Throughout the day, the phones of light industrial staffing firms are ringing off the hook – some of the calls relate to high-conversion recruiting activities while others are support-related and just eat up valuable time. In either scenario, its often too much for recruiters to keep up with, which has a negative impact on the overall candidate experience, placement rates and cost per hire.
Resourceful staffing agencies have increasingly turned to a proven yet often neglected solution to boost their revenue and brand reputation, leveraging a contact center solution from companies like PSG to manage inbound and outbound calls at their branches. In one client case study, the PSG team answered around 21,000 calls a month during the client’s peak season – 42% of the calls related to high-conversion recruiting activities. These numbers aren’t an anomaly.
Below, we explore the benefits of outsourced contact centers and the real impacts they can have on a staffing firm’s bottom line.
Benefits of a centralized contact center. It’s not such a stretch of the imagination to incorporate a contact center approach into your recruiting workflow. When candidates and contingent workers call your branch offices, they’re very similar to consumers reaching out to a call center for answers to customer service questions.
Did you receive my application? When is my interview? Have I received a job offer? When do I start? These and similar questions are often better suited for someone with a customer service or BPO background rather than a seasoned professional with traditional recruiting experience. In fact, assigning recruiters to field these questions distracts them from focusing on valuable face-to-face interactions with candidates at their branch.
On the other hand, a dedicated contact center is perfectly suited for these types of tasks. Sending the incoming calls for all branches to a single team creates predictability and brand cohesion that is absent when your recruiters act as ad hoc phone operators. And, if your centralized team is trained in the right procedures and data management best practices, your recruiters can rely on more scheduled branch interviews and up-to-date, accurate briefings on candidate interactions in your ATS. Recruiters at the branch then have more time to develop relationships with their clients and their candidates.
Case study. What do outsourced contact center services look like in this scenario? In February 2017, one of the top 15 national light industrial staffing firms set out to find an answer to that very question. They approached PSG Global Solutions to undertake their incoming recruitment lifecycle calls. We proposed an engagement model that would lower their cost per call across branches, increase their applicant-to-start ratios, and improve their overall profitability. When the project began, we launched with five dedicated agents to shoulder the majority of the call volume reaching their staffing offices.
From the beginning of the partnership, we outlined processes to decrease average handle times and increase calls handled per day across over 30 branch locations.
During the peak of the hiring season, in one month over 21,000 calls were routed to the client’s switch, which was a 22% increase over the prior month’s call volumes. During this month, our team adjusted schedules, further reduced our call handle time, and tuned the processes for each call type to ensure we were still able to meet the client’s service level goals.
At least 42% of all incoming calls corresponded with hard benefit activities such as interview requests, inquiries about website applications, pre-employment availability checks, scheduling of branch interviews, and directions to the branch location. As the PSG Global Solutions team decreased average handle time, we were able to dedicate more time to activities that retained or expanded our client’s revenue.
Again, these results weren’t an anomaly. By working with the right outsourced recruiting partner, your operations will easily see a reduction in cost-per-call, while your recruiters can concentrate on building key relationships with qualified candidates and turning them into placements.
