End Hiring Nice People for Customer Service: How Personality Outweighs Agreeableness Every Time
I’m about to say something that will most likely annoy every HR manager who reads this: hiring people for customer service because of how “pleasant” they appear in an interview is among of the largest errors you can do.
Agreeable becomes you minimal results when someone is raging at you about a issue that is not your fault, insisting on outcomes that don’t exist, and threatening to ruin your company on online platforms.
What succeeds in those situations is resilience, calm boundary-setting, and the capacity to remain concentrated on outcomes rather than drama.
I learned this lesson the challenging way while working with a significant commercial business in Melbourne. Their recruitment system was completely based on selecting “customer-oriented” candidates who were “genuinely pleasant” and “enjoyed helping people.”
Sounds sensible, yes?
The consequence: extremely high turnover, continuous absence, and client quality that was perpetually subpar.
When I examined what was occurring, I found that their “pleasant” employees were becoming absolutely devastated by challenging customers.
The people had been hired for their inherent compassion and wish to help others, but they had zero tools or built-in defenses against internalizing every client’s difficult energy.
Worse, their genuine inclination to accommodate people meant they were repeatedly saying yes to demands they couldn’t deliver, which created even additional upset customers and increased anxiety for themselves.
The team watched really caring employees leave after short periods because they struggled to cope with the emotional strain of the role.
Meanwhile, the small number of staff who succeeded in demanding support environments had completely alternative traits.
Such individuals weren’t especially “agreeable” in the conventional sense. Instead, they were resilient, self-assured, and fine with establishing boundaries. They truly aimed to serve customers, but they also had the ability to say “no” when necessary.
Such staff could recognize a person’s anger without making it as their responsibility. They were able to keep calm when customers became unreasonable. They could stay focused on finding practical solutions rather than being caught up in dramatic arguments.
Those traits had nothing to do with being “agreeable” and everything to do with psychological intelligence, professional security, and resilience.
The team totally overhauled their recruitment process. Instead of screening for “agreeable” candidates, we began assessing for emotional strength, solution-finding ability, and ease with limit-establishing.
In assessments, we presented candidates with realistic support scenarios: upset clients, excessive requests, and circumstances where there was zero ideal resolution.
Rather than questioning how they would keep the person pleased, we asked how they would handle the situation appropriately while maintaining their own emotional stability and maintaining business policies.
This candidates who performed excellently in these assessments were seldom the ones who had originally appeared most “nice.”
Instead, they were the ones who demonstrated clear analysis under stress, confidence with saying “I can’t do that” when required, and the skill to separate their own emotions from the person’s psychological state.
Half a year after introducing this new hiring strategy, representative retention fell by more than 60%. Service quality rose considerably, but even more notably, happiness particularly with difficult client interactions increased significantly.
Let me explain why this approach is effective: support is essentially about problem-solving under stress, not about being continuously appreciated.
Clients who reach customer service are typically beforehand upset. They have a problem they can’t resolve themselves, they’ve commonly beforehand worked through multiple methods, and they want competent help, not superficial agreeableness.
The thing that frustrated customers genuinely need is someone who:
Recognizes their problem immediately and accurately
Exhibits genuine competence in comprehending and resolving their problem
Provides straightforward explanations about what can and cannot be accomplished
Accepts suitable steps efficiently and continues through on agreements
Preserves composed demeanor even when the client gets emotional
Observe that “agreeableness” does not feature anywhere on that collection.
Competence, appropriate behavior, and reliability matter much more than niceness.
Moreover, too much pleasantness can sometimes backfire in client relations situations. When customers are really frustrated about a significant problem, excessively positive or enthusiastic behavior can seem as uncaring, fake, or tone-deaf.
The team worked with a banking institution company where support staff had been instructed to always display “cheerful energy” no matter what of the customer’s situation.
Such an strategy was effective reasonably well for standard requests, but it was totally inappropriate for significant issues.
When clients called because they’d lost large amounts of money due to system failures, or because they were dealing with monetary crisis and required to explore repayment options, forced positive reactions came across as callous and wrong.
The team re-educated their staff to align their emotional tone to the gravity of the client’s issue. Significant problems needed appropriate, competent responses, not forced positivity.
Service quality improved right away, especially for serious situations. People experienced that their issues were being treated seriously and that the staff assisting them were competent experts rather than simply “cheerful” people.
It brings me to one more significant point: the gap between understanding and interpersonal absorption.
Effective client relations people must have compassion – the capacity to recognize and respond to other people’s emotional states and viewpoints.
But they definitely do never need to take on those negative energy as their own.
Psychological absorption is what happens when client relations people begin experiencing the same upset, anxiety, or desperation that their customers are feeling.
This psychological taking on is remarkably draining and leads to mental exhaustion, reduced performance, and excessive employee departures.
Professional empathy, on the other hand, enables staff to understand and attend to customers’ psychological states without making responsibility for resolving the customer’s emotional wellbeing.
That distinction is vital for maintaining both work performance and individual stability.
Given this, what should you look for when recruiting customer service people?
First, psychological intelligence and strength. Search for individuals who can stay calm under stress, who don’t accept client upset as their responsibility, and who can distinguish their own feelings from other individual’s psychological states.
Next, analytical ability. Customer service is fundamentally about understanding problems and finding practical fixes. Search for people who handle difficulties systematically and who can analyze effectively even when working with upset customers.
Third, comfort with standard-maintaining. Screen for individuals who can say “no” politely but clearly when appropriate, and who recognize the gap between being accommodating and being exploited.
Additionally, real interest in solution-finding rather than just “helping people.” The excellent support people are energized by the professional stimulation of solving difficult situations, not just by a need to be liked.
Lastly, career security and self-respect. Support staff who appreciate themselves and their job expertise are significantly more effective at maintaining healthy boundaries with people and providing consistently professional service.
Keep in mind: you’re not recruiting people to be customer service friends or personal support counselors. You’re hiring professional professionals who can offer outstanding service while maintaining their own wellbeing and upholding reasonable expectations.
Recruit for competence, toughness, and work quality. Agreeableness is secondary. Professional competence is crucial.
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