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Recently, a frustrating customer service experience with a national rental car company at the Atlanta Airport, which will remain unnamed; and an incredibly smooth experience with the California beverage chain, Beverages & more! (www.bevmo.com) compelled me to take the time to post two reviews on Yelp.com.  Yelp.com is one of the fastest growing websites for people to read and post reviews about local businesses.

As I was typing these reviews and selecting the number of stars to rate these experiences, I realized how everyone at every level in a staffing agency should be striving to make their candidates and customers feel genuinely good about their relationship. This applies to all businesses, but even more so to the staffing industry because of the people-centric nature of the business on every side.

In the spirit of staying positive, I’ll avoid the temptation to vent. But for a good laugh, watch the following Seinfeld clip, which prophetically depicted my experience with this rental car company.

On the other hand, I had one of the smoothest experiences ordering a bottle of wine through Bevmo.com for a business associate of mine who had recently helped me out. After ordering online the exact bottle I was looking for, I realized that I had forgotten to send it as a gift. I frantically called the customer service number listed on the website. A live voice immediately answered and transferred me to someone who was able to log into their tracking system, change my order to be shipped as a gift, and hand-type the message I dictated to be sent with the bottle.

Mediocre service just doesn’t cut it anymore. The main thing regional staffing agencies have going for them is the ability to make a personal emotional impression on each candidate and client. The question is, “What type of emotional impression are you and your staff going to make?” Here are some action steps you can take to raise your candidate/customer service game:

• Have people at “every touch point” within your staffing company ask, “How can I make our candidate and customer feel especially good about our relationship today?”
• Setup a Google Alert (http://www.google.com/alerts) for your staffing company’s name to be emailed to you everyday, this will help you monitor what’s being said about you online.
•  Ask candidates and customers, who have positive experiences with you, to write reviews for your staffing agency on sites like Yelp.com.
• Create a candidate and client-centric culture within your company by celebrating positive reviews on a regular basis.

Everett Reiss
Business Relationship Development
The Staffing Cooperative
Check me out on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/evreiss
Check us out on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/StaffingCo_op

How are you as a staffing company marketing yourself to your clients and prospects?  Have you considered casting yourself as the staffing solution to help businesses get a jump on preparing for the economic upturn?  It’s going to happen, it’s happened every time before, and there are already signs of recovery.  Check out these staffing industry statistics:

·         The rate of temporary job loss is decelerating from the beginning of the year through April according to SI Analysts’ Contingent Blog.

·         According to California’s Employment Development Department, California’s unemployment rates decreased from 11.2% to 11% while employment increased in April.  California is traditionally a bellwether state as far as economic recovery is concerned.

·         The ASA staffing index has stabilized, remaining flat since February and showed a slight increase in the beginning of May (http://www.americanstaffing.net/statistics/staffing_index.cfm).

Elaine Balady, co-owner of The Assurance Group and Director of Strategic Relationships for The Staffing Cooperative specializes in forming close partnerships with staffing buyers describes how we, as staffing professionals, can “assist [staffing buyers] in maintaining their competitiveness in a difficult economy. For example, we can assist in staffing level assessments and in providing tools for re-evaluating current staff.”

Here are some additional ways you should be marketing your staffing services and looking to partner with potential staffing buyers:

·         Staffing businesses to their strengths:  Many companies have cut staff in all areas including employees who directly support their core-competencies and strengths.  Businesses need to get the people with the right skills and experience in these positions again, but are still hesitant to add employees.  This is the perfect entrée for you as a staffing provider to come into a business and help them identify the gaps in talent that they need to fill for the recovery and then provide that talent on a contingency basis.

·         Tightening up HR processes and compliance issues: As things pick up, focus quickly shifts to simply keeping up with demand.  While we’re still on the threshold of recovery, now’s the time for businesses with the help of proactive staffing companies to develop maximum efficiencies in managing their human resources.

·         Investing in and developing staff: In order to prepare your clients and prospects to be at the top of their game for the recovery, you as a staffing company could repackage the same training and development programs you use for your own candidates and offer it to them.  If you have a very effective candidate development program for customer service, then offer a similar program to the customer service departments of your clients and prospects.

Now it’s your turn to let us know of some other ways you are helping your clients prepare for economic recovery.

Everett Reiss

Business Relationships Development
The Staffing Cooperative
Check me out on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/evreiss
Check us out on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/StaffingCo_op