 

 

“Our applicants get to experience the compassion demonstrated by our employees, get a sense of the physical surroundings and the technology which they'd be using, and a sense of the succession of calls coming in,” Pryor said. “Many decide after this experience that the position may be more demanding than they expected or otherwise doesn't meet their expectations.”

 

3. Building and retaining industry knowledge

 

Beryl’s Call Advisors face requests from customers nationwide with multiple healthcare needs. The new hire training program is designed, says Pryor, to build confidence, provide technology and customer service training, as well as build an understanding of healthcare terminology. The firm has assessments at the end of each week to ensure knowledge transfer and retention by the new hires. If the assessments are not passed, the new hire does not continue with the training program. 

 

“We think of this as a five-week interview and all applicants and new hires are aware of our training and development process,” Pryor said.

 

4. Hiring for longevity

 

Acknowledging that contact centers are notorious for high turnover, Beryl discusses career paths with applicants. Pryor said his company wants employees to see that growth is possible. The standards are set high for advancement. A team lead must have a Bachelor’s degree or two-plus years contact center supervisory experience.

 

“It’s that tenure which translates to a more highly trained, long-term Call Advisor’s ability to serve our callers through knowledge and strengthened customer service skills,” Pryor said.

 

 

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