The key role of a customer support executive is to lead the customer support representatives and ensure customer delight. This can be observed by tapping multiple responsibilities varying from business to business. Hence, the hiring process starts with analyzing business needs and understanding role requirements.
Step 1: Outline Role Requirements
Recruiters must spend a lot of time understanding the business and mapping out specific requirements. For instance, a technology-based company might look for a customer support manager/ executive with deep product knowledge. A large service enterprise might want a manager who focuses on good communication and problem-solving skills. The business needs can vary, but what all tasks fall under the customer support executive’s jurisdiction?
What is the role of a customer support executive?
- Lead Customer Support Team- A customer support manager trains, manages, and leads a team of customer support representatives. S/he plans and conducts training to enhance customer support service. This includes strengthening soft skills and technical competencies. Additionally, s/he manages the entire team and takes over in case of complexities.
- Ensure Workflow and Operational Efficiency- A customer support manager sets SOPs and optimizes the processes for maximum efficiency. This involves setting standard procedures and employing various tools to automate the process. Moreover, they provide actionable insights to improve the operation execution. This ensures quick problem-solving and better customer service.
- Customer Delight and Retention- Besides leading and managing the team, the customer support executive handles product-related queries. Especially since they have to deal with complex issues that a regular representative cannot resolve. Moreover, they communicate with angry and frustrated customers to understand their needs and meet their expectations.
- Collaborate- The customer support manager has to actively collaborate with multiple teams and build strong relationships with employees and customers. S/he has to connect with other managers to solve customer issues and strategically plan a workflow. For example, they will reach out to the product development team for repetitive customer issues which might need a permanent solution.
So, based on these 4 key roles of customer support executives, recruiters can look for the desired candidate to fill the role. Once they decide on key roles and responsibilities, you can draft the job description and start sourcing qualified candidates. Here is a JD template for your reference.
Customer Support Manager Job Description
Job Brief
Our company is looking for a qualified customer support executive to lead the customer support team and improve customer retention. You will have to manage a team of 40+ customer support representatives and actively cross-collaborate with departments to share insights. Also, you will have to strategize the workflows and training for the representatives to improve customer experience.
Ps:- The job brief shall include the roles and responsibilities, and a peek into company culture and values.
Expectation
- Strong interpersonal skills to collaborate with managers across the firm to share valuable insights.
- Communication skills to handle complex grievances.
- Mentor customer support representatives to enhance operational efficiency.
- Mediate customer grievances with relevant departments to offer a long-term solution.
Ps:- This section will include all your expectations from the candidate based on soft skills or other competencies. Ensure to add only relevant expectations, not to drive away underrepresented candidates.
Responsibilities
- Managing customer support representatives
- Resolve complex customer issues
- Set workflows and operational efficiencies to solve customer issues promptly.
- Plan and train customer support representatives to keep up with new updates
- Possess strong product knowledge
- Assist HR with new hires
- Communicate with other departments to share insights into customer pain points.
- Deploy product engagement strategies for enhanced customer retention.
Ps:- This section can vary based on business needs. Start with core responsibilities and gradually move to less important ones.
Requirements and Skills
- Ability to lead and manage a team
- CRM systems knowledge
- Conflict resolution skills
- Interpersonal skills
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Technical soundness
- Performance management
Ps:- Do not include “nice to have” responsibilities or skills in this section. This can impact the application rate and might push away top performers.
Depending on your business requirements, you can include more sections like benefits, experience, and much more. Once you draft and post your JD, you can start sourcing the top candidates.
Step 2: Sourcing Candidates With Multichannel Approach
A multichannel approach combines traditional sourcing channels with new proactive strategies to find the most suitable candidate. This includes passively engaging and sourcing candidates throughout the year. Recruiters use platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Naukri.com, etc., to find the top talent instead of relying completely on job posting applications.
However, one of the biggest loopholes with this system is the hassle of managing applications, engaging with 100s of candidates, maintaining candidate interest, and all the administrative work that comes along. Solution?
Nurturebox- The Ultimate Talent Engagement Platform!
Nurturebox integrates seamlessly with your existing tech stack and takes over all the admin tasks to make hiring easy. It collects information about desired candidates, records all conversations, avoid duplication, and even shares insights about which platforms perform better.
Where to get started?
Download our plugin and start engaging with desired candidates over any platform you like- WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Gmail, Twitter, etc. Automate your hiring process without sacrificing personalization to get your hands on the industry's top talent!
Step 3: Evaluate and Pick the Desired Top Talent
The sourcing and engagement process would get you a strong pipeline of qualified candidates. You must critically evaluate each candidate to find the most qualified customer support executive. But what skills shall you look out for?
What Skills are Required for a Customer Support Executive?
- Technical Skills- The customer support executive must have technical skills matching the product/ service requirements to solve complex customer problems. If the executive needs to understand the product technicalities, how will s/he resolve any technical issues? Hence, clarity of technical background is critical for a new customer support executive.
- Customer Interaction Skills- The executive must have strong communication skills, especially in customer-facing. They must respond well to customer queries while communicating company values and brands. They should actively listen with empathy and handle customer queries with patience promptly.
- Product/ Service Knowledge- The executive must have deep knowledge and understanding of the company product and/ or services. Otherwise, they will be unable to resolve customer issues and support requests. Moreover, with better product understanding, they can identify common issues and communicate them with relevant departments. They will be well aware of product aspects and improve product adoption and engagement.
- Support Workflow and Policy Knowledge- The executive shall clearly understand current workflows and company policy. They must understand how the teams in the organization handle the objection and resolve current support issues. Moreover, they should be aware of the incident and problem process, which is how customers raise support requests and resolve them. Additionally, they must be thorough with company policy to ensure compliance.
- Problem-Solving- The executive must have exceptional problem-solving skills to identify and solve customer issues and support requests. Moreover, they must be prompt to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. They should be able to resolve complex and time-sensitive issues while guiding the team.
- Leadership- The executive leads, trains, and manages a team of customer support representatives. Hence, they must display leadership skills to showcase their ability to supervise and handle customer support teams. This includes highlighting strengths, working on weaknesses, identifying opportunities, resolving internal conflicts, and motivating them to work efficiently.
- Performance Management- The executive plans and trains the representatives to improve their performance and current workflows. Hence, s/he shall be able to evaluate the performance and take corrective measures to enhance performance further.
- Communication Skills- The customer support executive has to have strong communication skills. They communicate actively with customers, representatives, and other departments to ensure a smooth workflow. Hence, they shall communicate seamlessly with all the stakeholders to report and resolve recurring issues. They must communicate with managers across the organization to collaborate on strategic solutions.
More skills make a candidate the best fit for your firm. Here is a list of key responsibilities of customer support executives to look for when selecting the right candidate.
- Technical Soundness
- Empathy
- Communication Skills
- Good Listener
- Problem-solving
- Motivational Skills
- Patience
- Leadership Skills
- Effective Team Training
- Performance Management
- Strategic Thinking
- Emotional Intelligence
Now that you have clear expectations, you can conduct interviews with clarity. You will know what soft skills you can assess the candidate for. Here are a few questions for your reference to get a quick head start.
- Do you have experience in leading and supervising a team of customer support representatives? Can you share some of the effective strategies for managing support teams?
- Do you have experience in training new support staff members? How do you keep them motivated?
- How do you resolve internal conflicts, especially about finding the best way to solve a customer grievance?
- Are you familiar with the software and hardware products used by our company and our competitors?
- How do you delegate tasks? How do you communicate with the team members to discuss their roles and responsibilities?
- Share an experience when you went above and beyond to resolve a customer grievance. How did you handle the situation?
- How do you solve unique customer problems?
- How do you ensure proper configuration of new system upgrades?
- What are some of the critical metrics to measure customer satisfaction? Why?
- Elaborate on an experience of managing customer support requests via ticketing systems & other tools.
- How do you keep track of customer issues & requests?
- How do you stay updated with industry trends and technologies?
- Do you have prior experience in creating support documents for customers?
These questions will help you assess the candidate for various soft skills. You can add more questions, case studies, and other assessments to find the right fit for the position.
Step 4: Hire and Onboard
The final step is to hire and onboard the new executive. Once you have evaluated the candidates, you need to look for these 5 core competencies to choose your next customer support executive.
- Customer Service Mindset
- Outstanding Communication Skills
- Conflict-Resolution Skills
- Creative Problem-Solving Ability
- High-Level Empathy
In addition, you can look for more skills to match your business needs. After choosing the right fit for your firm, you must spend adequate time onboarding them for a smooth transition. This includes setting high-level expectations and familiarizing them with company policies and tools.
They must have clarity over learning objectives and performance goals. They shall learn, collaborate, and lead the team to reflect their competencies and add value to the organization.
Start the onboarding process by sharing all the relevant information and completing all the documentation. This will include a career map highlighting different stages of their journey in the company. Further, explain their role and responsibilities, broken down into a specific timeline. This will give them an idea of how they would contribute to the organization and what perks they will get.
The next step of onboarding is to share learning objectives and performance goals. Also, highlight the core metrics your businesses focus on and learn about their personal goals. The training period could include:
- Client research
- Product and workflow knowledge
- Client meetings and notes
- Understanding product:
- Company Policies
- SOPs
- Compliance and security training
- Resolving customer feedback
With proper training and onboarding, the customer support executive can effectively collaborate for training sessions and meeting department heads. They can lead successful team meetings, identify responses to customer queries, share insights, and add real value to the company.
Ace Multi-Channel Approach With Nurturebox
Source and engage the most qualified customer support executives with Nurturebox!
Customer support executives play a significant role in customer delight success. They act as a bridge between the customer, product development, and customer support team. They guide customers and resolve all product-related queries, maximizing product engagement. In a nutshell, they become the guiding star for the business to track questions and provide exceptional products/ services to the customers.
Need help starting your journey of finding the next customer support executive?
Nurturebox is a talent engagement platform that automates your hiring process to find the desired candidate without much hassle. With a simple plugin, recruiters can find qualified candidates faster and engage with them without going through tedious admin tasks. They can scale their efforts and passively engage with talented candidates throughout the year.
Download our plugin today and hire effortlessly!
Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.
Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.
Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.
From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:
- Build positive brand awareness
- Make your audience stick around for longer
- Get better traction on social media
- Gain more trust of your audience than ever
- Generate qualified leads
- Improve conversion rates
- Boost business visibility with SEO
- Position your brand as an authority
- Cultivate loyal brand fans
While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.
What is The Role of a Content Marketer?
A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.
As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.
To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.
Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:
- Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly.
- Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
- Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
- Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
- Types of content to be created
- Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
- Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.
- Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.
While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with
- Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide
- Continous publishing and distributing content
- Measuring and analyzing performance
How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?
Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.
Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.
Top Must-Have Skills in a Content Marketer
Apart from having relevant industry experience, a good Content Marketer must possess the following skills.
- Excellent Writing Skills
A Content Marketer’s prior skillset should be writing excellent attention-grabbing content. From long-form blog posts to website copy, ad copies, social media content, video scripts, emails, newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, and more – a Content Marketer should be able to adapt to the business’s specific requirements and create quality content.
- Audience Research
Identifying user behavior is vital for framing the story in the right direction. So a Content Marketer must know how to identify and analyze the needs and pain points to develop a buyer persona. User research can be performed through social listening, relevant communities, in-person calls with customers, analyzing sales call recordings, and more.
- Keyword Research
Creating valuable thought-leadership content isn’t enough. Researching the right set of keywords is an essential skill to further educate your target audience on the Whys, Hows and Whats of your business, and have your website rank on Google.
- Data-oriented Content
Content that’s not backed by relevant data points does not build enough trust. Experienced content marketing professionals would always prefer data over hollow claims. No doubt that only data doesn’t help a content piece succeed, but it’s essential..
- Project Management, Planning, and Publishing –
A Content Marketer is also expected to break down and analyze the pain points to turn keyword research into content ideas. So a professional must be able to identify and solve content gaps.
Further, they must know how to create a content calendar, decide the different types of content, and choose relevant platforms to publish and schedule marketing campaigns.
- Content Promotion
Creating a valuable content piece, for example - an ebook, isn’t enough. Your content marketing team needs to promote it proactively for bringing enough attention and engagement.
- Performance Analysis
Setting up goals and plans is one thing, but continuously executing, measuring, and analyzing content performance is another. A Content Marketer should always be monitoring key performance parameters to figure out the upcoming plans with the necessary updates required.
Not to forget - stakeholders and marketing heads need the performance reports regularly. So Content Marketers must be able to collect and comprehend all the data to make it worth presenting.
Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona
Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:
- What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
- How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
- What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
- Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
- Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
- What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
- Where do they look for a new job?
- What are their career and life goals?
Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.
Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process
Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?
You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.
Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.
Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.
As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.
Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description
Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.
Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:
- Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.
- Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.
- Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.
- Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.
- About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?
Content Marketer Job Description Template
Role
The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.
Responsibilities
- Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
- Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
- Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
- Include and optimize all content for SEO
- Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
- Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence
Requirements
- Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
- Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
- A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
- Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
- Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
- Fluency in English or any other required language
Soft Skills
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent writing and editing skills
- The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
- The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
- Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables
Step 4: Source Candidates
Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.
- Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
- Why should candidates apply for the position?
- Highlight the growth opportunities
- State the company vision and mission
- Briefly describe the recruitment process
Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:
- LinkedIn
- Indeed
- Instahyre
- ZipRecruiter
- Monster
- GlassDoor
- CareerBuilder
Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.
Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones
Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.
Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.
Step 5: Make the Hire
Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.
Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.
Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.
- Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
- Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
- Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
- Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
- Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.
Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox
Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?
Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.
Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:
- Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
- On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
- Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
- Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.
