Quality assurance in the call center is a critical piece to success. It can help to improve each customer experience, improve efficiency and give productivity a robust boost. In order to make improvements, managers must stop trying to randomly pinpoint and repair problems. Call centers tend to thrive when a bottom-up method is used to address issues in an organized fashion.
Measurement Really Does Matter
Numbers are a critical part of call center quality measurement and monitoring. In fact, 85% of QA leaders hold the belief that a successful call center must find ways to evaluate how agents are performing as well as quantify if training requirements are being followed.
The sheer volume of data that is collected in order to measure your call center’s success can be overwhelming. Lagging technology frequently leaves quality assurance managers frantically working to analyze large batches of metadata in order to make sense of the numbers. A reliable call center monitoring solution that provides reliable analytics and insights is the first step to freeing up time so these same managers can instead work on identifying problems and helping the team come up with effective solutions.
A Bottom-Up Look at The Whole Structure
No matter what type of industry a call center supports, each goes through the same phases of growing and building over time. When quality assurance managers take time to look at key call center metrics and indicators, while also considering these phases, they are more capable of identifying key performance indicators and setting long term goals. In essence, it is critically important to look at the “whole building” in order to see where the problems may be.
Start With a Solid Foundation
Some may think that focusing time and energy on the basics of operational quality assurance is a waste of time. In truth, making sure that certain goals are being met is helping to set a strong foundation that can be built on. Some of these goals include:
- Being able to recognize poor performers.
- Track how call center agents are progressing.
- Hit service delivery goals consistently.
- Track if procedures and processes are being handled correctly.
While it is ok to take a group bow once these markers are being consistently met, remember that this type of quality assurance is only the foundation and must be added upon for maximum effectiveness.
Build the Supporting Walls
Once the strong foundation of your call center is up and running, it is time to build the theoretical supporting walls. To do this, you must identify some goals that have more foresight and flexibility. This type of goal is rarely set in stone. Instead, they tend to shift and change as the call center develops. Your team of managers may decide that some of this type of goal should include:
- Identifying the reasons for poor customer service
- Finding ways to improve customer retention rates
- Institute accurate reporting of trends
- Lower staff turnover
- Pinpoint places where retraining might help
By taking a closer look at this type of quality assurance goal, managers and staff alike can begin to more fully understand the type of experience each customer is having. When call center agents are encouraged to give themselves a score on each call, they will be able to see and mentally review how successful they have been at achieving the goals. The collected data can then be used by quality assurance leaders in retraining efforts. By taking ownership of the metrics of each call, agent retention tends to increase along with performance.
Create an Impenetrable Roof
It may seem simple to complete this process by sticking rigidly to current quality assurance goals and practices. However, doing so simply keeps the call center status quo going. In order to attach an impenetrable roof to the foundation and walls you have worked to build, a company must be willing to change current practices, though it may not be an easy process.
This type of large-scale changes must come from upper management and employees must be a part of helping the shift happen. Employees that are forced toward such changes in the company are much less effective when compared those who are encouraged to be part of the change.
At this step in building the call center, the focus should change from QA scores and begin to look at actionable behaviors such as improved caller loyalty, increased percentage of customers who purchase or increased net promoter scores.
In this final step, each employee should be involved in reaching the goals which should cause company culture to shift from one where micromanagement is essential to a more effective environment of listening, offering solutions and respect. This dynamic shift brings with it an overall experience of happier customers and agents which raises your overall ROI.
If You Can Describe it, You Can Do It
Most call center agents can describe how a perfect call would go, from start to finish. Unfortunately, not every call is the same. Because of this, it is important for agents and management alike to understand that a great customer experience consists of three different parts. These are customer needs, expectations and the need for consistency.
When your call center team works together to make sure that each of these customer needs are met, you should see that your team begins to evolve and think differently about quality assurance. When paired with measurable analytics, a call center can, indeed, become exactly what it was meant to be.
For more advice on creating a quality assurance team that drives CX or if you would like to learn more about Etech, feel free to contact us at info@etechgs.com.
This blog was first published on LinkedIn.
