It’s Still a Jungle Out There—Beating the Competition to the Best Talent

Yes, the “Great Resignation” (or “Great Realignment,” “Great Reassessment,” etc.) continues—creating unprecedented competition for top talent—particularly for contact centres, where staffing has been a perennial challenge.

Though the last few years has seen record numbers of people leaving the workforce, the vast majority are not leaving permanently. Rather, they are using this time to re-evaluate their career paths and explore opportunities that will offer them improved work-life balance and job satisfaction.

In fact, according to a Willis Towers Watson’s 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey, 44% of today’s employees actually consider themselves “job seekers.” Couple that with the pandemic-fuelled ability to work from anywhere, candidates can apply from anywhere—resulting in a bigger applicant pool than ever—making it more challenging (and time consuming) than ever to find the candidates who are most likely to be long-tenured top performers.

Get the Right People for the Right Job Without Unnecessary Delays

In today’s ultra-competitive job market, you need to take advantage of all the tools at your disposal to help you beat your competitors to top talent.

Filling openings for contact centre agents has never been an easy task—especially when it comes to hiring those who are most likely to be long-tenured top performers. In today’s market, the challenge is greater than ever.

In fact, a recent search on Indeed.com uncovered more over forty thousand open contact centre positions nationwide. With the competition for the best agents more intense than ever, you need to take advantage of tools that will help you find the right candidates to fill your openings as quickly and efficiently as possible, while shortening your overall hiring process.

Consider investing in tools (such as Verint Intelligent Interviewing) that provide AI-driven candidate screening to help identify candidates most likely to be successful in their jobs. As a result, you can achieve improved hiring metrics while shortening the overall hiring process—a key factor when trying to beat out your competitors for top talent.

Verint Intelligent Interviewing’s cloud-based solution leverages machine learning, proprietary audio models, and predictive analytics to help evaluate candidate engagement, knowledge, and communication skills to identify those candidates most likely to be successful in their jobs and freeing up hiring managers to focus on other tasks.

And Then Keep Them!

Again, one of the key reasons cited by people taking part in the Great Resignation is the desire for improved flexibility and work/life balance. Companies looking to hire in today’s marketplace need to take a close look at the type of flexibility they can provide their employees to help foster engagement and long-term retention.

Here are three things to consider:

• Flexible Scheduling—Staff need access to online resources that allow them to adjust their schedules to meet their preferences while managers need to have access to tools that enable them to maintain the right staffing levels with the right people (and/or bots) doing the right work at the right time.
• Flexible Work—Employees are demanding more satisfying variety in their work. You will need to be able to develop schedules that let agents swap tasks and channels to increase employee retention.
• Offer Opportunities to Develop new Skills—As you struggle to meet optimal contact centre staffing levels, you want to ensure that you are making the best use of the employees you do have. Cross-training your staff so that they can fill-in in other capacities as workloads ebb and flow. By viewing your employees as “one workforce,” you can keep them engaged while providing them with new skills for career advancement.

Give Them Tools for Success

The best agents are generally those who feel secure that they have the knowledge they need, when they need it, to help their customers. Knowing that they will be able to quickly access the most up-to-date answers to even the most complex questions, while also lowering average handle time, goes a long way toward boosting agent confidence and improving job satisfaction.

Learn More and Join Us at Engage!

To learn more about how Verint can help you combat the effects of the Great Resignation while staffing your contact centre with high performing agents, reducing attrition, per hire cost, and increasing customer satisfaction, check out our latest eBook: “6 Keys to Surviving and Thriving Through the Great Resignation”.