In some cases qualifications are a requirement as in the case of those working in the insurance industry or nursing. In many other situations qualifications are less prized because there is o en no clear correlation between them and the ability to successfully undertake the work.
As the call centre sector develops and matures, traditional industry indicators such as industry bodies, recognized skills and competencies, qualifications, etc will provide structure and shape. These developments will make the industry more formalized and transparent; however, in the interim, recruitment, induction and training processes o en have a greater significance in identifying suitable candidates.
To add complexity to the situation many of the skills used in contact centres are tacit ones hidden deep within people, making it hard for them and observers to describe what skills are being used. For this reason recruitment is o en based on identifying people possessing these inner skills and then selecting them.
Developing broader social knowledge and the ability to recognize a nuance in the voice of a customer and respond appropriately is not something that can be trained in a few weeks of induction. It is possible that some of these tacit skills may only be developed over a very long period of time. It is for these reasons that many employers seek people who possess a wide experience of life, eg running a household and bringing up children.
In addition, managers also seek well motivated individuals who possess a caring attitude, high levels of confidence; are ‘bubbly’ or lively; have a natural ability to talk, develop rapport and smile down the phone. For people who work in technical support, communication skills are less highly valued. Instead, the ability to problem solve is considered more important. In fact, the people in these roles are considered less likely to possess the ‘bubbly’ personalities.
Time and again there would appear to be a consistent message from employers – personality and particularly attitude are the most sought after attributes in job applicants. What is most remarkable is that many of them consider attitude to be something that is very difficult to train. One hotel manager stated that:
We didn’t actually look for people with experience. . . because we felt that wasn’t particularly important. We wanted people that had a personality more than skills, because we felt we could train people to do the job.
Managers at Telebank expressed similar feelings about the innateness of personality, motivation and enthusiasm:
Customer service, that’s not a skill. That’s in you. It’s the attitude towards customer service.
I firmly believe that if you have a CSR who has the right attitude and approach, so long as you’ve got somebody who’s willing to learn, who will be receptive to their feedback and sees it as an opportunity to develop themselves, then I believe that you can get them to where they need to be.
This emphasis on attitude is also valued in other industries:
The US’s only consistently profitable airline, Southwest Airlines, has been known to turn down a brilliant pilot because he or she was rude to a receptionist. Its mo o is summed up by the phrase, ‘you can train skills, you cannot train attitude’.
This emphasis on recruiting attitude might be interpreted as meaning that there is little room for training; however, this is not the case. While there may be rough diamonds with a positive attitude in the job market there is still a considerable need for developing these talents and shaping them so that they can be effectively applied in call centres. The remark by the woman entering hospital for a neurological condition sums up this perspective: ‘I don’t want to be operated on by a natural born surgeon, I want someone who has received all the training and has many successful years of experience!’
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