How many parties have you been to where the topic of conversation turns to customer service and, usually, some horror story about a bad customer service experience? If you are like me, it happens all of the time. Imagine, if you will, if you were responsible for a customer service organization and the topic of conversation turned to a bad experience with your customer service department. Now what do you do? My guess is you start to examine your customer service department.

Generally, the best place to begin your examination is at the beginning. How are you recruiting and interviewing your customer service representatives? Is there a structured interview process? Is it willy-nilly? Do your hiring managers really know how to interview?

I'm going to share a three step approach to interviewing customer service representatives that will lead you to better results. All employees' success is based on three critical success factors: The first is Skill Fit. Skill fit is the most natural piece of information for us to evaluate from a resume. It includes education, training and experience. The second is Company Fit. Company Fit includes values, attitudes and appearance. The third, and often most overlooked, is Job Match. Job Match includes personality, interests, and abilities. By bringing together all three, you can raise the bar of your customer service team.

Now, how to do it.

First, you've got to make sure that your hiring managers know how to interview. Good solid interviewing skills are critical. Using the tried and true behavioral interviewing approach will always provide better results than an "off the cuff" methodology or an interviewing style that relies on anecdotal responses to hypothetical questions. The crux of behavioral interviewing is this philosophy: Past Performance Predicts Future Behavior When interviewing, generally, you can create behaviorally based interviewing questions by formulating your questions as follows:

Tell me about a time when...

Give me an example of...

Walk me thorough an experience where you...

Some customer service interview questions might include:

"Tell me about a time where you had to go around company policy to get something done for a customer?"

"Can you give me an example of a time when a customer was being unreasonable? Tell me exactly what the situation was and how you handled it." And, as a follow-up you can ask, "What did you learn from that situation?"

"Oftentimes we are asked to be a part of a project team. Can you tell me about a time in your last job when you were a part of a project team? What was the team asked to do and what role did you play?"

Of course these are just examples. You'll want to create your own specific questions that you'll ask every single candidate. In general, you'll need to push for a story but that is exactly what you want the interview to be...a series of stories where the candidate tells you about the way they handled specific situations in the past. You can bet that they will be good indicators of how they will handle similar situations in the future. Once you have the basic interview questions structured, you are ready to move onto Company Fit.

Generally, Company Fit is a bit more challenging that Skill Fit and good interview questions can often get us the information that we need. In order to focus on company fit, you first need to know what types of behaviors are expected at your organization. Are you a team oriented culture or one that rewards individual contributors? Are things flexible or do you hold to specific policy? Shorts and a T-Shirt or suit and tie? Closed or open door policy with an executive? All of these components make up company fit. Your interviewer will want to ask questions like:

"Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a policy. What was your disagreement and how did you handle it?"

"Tell me about a manager that you worked for that was particularly effective. What behaviors did he/she display?"

"Tell me about a very busy day that you have had in the past. How did you go about accomplishing everything?"

The final component is Job Match. Using Job Match technology, you can assess successful incumbents in customer service roles and find out what their learning styles, behavioral traits, and occupational interests are. Each of these three components have been studied and found to be key indicators of job success-more so than experience and education alone. They indicate the following:

Thinking Style: Shows how the person processes and learns new information. It answers the question "Can the candidate cope with the mental demands of the job?"

Behavioral Traits: What are the key behaviors the job demands? It answers the question "Will the candidate be comfortable in the job environment?" It also answers the question "Will the candidate be motivated by this kind of work?"

Occupational Interests: What is this person interested in doing? Are they an artist who is applying for a data driven job?

By understanding those key components, you can then create a job match pattern for people who you know to be successful in the job. Once that pattern is created, you can then assess incoming potential talent and see where they fit in the pattern and where they lie outside of the pattern. Some job match tools even provide behavior-based interviewing questions that target areas where candidates lie outside of the job match pattern making the interviewing process even easier.

By utilizing behavior based interviewing to target Skill Fit and Company Fit and then adding in Job Match technology, you can go a long way in improving customer service. It is not easy to find great people but it is possible. Putting a solid, repeatable methodology in place is the key.