Customer Contact Personnel: Using Interviewing Techniques to Select For Adaptability in Service Employees

By: Alicia Thompson.

The Journal of Service Marketing. Winter 1989, pp57-65

Presentation By: Jake Pfeifer

Objective

To present a method of interviewing prospective employees regarding their adaptability to the various service encounters they will face

Give the service business owner a set of situations that will allow for choosing the employee that will best fit their customers’ service needs with minimal amount of training

Prior Work

Christian Gronroos: “Innovative Marketing Strategies and Organization Structures for Service Firms” in Emerging Perspectives on Service Marketing. Chicago: American Marketing Assoc. 1983 pp 9-21

Kim Harris: “Employee Training: Use of Interactive Video and the Optical Disk,” H.E.R. Conference Journal Proceedings. Washington DC: Council of Hotel-Restaurant and Institutional Education, in press

Barton Weitz, Harish Sujan and Mita Sujan, “Knowledge, Motivation, and Adaptive Behavior: A Framework for Improving Selling Effectiveness,” Journal of Marketing, October 1986 pp174-191

ResearchBecause service encounters can vary dramatically

successful employees will be able to adapt to diverse situations. Service positions should be viewed not only as customer service, but also sales opportunities

A list of distinguishing traits that make a ‘good’ service employee has still not been determined and has been studied since the early 1900’s

Many of the studies on effective service representatives contradict each other: one study showed that age, intelligence and education were determining factors, while other studies showed that memorized pitches were superior

Adaptability Research

Different service environments demand a varying range of skills

An adaptive employee must be aware of their surroundings, observe customer behavior, actively collect customer information and apply diverse communication skills

To keep training costs to a minimum an employer can rely on selecting new employees who already posses these skills

Abstract Questioning

These open-ended questions test the ability of the applicant to actively collect information. Can also reveal an applicants understanding of adaptability

Good employees will actively collect various bits of information from both their personal and work lives

Applicants that speak well may be able to tell of their many life ‘events’ without actually understanding how that translates into adaptability

Abstract Questions

Situational Problem Solving

More in-depth interviewing technique

Prospective employees are asked to provide answers based on particular situations instead of being able to select their own experiences (as in abstract questioning)

A good employee will show varying styles of dealing with the problem based upon the situation they are put in

Applicants with good communications skills may be able to “talk” their way out of the situation without showing true adaptability. Pay close attention to the substance of the answer, not just the words

Situational Problem Solving

Role Playing

Even more in-depth interviewing process

Applicants are asked to respond to a particular situation, but instead of stating a 3rd person response, they are asked to actually act out their solution to the situation

Allows the interviewer to evaluate how the applicant will respond under stress and adapt to varying situations

Role playing can take time for the interviewer to setup and because of the diversity of responses from applicant, direct comparisons can be challenging

Role Playing

Conclusion

Employees who are adaptable exhibit superior customer service performance

Creative interviewing can select employees who will be successful with a minimal amount of training

Recommendations

Determine what the objectives of the selection process will be

Make a list of abstract questions, problem solving situations and role playing scenarios

Determine what the “correct” answers will be for the above questions based on the type of service your organization performs

Create an evaluation sheet to allow for easy scoring of each potential employee