World-class customer service. An exceptional candidate experience. Many staffing professionals say that they provide these, but according to Inavero, just 32% of clients and 45% of placed candidates are satisfied enough with the service they received to recommend their staffing firm to a friend or colleague.
That’s a huge disconnect. And a huge potential problem!
Could your staffing firm be suffering from an image problem? Here’s how to find out – and what you can do about it.
Solicit Feedback
How can you find out what people think of you, if you don’t ask? Don’t wait until an angry ex-client or potential candidate blasts your company on Indeed or Glassdoor for “not helping” them; get their feedback first (and privately).
PREMIUM CONTENT: Temp satisfaction with staffing firms and clients
Here are several ways successful staffing companies garner feedback from clients and candidates:
- Website feedback forms. These forms can be put on relevant pages on your website, making it easy for candidates and clients to provide honest and timely feedback about their experience with your agency. Use simple, easy-to-answer online forms to get genuine responses to your most basic customer experience questions. Find out where your process is lacking and where it shines.
- Reviews and testimonials. Ninety-one percent of all B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth, so you want to ensure the words coming from your clients and candidates are positive. To do this, you should be reaching out shortly within the time you worked with them (post-interview, after a successful placement, etc.) to gather a wealth of positive and genuine testimonials. These can then be added to a “testimonials” section of your website, turned into social media graphics, used to share your amazing customer service experience, and position your agency as a business both clients and candidates love to work with. Bonus: the more positive testimonials you have, the less important those few-and-far-between negative comments sting your online reputation.
- Catch negative comments before they make it online. If you are proactively reaching out and asking how candidates and clients felt about your service, the unhappy ones may still send you a scathing response, but it won’t be made public. This gives you the chance to not only get honest feedback and find places your business can improve, it also saves your company the embarrassment of a harsh online review that can deter the overwhelming majority of people who trust word of mouth.
Benchmark Your Service
Do you currently solicit feedback in the form on a Net Promoter Score, or NPS? By using a Net Promoter Score, you’ll be able to see how your service compares to staffing industry leaders. Using this confidential survey can again give you a glimpse into the experience of both clients and candidates you have worked with, and it can set your company apart in its service level. Your NPS score and feedback should answer some of your questions about what you need to work on, as well as aspects of your service in which you are already meeting (or hopefully even exceeding!) client and candidate expectations.
Service Is What Most Companies Claim Sets Them Apart
Are you CERTAIN your experience is thrilling your clients and candidates? Use these tips to solicit feedback, benchmark your service, reclaim your online reputation, and become an industry leader in staffing customer experience.
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