Case Study: ASSESSMENT INCORPORATED
Major Worldwide Hotel Corporation increases call center representative performance while reducing turnover.
Overview of the Problem
A leading global hotel chain was experiencing several problems with their contact center representatives. The first of these was the fact that the company initiated a new set of performance incentives that rewarded agents for up selling. The corporation expected large increases in revenue based on this new strategy. Secondly, turnover rates for these representatives were extremely high hovering around 60%, causing difficulty in ensuring continuity and undermining efforts to train employees on techniques required to help them fulfill new sales objectives.
Finally, the corporation had difficulty understanding the value of the rep position to their bottom line as they were not able to develop a process for measuring the effectiveness of selection decisions relative to important job performance outcomes (i.e., sales, customer service behaviors).
This corporation contacted Assessment Inc. to help them develop a selection process for these reps that would both help select individuals who would thrive in a sales driven environment and who would be likely to want to remain in this environment. The system was to have built in links to downstream performance outcomes such as sales revenue, satisfaction, and tenure.
Description of the Solution
Assessment Inc. created a selection system aimed at helping this client to simultaneously address both issues and measure the outcomes associated with it. The system began with helping the corporation to understand exactly what is required for success in their contact center environment and to understand why employees were leaving the job in such high numbers.
The first step was to use Assessment Inc’s. Online Job Modeling Tool® to survey existing employees and their managers to determine the key environmental and performance requirements for the job. The outcomes of this process would serve to establish performance benchmarks and to lay the foundation for the use of specific selection tools designed to measure key job requirements. Assessment Inc. also performed a survey of employees to help establish major reasons for turnover.
The results of phase one revealed several interesting things. First of all, it became clear that the revised requirements for the job which placed a premium on up selling did not fit well with the interests and traits of most of the existing employees. It was determined that this was due to the fact that the existing selection system used to fill these positions did not provide any measurement of sales ability or interest in the sales position. In order to help link the selection system to the outcomes of interest, Assessment inc. employed a customized sales aptitude test as part of a new selection system.
Our research also revealed that a major contributor to turnover was the presence of a very specific culture in which individual performance was encouraged. It was discovered that the selection system currently in use was geared towards selecting persons who were interested in working in a team based environment. Assessment inc. addressed this issue by implementing a values matching assessment which helped to systematically identify applicants who had values matching that required for job satisfaction and success.
Finally, Assessment Inc. employed our proprietary Validation Streamer ™ product to set up an ongoing concurrent validation study in which scores on the various parts of the selection system were correlated with performance data to help promote a more complete understanding of the value added via the use of the new selection system.
Discussion of the Result
The results of the new selection system were almost immediate. The first round of data analysis revealed that employees selected using the new system sold a significant amount of additional services, increasing instances of a successful upgrade sales by over 70%! Secondly, analysis of turnover rates indicated that turnover went down significantly, remaining stable at 30%. This represents a drop of 30%. Finally, survey information revealed that employees selected using the new system were more satisfied with their jobs and were highly motivated by the opportunity to be compensated for their sales ability.
Finally, the results gained by the use of the Assessment Inc. system contributed significantly to the company’s bottom line. Considering the cost of each new hire to be approximately $10,000 and that the company had over 1,000 rep positions to fill per year, a 30% reduction in turnover alone was estimated to have saved the company over 3 million dollars. Increases in sales revenue realized through the use of the selection system were estimated to top 5 million dollars for a one year period.
The results of Assessment Inc.’s selection system provide consistent and solid support that our solutions are effective predictors of key business outcomes for contact center reps at this global hotel corporation.
What Did We Learn?
The value of Assessment Inc.’s initiatives goes well beyond the immediate financial impact noted above. We helped our client to learn that effective hiring is more then just using one specific test. Instead, the way to really add value is to fully understand the objectives that will impact the bottom line and to create a system that is aimed at fulfilling these objectives. In the present case, achieving increased performance, satisfaction, and tenure meant helping the corporation to understand the key requirements for job success as well as collecting information to help diagnose mismatches between job performance requirements and the traits on which employees were selected.
Creating a selection system which ensured alignment between requirements and applicant’s traits and interests had an immediate and significant impact on the company’s bottom line.