A customer has already explained the problem twice. The automated answer did not resolve it. Now someone on your team has to take over.
That person needs more than a pleasant phone voice. They need to understand the issue, communicate clearly, work within the company’s authority limits, and follow through. Your hiring process should look for evidence of those capabilities before the customer has to discover whether they are there.
Automation changes the hiring question
Customer Service Week runs October 5–9, 2026. Recognizing the people doing this work matters. So does giving them a fair chance to succeed.
On October 5, PYMNTS reported on L’Oréal’s use of AI in customer service. The underlying Salesforce case study, dated September 11, describes AI summarizing cases and drafting responses, with advisers reviewing and editing those responses before sending. It is a vendor-published example, not evidence that every employer will get the same result.
The question for employers is practical: if the routine work changes, have you updated what you expect from the person doing the rest?
That does not mean every service job is becoming more complex. Look at your own calls, messages, and escalations. A distributor’s order desk, a healthcare scheduling team, and a financial-services support team may need very different service behaviors.
Start with the service failures that cost you business
Before posting the next opening, review a small, representative sample of resolved and unresolved customer cases. Remove customer identifiers from any examples used in interviews or training.
Look for the moments where the conversation broke down. Did the employee miss an important detail? Promise something operations could not deliver? Apply a policy without explaining the available options? Transfer the customer without taking ownership of the next step?
Separate employee performance from process failure. A capable employee cannot approve a refund when nobody has defined approval authority. An assessment will not fix inaccurate inventory, missing case history, or a supervisor who is unavailable when a decision is needed.
Then write a short service standard for the role. Describe what the employee must do, not the personality you happen to enjoy interviewing.
- Confirm the actual problem before offering a solution.
- Explain the available options accurately and respectfully.
- Stay within authority and escalate exceptions promptly.
- Make a specific commitment and complete the follow-up.
Those expectations give managers something concrete to hire toward and coach against.
Where Customer Service Profile belongs
Customer Service Profile™ adds a structured view of fit for customer-service work. It measures six service-related traits: trust, tact, empathy, conformity, focus, and flexibility. It also measures vocabulary and numeric proficiency and considers alignment with the organization’s service perspective and a role-specific Performance Model.
The official brochure describes support for selection, interviewing, onboarding, and development. The value is a clearer basis for examining fit against the service job you have defined.
A warm interview alone does not establish how someone will manage an upset customer, maintain accuracy, or work within a policy. Use assessment information to focus the questions you ask and the support you provide. It does not directly observe a customer interaction or certify product knowledge, software proficiency, or technical competence.
Give candidates a realistic conversation
Here is an illustrative situation for an industrial distributor. It is not a client case:
A maintenance customer was told a replacement part would arrive today. It has not arrived. The customer says the delay is affecting production. The tracking system offers no confirmed delivery time, and the service employee cannot authorize an unverified substitute.
Ask the candidate to explain the next conversation. Give every candidate for the same role the same relevant facts, available options, and authority limits.
Listen for whether the candidate checks what is known, acknowledges the impact, avoids inventing an arrival time, and identifies a person who can investigate. Then ask: “What would you tell the customer now, and how would you make sure the next update happens?”
Agree on the evaluation criteria before the interviews. Score the response against accuracy, listening, ownership, appropriate escalation, and follow-through. Do not reward someone simply for sounding like the interviewer.
This is an employer-run work sample, separate from Customer Service Profile. For a role requiring technical knowledge, verify that knowledge separately. TAC does not provide technical skills testing.
Coach the handoff after the hire
A good selection process should make the first month more useful.
Give the new employee examples of resolved cases, clear escalation contacts, and the boundaries of their decision-making authority. Explain what a complete handoff looks like. The next person should receive the issue, the steps already attempted, the remaining question, and the commitment made to the customer.
Then review a few real interactions together. Choose one observable behavior to improve and return to it the following week. “Be more empathetic” is vague. “Acknowledge the customer’s concern before explaining the policy” gives the employee something to practice.
Customer expectations support that focus. In a September 15 Sinch survey release, 53% of 2,501 consumers across eight markets said they trusted a person’s product recommendation more than AI’s. This is vendor-sponsored consumer research, not a hiring-validation study. It does not establish which applicant will succeed.
It does reinforce a business question worth asking: when your customer reaches a person, what makes that conversation worth the effort?
Measure resolution, not just speed
A short call can still leave a customer with an unresolved problem. Track repeat contacts for the same issue, completed follow-ups, quality reviews, and customer outcomes alongside handling time.
Use comparable case types when reviewing results. An employee handling disputed invoices should not be judged as though every call were a simple order-status request.
Here is hypothetical planning math, not a TAC result or price quote. Suppose 12 avoidable service failures per quarter each put $500 of contribution margin at risk. That is $6,000 of exposure. If a combined hiring, coaching, and process-improvement effort costs $1,500 and prevents six of those failures, it protects $3,000 of contribution margin. The illustrative net benefit is $1,500, or 100% ROI on that assumed cost.
If it prevents only two, the protected margin is $1,000 and the effort has not paid for itself. Use your own costs and actual outcomes. Do not attribute every improvement to an assessment when training, staffing, or processes also changed.
Keep the hiring standard tied to the work
Use consistent, job-related criteria. Arrange appropriate accommodations and review selection outcomes for potential adverse impact. EEOC guidance makes clear that employers remain responsible for how selection procedures are used.
No assessment guarantees customer retention or replaces the broader hiring decision. Start with the job, use relevant evidence, and check whether the process is producing the service you intended.
Start with one customer-facing role
At The Assessment Company®, we help employers connect assessment information to the work they need people to do.
Bring us one customer-facing role and the service problems you want to reduce. We can help determine whether Customer Service Profile fits that decision and how to use the information in selection and development.
Discuss your customer-service hiring needs or call 1-800-434-2630.