45 minute call with recruiter -- typical questions regarding experience, how would I go above and beyond, how did I solve a difficult customer interaction. There was a live exercise included, to see how I would prepare for meeting with Customer Experience Manager to review my metrics, SLAs, my productivity, and quality of communication. Next is the assessment/exercise, which would basically be a writing sample, to see how I would respond to customers. It would be live, so they would watch and time you. Last step is two 30 minute behavioral interviews, and beforehand, you would meet with a recruiter/HR rep to prepare for those questions, since they don't want you to be surprised. **I don't feel this is necessarily too many steps in the interview process, but this is significantly more involved than other companies for a standard customer support role. I can tell they really want to put the applicant under pressure, to see how they would handle any given situation, which is why the writing exercises are timed and monitored, and why they have in-depth behavioral interviews. However, this support role is working with therapists and patients, mostly regarding insurance inquiries/billing issues. I'm sure there will be difficult and complex cases. I'm also positive all issues can be handled with proper training, and assistance from other teams. They make it sound as if they want you to know everything beforehand and then they completely abandon you while doing the actual job. I don't respect companies that handle their operations this way. They can certainly do their best to weed out people who might not be a good fit. Although, instead of looking for a perfect candidate, which is always kind of hit or miss because you never know how well someone fits with the team or conducts themselves on a daily basis, -- what about actually supporting and training a new hire? If they don't know the best way to handle something or have the ideal answer, how about teaching and correcting them? It's ok to make mistakes, as long as someone learns from them. Headway makes it seem as if they are on a first date, throwing all these questions and scenarios in order to find the perfect match. Honestly, I was turned off by the first live exercise, because it's obvious -- even without explicitly stating as such -- that they are going to be very strict about closing 40 tickets daily, and they closely monitor these metrics. I understand that's important, but so much about customer support is sometimes out of the agent's control. If there is a technical issue, which takes time for the developers or engineers to fix, this might prevent me from closing out a ticket. If someone is consistently slacking off, that's a problem and should be discussed. I would never thrive in an environment where I felt I had to defend myself because I didn't hit the exact numbers they wanted. I also think their requirement of solving 40 inquiries is unrealistic. Currently working in telehealth, with similar business operations, it is certainly possible to solve 40 inquiries daily, however, it would be hard if all of them are very complex, if they require a lot of assistance from other teams, or technical bugs that could not be solved within the same day. In addition, they want top notch communication and quality with every interaction. I could tell they were not impressed with my answers for the Live Exercise for metrics -- I got the sense they wanted me to apologize and say I would do better, if I wasn't hitting those numbers. But in this ridiculous live exercise, I had no context. Was I actually doing a bad job, or were there other reasons? I am not taking the blame and making promises to do better, unless I knew for a fact that it was in my control. When I was told they were not going to proceed with my application, there was no regret, just joy! Good luck to everyone else who manages to jump through all their endless hoops and gets the job. I am not confident how long you will be in that job though. Trust me, there are plenty of telehealth companies out there with amazing missions, who pay the same rate, and do not make you do multiple assessments and behavioral interviews. Instead, they just interview you with standard questions, get to know you better, and have faith you will do a good job based on your experience. They will encourage questions and collaboration, and will not fault you if you don't meet specific metrics every single day.
