The way modern customers want to engage with businesses is consistently changing over the years. Nowadays, companies need multi-channel approaches to provide the best possible customer service experience. Voice calls are still a very popular source of communication, but other methods are quite popular for different online businesses. Customers also love to contact companies through other convenient methods like email chat support services.
Companies are now recognizing the benefits and turning to email chat services. It is no surprise that the chat agent role is fast-growing for many contact centers and other businesses. You would possibly suppose that hiring excellent chat agents includes particularly ensuring their customer orientation and writing expertise. But, it is much more than that.
These tips will help you on how to hire the best email support agents, so you can choose
the right fit for your business, and improve your overall customer experience.
Tip #1: Determine Your Needs
The very first thing you need to consider when hiring an email chat support agent is to find out the level of assistance you are seeking. This may help you better identify what you need to look for when interviewing applicants. To find out what your desires are while looking to hire a chat agent, find answers to these questions:
● How many hours of support are
you looking to cover? Regular business hours are often preferred by some companies
depending on the capacity of their business, while others prefer to offer 24/7
chat support or work in different time zones.
● How many chat tickets do you
expect?
Consider the number of hours you are currently spending on chat requests to
figure out the level of assistance you are seeking.
● Will your ideal agents be able
to handle multiple customers? This will help you find the number of chat agents you need and
do they have skills in particular fields.
Tip #2: Define the Role and Skills Required
To hire an email chat support agent who can play an active role in that, you should have a very clear perception. For example what position does it involve and what are the skills needed to perform it well. It can be found out by doing a task examination to understand the hard and mushy skills and capabilities that candidates need to provide as an ideal email chat support provider.
For example, support agents excel at doing multiple
tasks, problem-solving, and work easily under stressful conditions to exceed
the customer’s expectations.
Tip #3: Conduct a Live Chat Simulation
Another important skill you need to consider Is “concurrency”, the ability of a chat agent to handle multiple chats at once. In particular, 95% of customers say they value effective, problem resolving support over speed.
Live Chat Simulation provides a compelling and
interactive candidate experience to help the person in question determine if
they can cope with the stress of work.
Tip #4: Evaluate Communication Skills
The ability to communicate effectively in writing is obviously a baseline skill required for email support. Online customers want their queries answers properly, to the point, answers that address their questions and helps them solve their problems. Observations show that factors such as poor grammar skills are having a negative impact on the company profile.
If your first impression is bad, you are more likely to
lose the trust of your customers, their interests, and their business.
Tip #5: Understand your customers
It’s easy for email support agents to mistakenly believe their job is, simply, to deal with tickets, one at a time. However, each customer’s engagement contributes to the company’s failure or success. Satisfied customers bring more leads while dissatisfied customers lead to the company’s bad profile.
An ideal support agent knows very well that each
customer’s communication has an impact on the reputation of the company.
Tip #6: Assess Your Candidates
Now, once you have decided what skills you need in an ideal email support agent, you can choose the right evaluation to help test for them and decide whether or not your applicants are good fits. Pre-job assessments are a great way to shorten your shortlist and make sure you only move forward with applicants who have the skills they need to succeed in the task.
Recruiting the right email chat support agents can improve the level of support you offer to your existing and future customers significantly. Customers will not only appreciate the speed and effectiveness of online support but also the capability to access customer-friendly service without spending ages listening to on-hold.
In case you are looking for remote email chat support
services agents, BPOXperts is the best BPO company to hire for that purpose. Their employees are super
professional and skillful to provide quality chat support services to your valuable customers.
