Customer Service Aptitude Profile (CSAP)
Updated
by
Cody Cooley
What is a Customer Service Test?
The Customer Service Aptitude Profile (CSAP) is an adaptation of the Sales Achievement Predictor and measures personality traits that are critical to success in customer service and customer service-related positions. The report describes characteristics related to customer service potential and performance, such as diplomacy, cooperativeness, patience, and assertiveness. The customer service test contains 140 items and is written at a sixth-grade reading level. Validity scales identify applicants who exaggerate strengths or minimize weaknesses - and automatically adjusts the scores of those applicants.
Detailed Score Reports
The CSAP presents an overall recommendation about an individual's suitability for customer service work, as well as a listing of his or her relative strengths and weaknesses in eight skills and behaviors associated with good customer service performance. Because many customer service roles include a sales component, specific scores that focus on a person's disposition towards sales-related activities are also provided.
Validity Information
Construct Validity: CSAP scale scores have been compared with a number of external measures of similar individual characteristics, including the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) and the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) scales; these comparisons provide very strong support for the construct validity of the CSAP scales.
Predictive Validity: The CSAP overall score is based on a combination of personality traits that have been shown to be critical for success in customer service and customer service-related jobs. These traits include cooperativeness, personal diplomacy, and patience. CSAP scores have been shown to correlate with job performance for customer service representatives in a wide variety of industries, and can also be used to screen candidates for related positions such as bank tellers, front-of-house workers in the restaurant industry, receptionists, and more.
Reliability: The estimated test-retest reliabilities for CSAP scores range from .67 to .90 and are well within acceptable psychometric limits.
For more detailed validity information please see the SalesAP manual.
Standardization Sample
Norms for the CSAP were developed using a sample of 1.375 individuals aged 15 and older, of which 48% were male and 52% were female. These individuals were being assessed for job selection, placement, promotion, or career appraisal. Approximately 30% were students and the balance were adults ranging in age from their early 20s to mid-60s. Their current work situations included executive positions in technical and service-oriented areas, managerial positions, and sales positions. About 10% of the sample were Black and 2% were Hispanic. In establishing standardized scores for the final version of the CSAP, normalized T-scores were first developed on the large, stable standardization sample for CSAP scores. The normative information obtained from the standardization group was extended to a separate reference sample of 745 managers, people in sales-related occupations, and middle- and upper-level professionals.
