The Challenge

Outstanding customer experiences set you apart from your competition, but they can be a challenge to provide online and at scale. Helping customers hire the right contact center personnel, at scale, is what this company’s business is all about.

They needed a robust and powerfully predictive recruiting process to effectively and efficiently evaluate thousands of candidates across different regions. Their plan for hiring transformation also included new tools that could more accurately predict a candidate’s potential for success, based on multiple key job skills. Finally, they wanted to build a team that could quickly and significantly improve overall customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores for their customer.

The Solution

After we conducted a detailed analysis of the customer support job function in conjunction with an in-depth study of their key expectations, it became clear to us that the best indicators of success were a) spoken English, b) soft skills (like empathy and flexibility), and c) a strong customer-centric mindset. To maximize the effectiveness of our evaluation, we recommended our AI-powered English language assessment tool with our Situational Judgement Tests (SJT).

SHL’s English language assessment tool uses artificial intelligence and voice recognition to evaluate spoken English language, accurately rating candidates on key parameters including pronunciation, fluency, listening, vocabulary, and grammar. Our Customer Service SJT evaluates candidates’ soft skills and customer-centricity. We combined these two proven, objective assessments into one innovative, AI-powered, phone-based soft skills assessment—an industry first.

The Results

Implementing SHL’s innovative solution resulted in improved hiring efficiency and effectiveness. Our AI-powered, fair and reliable assessments ensured that only highly-qualified candidates progressed to the interview stage, saving the interviewing team a tremendous amount of time and effort. Broader candidate reach was achieved via the highly scalable technology of our online testing platform. In fact, by utilizing SHL solutions, this organization is today able to reach and evaluate three times as many candidates as before.

Beyond efficiency, SHL helped them identify and hire top-notch customer service teams that beat the best in the contact center industry. They have seen their customer satisfaction scores (CSATs) increase by an incredible 32%, with 60% of this increase attributed to higher customer centricity of the hired associates and the remaining 40% attributed to spoken English skills. This business processing organization continues to utilize SHL’s assessment solutions, currently evaluating almost 7,000 applicants per month across the Philippines and has never been better positioned to meet its customers’ needs to continuously attract and secure top talent across the customer service vertical.

Learn more about our AI-Powered Assessments, which help hire best-in-class customer service teams.