When prospective clients include us in their vendor search, they often ask a number of common questions. Such questions, perhaps not surprisingly, include:
- What are your costs?
- What are your turnaround times?
- What are your integration capabilities?
- What is your experience in our industry?
- How long are implementation timelines?
One of the questions we typically ask prospective clients to learn how to better help them is, “What areas of improvement are you focusing on as you vet potential vendors?”
Interestingly, one of the most common responses is “customer support.” While seemingly a point of great importance to most, it isn’t typically reflected in their list of vetting questions. Cost, turnaround time, and industry-specific fulfillment experience tell little about how a screening company will care for clients and candidates when assistance is urgently needed.
At Peopletrail, we firmly believe a successful employment screening process relies heavily on good customer support, which should not be overlooked.
The Role of a Customer Support Team
When it comes to employment screening, customer support is much more than password resets and invoicing adjustments. Poor customer support from a provider can lead to lawsuits, unhappy candidates, and extended hiring times.
Apart from answering the occasional noncritical inquiry, customer support includes the following:
1. Dispute Responsiveness
When a candidate initiates a formal dispute, the response should be prompt and tactful. Failure to correctly address a dispute can quickly lead to litigation. While such measures are often taken against the CRA, the employer can also be significantly impacted by their vendor’s support and escalation negligence.
Kindness, expertise, and responsiveness are key to effective dispute resolution.
2. Candidate Care
The employment screening process can be stressful for candidates. We often receive calls from anxious candidates regarding the status of their report, the location of a drug test, or other issues. When a screening vendor emphasizes candidate support, this can remove a tremendous amount of work from the employer’s shoulders. Offering a candidate portal, providing open lines of communication, and delivering friendly responses to questions can go a long way in mitigating onboarding woes.
3. Time-to-Hire
Additional information is occasionally needed from a candidate to properly complete a background screening report. This information must be deliberately pursued. It is also common for customers to request changes or modifications to an order after it has been placed. If customer support is lacking, such occasions can create invoicing hiccups and significantly extend the report completion timeline.
4. Process Agility
Some clients have unique needs that require extensive process modification and troubleshooting. A willing, agile support team is imperative for success in these situations. Building customized solutions and fulfillment frameworks requires time, availability, and expertise. Rigid and unresponsive support infrastructures will almost always prove inadequate for customers with more in-depth needs. Low cost and quick turnaround times mean little when workflows are entirely mismatched.
Questions to Ask a Prospective Screening Vendor
Along with the standard cost and time-service related questions, we would recommend challenging your prospective vendor’s support capabilities by asking some of the following questions:
- How do you provide support to candidates (if necessary)?
- Do you offer a candidate portal?
- What is your average support call answer rate/hold time?
- Do you outsource your support?
- Do you grant direct-line access to account managers and support staff?
- What is your dispute resolution protocol?
- What is your escalation process?
- What process customizations do you offer?
- How do you intend to accommodate our unique needs (providing specifics)?
- How flexible are you with order modifications?
Takeaways
Many factors determine employment screening success. Compliant, efficient, and cost-effective solutions are a must. However, a poor support infrastructure can quickly undermine all of these factors.
While perfect customer service is an unreasonable ask, diligent, responsive, and competent customer care should be the expectation of those embarking on their background screening vendor search. This expectation should be reflected in their vetting questions and protocols. While cost and time-service considerations are important, poor customer care can lead to significant problems that, in extreme situations, influence the entire organization’s operations. In short, customer support is among the most crucial considerations.
For more information about Peopletrail, feel free to reach out to us.
