I took an online assessment which simulated real-sounding calls. You must have your speakers working on your computer to take the test, because you will hear a phone ring, answer it, and then hear a simulation of a customer speaking. I had to read the directions on a simulated Call Center computer screen to know how to find and enter information correctly into the fields for 4 different companies before taking calls. Read this carefully. You really need to have a pretty good idea what the screen options are to perform well. One example of a call was, a "customer" will ask you about a trip they are taking. They are angry about the way their call was handled on a previous occassion. You must choose the best thing to say back to them from a multiple choice question. Then, you must find the tab on the screen that will take you to the travel agency company. You have to enter their customer information, like name, address and phone number. Then, you must folllow the guidelines for the travel company to resolve the customer's issue and make them happy again. You have the option to hit a replay button to hear a repeat of the last thing the caller said, but you only have 10 minutes to do the whole assessment. I had to replay each customer saying their name, address and phone number in order to enter it right, because they speak kind of fast. I think I got through 4 calls.
The next step was a phone interview. The phone interview is like a real interview as far as the questions that were asked, but you answer like you are leaving a message on voice mail. You hear a question, you push a number to repeat the question and a number to leave your answer. Similar to leaving a voice mail message, however I was not able to review what I said and erase and re-record. When I read the directions, I thought I would be able to re-record my answer but I couldn't. I was having some issues with my own phone so maybe it was me. I recommend you have all your notes in front of you and be as ready as if you are in a real interview. There are 9-10 questions and they will let you look at the questions before the phone interview, so you can prepare. The questions were something like, Why do you think you would be a good fit for the job?, What does customer service mean to you?, What would a previous boss say you needed to improve on? If you have new information to learn, how do you do that?
After that, I got scheduled for a face to face interview. There were two interviewers. Both were very nice and put me at ease. One talked and one typed what I was saying into a laptop. The questions were standard, Tell me about your background, Name a time when you made a mistake and what you did to fix it? They will not accept general answers. You must give one specific example of one specific incidence. Period. They are looking for happy, happy, happy people who put being helpful and friendly as the top priority. Everywhere you look in the building are motivational and ultra feel-good statements all over the walls in large lettering. Friendly people who get along seems to be very , very important to them, which I thought was great, but might not be everyone's style.
They want you to use the S.T.A.R. format for answering questions (Situation-Task-Action-Result). So, you start with a specific example and tell them the Situation: What was going on, who was involved, etc. Then you tell them the Task/Action: What needed done? What did you do? What actions did you take? Then, What was the result? How did you know you hit the goal or were successful?