Quality Assurance

How to Take Your Contact Center to the Next Level with Effective Quality Assurance?

Customer experience can be understood as the direct interaction between the customer buying a product and the representative of the business that is selling the product. Most businesses realize that this interaction is important when it comes to building customer loyalty because customers are unlikely to return if they don’t like the quality of service that they receive. For this reason, it is essential for every business to employ an effective contact center quality assurance approach. Having a quality assurance program will give your contact center the ability to monitor agent performance while revealing actionable insights for making necessary improvements to ensure your center is always on the right track. Below are some of the ways in which effective contact center quality assurance can take your contact center to the next level.

Selecting the Right Quality Monitoring Solution Can Vastly Improve Customer Satisfaction Rates

If you’re in need of a solid strategy to boost your customer satisfaction rates, one of the best ways to do so is with a quality monitoring solution. Call center quality monitoring benefits customers, call center representatives and businesses, making it a winning situation for everyone involved. Before implementing such a solution in your business model, you should first have a solid grasp of the overall benefits of quality monitoring and why quality monitoring is so effective when it comes to improving overall customer satisfaction. How Business Intelligence Solutions Involve Quality Monitoring When it comes to improving customer satisfaction, you’ve got to act quickly and with automated call center technology solutions that offer immediate results. Without quick and effective solutions, you run the risk of losing customers forever. One of the absolute biggest benefits of quality monitoring solutions is they pave the way toward higher profits, mainly because satisfied customers are more willing to spend time and money on your company and the products and services you offer. Another advantage is your call center agents have a better idea of the steps necessary to take the best care of your customers, something that can go a long way in avoiding trial and error. Rather than wait for your customers to need assistance before they ask for assistance, quality monitoring solutions offer customers prompts when they first arrive at your website. The great thing about this is that customers know exactly where to go when they do have a question, which is undoubtedly preferable to scrambling around on your site in search of a phone number or live chat link. There’s also the fact that taking steps to boost your overall quality helps you to retain customers. Like you’re likely to continuously renew your lease on an apartment in which you enjoy living and feel like you’re well taken care of, the same applies to businesses that take great care of their customers and their needs. You have to remember that no matter the services or products you sell, your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Take great care of them, and it’s that much easier for you to grow your business and fulfill its true potential. Saving time is another great selling point for quality assurance. Even if you make it easy for site visitors to ask for help, there are still a few more steps to complete to take full advantage of your opportunity. For instance, the information gleaned from quality monitoring can allow your call center agents to fully answer any questions customers might have and take care of them faster, saving time for the customer and your agents. Do you have (or have you had) to reduce your number of contact agents for financial reasons? If so, investing in quality assurance could make the situation better for your agents as well as your bottom line. Quality solutions can go a long way in reducing caller and customer wait times, preventing customers from having to talk to more than one agent about the same problem and better managing your need to potentially outsource your call center to agents who might not be easily understood by your callers or who might not easily understand your callers. Additional Benefits of Quality Monitoring You’ll likely find it’s much easier for you to gauge the overall performance of your agents with quality monitoring solutions. While there might be standards you have, and while your agents might adhere to those standards, quality monitoring solutions provide you with more information that can be used to pinpoint further exact areas of agent performance that need improvement, something that better keeps your agents on their toes and can keep them from becoming complacent in their work performance. There’s also the fact that you want to make sure your agents are all offering customers the same experience across the board, meaning you don’t want to send (accidentally or on purpose) mixed messages. Even if a caller or site visitor interacts with a different agent each time she or he reaches out for help, it should still feel like dealing with one individual and one set of standards. With this approach, the quality assurance and monitoring feedback you receive is precise across the board, allowing you to make solid improvements to your call center. Just as quality assurance efforts let your call center agents know where they need to make improvements, they also let you know where you might have areas of improvement within your business structure. For instance, if customers and visitors constantly reach out to you with complaints about how difficult it is to navigate your site, it’s likely you need to give your online home an overhaul, or at least some mild remodeling. On a related note, don’t forget that your agents are another valuable font of knowledge about ways in which you can make your business better, so be sure to listen to them and give them a chance to voice their opinions. Having a constant influx of information on the overall quality of your service keeps you and your agents from settling into a false sense of security, which provides you with an undeniable edge in the modern-day business world as well as your industry. No matter your market or audience, change is inevitable. Not only that, but it’s also better to keep us with those changes rather than struggle to play catch-up, which can result in more than a few avoidable disasters. See what a difference practicing proactivity makes by keeping yourself and your agents on your toes. Going back to how you can save money with call center quality monitoring, it can lower the amount of money you spend on calls and other common operational costs, some of which you might not even be aware are impacted by the overall quality of your customer service. That’s money you can funnel back into your business, giving you the financial resources you need for successful growth and to keep your call

How does Contact Center Quality Assurance Improve With Speech Analytics?

At the point when customers achieve your contact focus, they need a situation that addresses their issues, settle their worries, and builds up the trust required for a proceeded with association you’re your organization. Successful leaders ought to set up conventions for evaluating that quality with the end goal to guarantee that customers reliably get the best services. Quality confirmation gives essential knowledge into current tasks and can be utilized to create systems for development. Gathering information about the client encounter is an integral part of accomplishing these objective results and of meeting other office objectives. Discourse examination can assume a necessary job in making existing information gathering more successful and quickening information accumulation with the end goal to audit objectives later on. Many upgraded results can be accomplished with the assistance of this continuous innovation. Troublesome Tasks Are Easier to Accomplish From numerous points of view, discourse examination has been viewed as an excellent distinct advantage in multiple components of business and in call focus tasks individually. Customarily, quality appraisal activities include directors looking into the whole record of considers made to recognize the remarkable precedents that require extra consideration. Calls significant for their positive or negative outcomes are chosen. Operators in charge of positive results can be perceived and praised for their endeavors. Any operators in the cost of adverse consequences can get instructing to enhance their administration. Despite the fact that just 10 – 20 percent of calls will be incorporated into this survey test, information must be submitted for everyone with the end goal to measure bring focus quality outcomes over some stretch of time. This tedious procedure can be extraordinarily supported via robotized observing. Computerized frameworks can achieve numerous errands that would conventionally require manual oversight: Screen the whole volume of approaching calls Classify all calls for a more successful examination Distinguish rising examples and developing patterns Target instructing themes for operators Departmental pioneers that coordinate robotized discourse investigation frameworks have been compensated with an abundance of essential data that can be arranged into practical classes with considerably less time. The work escalated observing and follow-up required for quality affirmation can be rearranged without giving up any viability. Truth be told, with the assistance of robotized training recommendations from the framework, telephone specialists get immediate and customized help with substantially less time. Given that absence of training and direction is an essential driver of disappointment among call focus specialists, this capacity can improve the strength of focus tasks from multiple points of view. Giving Necessary Support to Evolving Quality Assurance Concerns Quality affirmation appraisals have dependably been vital to comprehending the huge riddle of client experience and fulfillment. As business pioneers find better approaches to consider client encounter, new information focuses should be regarded as in the quality confirmation process. A robotized framework with the incorporated investigation for discourse will be on the ball with the adaptability required to develop with your organization’s needs. This is a perfect expansion to any contact or calls focuses wishing to stay at the cutting edge of client benefit conveyance.

How to Maintain Policy and Procedures for Effective Quality Analysis

Quality analysis is an ongoing process in the call center to guarantee that agents are delivering superior customer service. Thus, monitoring is essential to keep your finger on the pulse of how your teams are interacting with the end customer. This allows for timely coaching and behavior modification as needed. A quality monitoring system must operate under established policies and procedures to consistently deliver calibrated results. You may have an experienced quality analysis team with an expert leading them, but if you lack commitment to adhering to policies and procedures you are at risk in the effectiveness of the analysis this team delivers. Here is a list of how you can maintain policies and procedures for effective quality analysis. Step 1: Outline the Policies and Procedures First you must create the policies and procedures that will govern the quality monitoring of the call center. Policies are documentation of rules, principles, and guidelines that an organization establishes to reach a long-term goal, in this case, quality control. Procedures, on the other hand, are the specific methods that will convey the policies in the day-to-day running of the organization. This process may take a while, but it is important to invest your resources in setting a good foundation. You can look at policies and procedures as your quality delivery strategy and tactics. Areas which need to be addressed include: Productivity measurements Workflow Calibration expectations Reporting standards Escalation process Dispute process Audit the Analyst (ATA) process and communication Monthly scorecard requirements and review Company policies Career Development Step 2: Document the Standards You should have an outline of the policies and procedures governing your quality assessment process within the call center, but you need to take it a step further and document it. By publishing your policies and procedures, you make them available to all within the company. This will easily facilitate the review with new hires and allow for documentation for all team members’ adherence to standards. Step 3: Train the quality analysts Leaders are responsible for formulating policies and procedures. However, the people to implement them are the quality analysts. You need to do an intensive training for the QA’s to ensure they understand the policies and procedures and thus be in a position to deliver quality service. Step 4: Coach the quality analysts Employee coaching is paramount for continuous performance improvement. When managers coach the team members on a regular basis, they further develop their knowledge and skills. Proper coaching supplements formal training and goes beyond on-the-job training. Matters relating to quality need reinforcement regularly so that the weaker QA’s can catch up and the strong performers can become better. There is always room for improvement and as a manager and coach your role is to guide all members of your team to engage in continuous performance improvement. Step 5: Monitor and review Finally, monitor the implementation of the policies and procedures. Policies should be formally reviewed annually to ensure that efficiencies are captured and modifications are made. Adding analysts to the review team will give you a hands-on perspective as well as allow for more ownership from the QA team. In conclusion, when you create policies and procedure, document them properly, train and coach your quality analysts on the best practices and then monitor and review the process, you will maintain the policies and procedure and carry out effective quality analysis. You can have an in-house quality monitoring team that is dedicated to only quality measuring and analysis. However, it is advisable to incorporate a third party audit team to audit your internal QA team. The external team will give you additional data based on their analysis that will help you improve your quality standards and provide the operations teams with actionable data to help modify agent behavior.

4 Ideas to Reduce Customer Complaints

If you’ve worked in a call center long enough, you’ll learn that customer complaint are among the least enjoyable to take. While complaints are simply part of the call center experience, there are four ideas you can put to good use to both reduce the number of customer complaints you receive and boost your quality monitoring capabilities. 1. Resolve the Issue on the First Call There are a few things that customers hate more than having to be put on hold, transferred, and made to call back before an issue is fully resolved. While you can’t prevent complaint calls, you can change the way customers feel about calling your company with an issue. Make sure your agents have the skill, authority, and knowledge they need to offer refunds, make promises that can be kept, and make it so customers don’t have to contact your business with the same complaint. 2. Implement the Right System You should also consider implementing a quality assurance system that gathers information on calls to provide you with valuable information you can put to good use improving your call center and your agents. The way QA technology works is it examines keywords used by your agents and callers so you can get a firm understanding of why customers are complaining and why your complaint resolution skills might not be as great as you’d like for them to be. 3. Keep the Lines of Communication Wide Open Not only do your agents need to maintain clear and constant communication with your customers, you also need to ensure your managers and agents can easily communicate with each other. You can take this one step further and see to it that your managers relate to other necessary departments and company personnel to allow them to be better. In addition to implementing quality monitoring solutions to help with this tip, it’s also a good idea to hold meetings to review past complaints, how they were resolved and how they can be better resolved in the future for even better results and happier customers. To make meetings more efficient, it’s a good idea to implement a complaint-logging system. 4. Stay Consistent Your agents should be consistent in their problem-resolution skills. If the same customer calls about two different issues and has two different experiences, that customer might feel you aren’t consistent or aren’t properly training your employees. Again, this is a good reason to hold regular meetings, to make sure your training efforts are the same across the line, and to see if any changes need to be made to your training. Make it so that when your customers have to call with a complaint, they know they’re going to be taken care of by your agents and fellow call center leaders. While you can’t please everyone, there’s most certainly no harm in trying. Put these tips to good use, and don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Etech if you need more assistance or guidance in your quest to reduce customer complaints. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

How to Improve Quality Assurance with Analytics?

Although there is more than one way to analyze the performance quality of your call center, they are not all equal in accuracy and usefulness. The best method to evaluate quality assurance is using people and analytics. When you have the right information, you then can make the right improvements in your customer experience. This increases your customer retention, reduces effort and delivers and effortless customer experience not to mention the bottom line. As technology, has undergone huge advances, it has become important for contact centers to reshape the current technology being used. It often makes me think, how should we combine quality assurance with analytics to embrace customer interactions? Here are 4 ways to obtain this beneficial domino effect: 1. Acquire a More Relevant Sampling A traditional mode of assessing your customers’ experiences with call agents is through random sampling. However, this approach does not provide an accurate picture because it does not extract the most relevant interactions. You are left to base corrections on data that is not completely reflective of reality. Instead, you can use analytics technology to find phone calls that reveal consistent areas of weakness. Instances to look for include: Customers who asked to speak to a supervisor Conversations that contain inappropriate language or incorrect information Interactions that got heated or displayed unprofessional conduct Interactions where customers showed signs of channel switching Being able to locate the right experiences will better show you where your call center agents needs to improve, which a random sampling alone cannot do. 2. Monitor Agent Behavior on and off the Phone The computer activity of your employees is just as important as their phone dialogue. They need to be using the right applications at the right times to ensure a smooth, informative, and timely interaction with callers. While screen recordings can inform you of what agents do during a customer service experience, they cannot disclose what agents do in between calls. Desktop analytics can. You need to know how your agents are spending their time on the clock and how it affects their performance. Even though communication does not take place in person, customers can sense when an agent is distracted or unprepared. You may discover the need to set stricter rules on permissible activities during down time. 3. Increase First Contact Resolution Customer satisfaction is highly dependent on if you resolve the person’s problem during the first contact. Subsequent calls decrease the customer’s perception of the competency and helpfulness of your company. This attitude reduces customer retention, hurting your profits. It becomes worse if the disappointed caller discourages friends and family from doing business with you. It may be the fault of an unqualified agent, or it may be due to a confusing or overgeneralized setup of self-service options. Whatever the cause, you cannot fix it unless you can identify it. Determine the source of repeat contact through analytic technology so you can eliminate this issue. 4. Reshape Quality Assurance The more versatility you have in how you evaluate quality, the more precise and useful your findings will be. This allows you to formulate the best plan on how to improve the customer service of your call center. You need not let limited technology limit your ability to rectify poor customer relations, refine employee training, and enhance overall productivity. Integrating analytics into your quality assurance strategy will give you the flexibility and precision you need to make truly informed decisions. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Chief Customer Officer for Etech Global Services. 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.

How to Enhance Brand Loyalty With Quality Assurance?

Just as important as getting new clients is retaining current ones to grow your business. Although many factors are involved in retention, call centers play a crucial role in building customer loyalty. Consumers want to know that when they have an issue, they will receive exceptional customer service that will resolve the problem. If this happens, the chances of them continuing to do business with and recommending your company greatly increase. Your call center can deliver this positive customer experience through the benefits of quality assurance. Evaluate the Performance of Employees The general purpose of quality assessments is to ensure your agents are doing their jobs correctly. You first must determine if each agent is providing the level of customer service that they are supposed to for clients to perceive your company as helpful and customer-oriented. This includes agents being knowledgeable and clear in their communication. They must also have a balance of friendliness and professionalism, and be able to resolve problems in a reasonable time. If these basics are lacking, you will have to focus on foundational skills before you can build upon them. Obtain In-Depth Quality Assurance Data If areas needing improvement are not readily apparent, you require a superior quality assurance program that can give you more accurate and thorough analytics. It can incorporate behavioral data for a more comprehensive look at agent performance and how it affects customer satisfaction. You can search for specific interactions for reviewal instead of relying on random sampling. Create Custom Coaching for Each Agent The greater options this kind of solution offers allows you to approach employee coaching with more personalization. It informs you of the precise areas in which each employee needs additional training so that you can give useful feedback. Not all agents have the same weaknesses or learn skills in the same way, so a more tailored method will lead to increased and quicker improvement. Enhance Customers’ Brand Loyalty Once your call agents have corrected their mistakes and refined their proficiency in delivering optimal assistance, the rest will take care of itself. The natural significance of pleasing clients will be stronger loyalty to your brand. They will trust your company and will see the reduced effort and improved customer experience. Increase Your Revenue With more loyalty to your brand, business will not only continue but also grow. It will be easier to upsell to current clients who already love you, and easier to gain and retain new ones due to referrals. There is no doubt that your company’s revenue is significantly dependent upon and influenced by your call center’s ability to deliver an extraordinary customer experience to every caller. With so many benefits, it is easy to see the value of integrating a versatile quality assurance program into your call center. It is more than cost-effective; it is profitable for your business. Using the analytics you obtain, will help you gain leverage over competitors because you will follow through best on what every consumer desires: an Effortless Customer Experience. This blog was first published on LinkedIn..

How Automated Quality Assurance Impacts Your Team?

Is your call center quality assurance team currently overworked and overwhelmed? If so, they are less likely to consistently provide accurate performance assessments and may overlook negative interactions between agents and customers. Spot-checking phone calls due to limited resources is simply not an accurate way to measure performance or identify areas that need improvement. Thankfully, there is a fairly easy solution that involves outsourcing your contact center quality assurance responsibilities. When you automate quality assurance, you ensure that each and every phone interaction between your customers and your agents is recorded and analyzed. It is natural for QA staff to worry about being phased out in favor of automated systems, but the most effective automated systems are designed to be used in conjunction with a team of professionals who know how to interpret the data and use it to come up with improvement recommendations. So, how will an automated QA system really affect your team? Greater Efficiency Every good QA department is constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency, and an automated quality monitoring system can help. A standard speech analytics system reveals information about keywords used in phone conservations between customers and agents. This type of system gives your QA team the ability to rapidly review calls based on specific keywords. It also makes it easy to identify any agents who may be making forbidden statements while interacting with customers. If your QA department is expected to achieve higher level of analyzation detail without help from an automated system, a team member will have to listen to each call personally. This takes a significant amount of time and is not very efficient. By choosing to automate the process, you will give your QA department more time to review and analyze the data to identify specific reasons for poor call results. More Time for Call Center Improvement Tasks When your QA staff members are not expected to spend most of the day parsing through calls, they have more time to take care of other important responsibilities, including planning and implementing training for phone agents, reviewing automated analysis reports and coming up with recommendations for improvement. By choosing to automate quality assurance, you give your QA department greater freedom to work on big projects and long-term goals rather than being bogged down with day-to-day phone call analyzation responsibilities. Choosing to automate your contact center quality assurance does not mean you will need to eliminate your QA staff. Automation simply makes it easier for your QA team to quickly perform their daily responsibilities with maximum efficiency. Your QA team will still be needed to interpret the data received from automated systems and implement effective training solutions to continuously improve call center performance. For these reasons, QA automation should be seen as a way to improve your QA department rather than replace it. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Executive Vice President for Etech Global Services. 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..

4 Benefits to Know Before Automating Contact Center Quality Assurance

Did you know that contact centers throughout the United States generate more than 20 billion hours of audio files each year for the purpose of quality assurance? This data reveals that the average U.S. contact center generates more than 300,000 hours of audio recordings annually. It is little wonder that QA staff are often overworked and struggle to maintain high call center quality standards on a consistent basis. What if you could relieve some of the burden on your QA team by automating much of the contact center quality assurance process? When you automate quality assurance, you will have an easier time avoiding employee burnout in your QA department. Here are four benefits you should know before automating your quality monitoring system in your call center. 1. Data Analysis and Interpretation When your QA team is expected to process hundreds or even thousands of audio files in a week, they may have to sacrifice accuracy in order to meet their quota. Since accurate call center data is essential for assessing agent performance, you are doing yourself and your agents a great disservice if you overload your QA department and force them to work with an incomplete data set. When you automate your contact center quality assurance, you can have peace of mind that your performance assessments are based on complete and accurate information. This is because an automated QA program checks every phone call and assesses every interaction between agents and customers. The resulting data will help you understand how well each agent is performing. Although automated systems are good at providing data, they cannot analyze the data or give you recommendations for improvement. For this reason, it is recommended that you use analytics technology in combination with human services that can interpret the data and provide you with suggestions for improvement. 2. Superior Agent Performance When agents know that their performance is being assessed accurately and fairly, they are more likely to step up their game. Additionally, when they receive performance feedback quickly, they can focus their efforts on improving certain behaviors and achieving a higher assessment the next time around. 3. Ease of Establishing Performance Trends No two phone agents are exactly the same in experience and ability, so how do you set realistic performance trends for each one? When you automate quality assurance, you receive regular reports that include information about each agent’s strengths and weaknesses. Once armed with this information, you can determine agent retraining needs and quickly establish performance trends for each agent. 4. Objective Agent Performance Assessments It can be nearly impossible to achieve unbiased performance assessments when you have one person evaluating another person’s performance. To avoid personal bias on a small or large scale, consider implementing an automated quality monitoring system. Doing so will eliminate subjective performance assessments and deliver reliable results. While automating your quality assurance processes can provide you with quick and accurate data, it should not be used to completely eliminate your QA department. In order to interpret the data you receive from an automated system, human understanding and recommendations for improvement are essential. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Executive Vice President for Etech Global Services. 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.

Can Contact Center Quality Assurance Be Improved Through Speech Analytics?

When customers reach your contact center they need to have an experience that meets their needs, resolves their concerns, and establishes the trust required for a continued relationship with a company. Effective leaders should establish protocols for assessing that quality in order to ensure that customers consistently receive the very best service. Quality assurance provides valuable insight into current operations and can be used to develop strategies for improvement. Collecting data about the customer experience is a necessary part of achieving these target outcomes and of meeting other department goals. Speech analytics can play a critical role in making existing data collection more effective and accelerating data collection in order to review goals in the future. Many enhanced outcomes can be achieved with the help of this revolutionary technology. Difficult Tasks Are Easier to Accomplish In many ways, speech analytics has been regarded as a true game changer in many dimensions of business and in call center operations in particular. Traditionally, quality assessment operations involve managers reviewing the entire record of calls made to identify the outstanding examples that require additional attention. Calls noteworthy for their positive or negative results are selected. Agents responsible for positive outcomes can be recognized and commended for their efforts. Any agents responsible for negative outcomes can receive coaching to improve their service. Even though only 10 – 20 percent of calls will be included in this review sample, data must be submitted for each one in order to gauge call center quality results over a period of time. This time-consuming process can be greatly aided by automated monitoring. Automated systems can accomplish many tasks that would ordinarily require manual oversight: Monitor the entire volume of incoming calls Categorize all calls for more effective analysis Identify emerging patterns and evolving trends Target coaching topics for agents Departmental leaders that choose to integrate automated speech analysis systems have been rewarded with a wealth of valuable information that can be sorted into useful categories with much less time. The labor-intensive monitoring and follow-up required for quality assurance can be simplified without sacrificing any effectiveness. In fact, with the help of automated coaching suggestions from the system, phone agents receive direct and personalized assistance in much less time. Given that lack of coaching and guidance is a primary cause of dissatisfaction among call center agents, this function can enhance the stability of center operations in many ways. Providing Necessary Support for Evolving Quality Assurance Concerns Quality assurance assessments have always been crucial to solving the enormous puzzle of customer experience and satisfaction. As business leaders discover new ways to think about customer experience, new data points will need to be considered in the quality assurance process. An automated system with integrated analytics for speech will be ahead of the curve with the flexibility required to grow with your company’s needs. This is an ideal addition to any contact or call center wishing to remain at the forefront of customer service delivery.

How to Improve Customer Experience Through Effective Quality Monitoring

Companies are always looking for effective and cost-efficient ways to improve their bottom line, and one of the best ways to do that is by improving the customer experience. After all, it does not make much sense to offer the best products or services in your industry if your customers are not happy. Focusing more on quality assurance through quality monitoring can both help improve your customer experience and gather feedback to improve your products and services. The Facts Let’s look at some of the facts and figures associated with the current state of customer service. Research has shown that roughly 20 percent of consumers place price over customer service, nearly 40 percent of consumers do not reach out to the companies they do business with, and customers who do reach out don’t do so very often. What this data shows is that a majority of shoppers are willing to pay more for a product if the company is known for having great customer service. This means that a company should make sure their customer service is of the same caliber as the prices they’re asking for their services or products. If customers spend top dollar on an expensive product but have trouble getting in touch with someone who can answer a simple question, they’re unlikely to continue to do business with that company. Moreover, those individuals are likely to leave bad reviews and share their experiences on social media, which can cost the company future business. When consumers are not reaching out to companies, part of the reason might be that they have had poor customer service experiences in the past. Companies have an opportunity to set the bar for customer service and change consumers’ minds about what excellent customer service is, which can make customers more willing to reach out to them in the future if they ever have questions or concerns. In order to understand what works with their customers, companies need to assume a proactive role in discovering what their customers are saying by monitoring those interactions for quality assurance. How Monitoring Solutions Work The central purpose of quality assurance is to gauge representative performance and determine Key Performance Indicator (KPI) or Key Success Indicators (KSI) metrics. These metrics help companies develop their definition of success and keep track of the behaviors that support that definition. One of the most essential things to bear in mind when it comes to KPI and KSI is that the metrics differ from company to company. When cultivating indicator measurements, the monitoring solution gathers information such as the following: How many calls the customer service team or call center receives. The length of time it takes for representatives to answer calls. The number of customers pleased with the services they received. Even though customer service agents can potentially gather this information on their own, companies might prefer to implement software instead. The results are more accurate, easier to organize, more complete and free of personal opinion, which can skew the results. The results provided by software let companies know where they’re doing well in terms of customer services, which areas need improvement and whether there are potential opportunities of which they may not be aware. Properly Utilizing KPI and KSI Metrics To leverage the data generated by quality monitoring solutions, it’s not enough that you simply gather information; you have to know how to effectively use the data and engage your company hierarchy in the process. In addition to sharing data with managers and department heads, front-line employees should also be included. Customer service agents are critical to the customer experience, so they need to understand the rationale behind putting new technology in place. Knowing you’re taking steps to make their jobs easier and giving them the tools they need can enhance their employee satisfaction levels and they may also have suggestions of their own about improving customer service. Share the results of metrics both on an individual customer service agent level and on a team level. You can also use the results of the metrics and monitoring solution in future company decisions. For instance, the gathered data can help you decide which changes to your customer service department will be the most effective, and the metrics may even help with your next marketing campaign. Additional Steps for Effective Customer Service Improvement While using monitoring solutions is a great first step in making your customer service capabilities stronger, it’s only part of the equation. As you’re gathering, sharing and implementing data, be sure you ask customers and callers how they feel about your company’s customer service capabilities and alignment with promises made in your marketing or advertising. You might already know how difficult it can be to keep callers on the line, so give them a good reason to stick around such as a discount or a free service or product in exchange for their participation. In addition to monitoring phone calls, it’s also best to monitor all other forms of customer communication. This is an especially good idea since a majority of today’s consumers prefer not to communicate over the phone. Gather data from live chat and email correspondences to discover valuable information, such as customer pain points. These pain points indicate the issues customers have with your products, services and your company in general. Customers may not call or communicate with you to specifically discuss these pain points but they can be elicited naturally in a conversation and rather than brush the matter off, you can use it as an opportunity to make your company and customer service better. Customers will appreciate the fact that you actually listen to them, and your customer service representatives will be pleased that the issues are being resolved such that they will not have to hear the same pain point over and over. There are always opportunities for your customer service agents to improve, and KPI metrics create an excellent baseline. You can look at

How Human Touch Improves Automated Quality Assurance Process?

All contact center operations have the aim of providing excellent customer service. After all, that is their reason for existing. However, the definition of what constitutes great customer service can vary significantly between companies, and can certainly affect their level of customer satisfaction. In many organizations, the responsibility of defining the behaviors that describe excellent service falls on the Quality Assurance group(QA). The Q.A team has the unenviable task of monitoring and analyzing the interactions of agents and customers with the purpose of providing feedback to the employees. This task is challenging because aside from the job’s monotony, no one likes to have their work “criticized”. Nevertheless, the quality assurance effort, when properly structured, can serve as the first line of defense against poor service and can also be a valuable source of information for contact center managers. Your customers have the choice to switch among various choices. They can move far from your brand, your products, and services in a matter of moments. They don’t have anything to lose. You do. As indicated by recent market studies, it requires 70% more work to produce another client, over holding an old one. The opposition is so steep and merciless, that one terrible move or a little carelessness can prompt to extreme ruin in the insights of your client base. So how would you guarantee this does not occur? What gives you the certainty that you will your current customer base while building another storehouse of prospects? The General achievement rate of your business is straightforwardly relative to the quantity of satisfied customers you have and you can accomplish growth if your call center follows proven quality assurance practices. Your customers should be dealt with like sovereignties. Your activities, customer service skills,approach, and their general service experience ought to make that evident to them, with the goal that they don’t consider exchanging brands. How to improve automated quality assurance process? 1. A Quality Assurance Officer An expert can streamline numerous strategies for you to guarantee that your call center quality assurance best practices are precisely what your customers are anticipating. 2. Performance Checks Visibility equals accountability. It is imperative that you keep agents informed of their quality assurance best environment for a great customer experience. Quality is not a score, it’s a behavior so being congnicent of performance is critical to gaining and maintaining great performance. 3. Call & Chat Monitoring Regardless of how much I say this, I can’t highlight the significance of this point enough. This is the thing that will give you real at-work performance checking parameters and genuine measurements about the competency level of your agents. 4. Call & Chat Barging Take control of the situation exactly when your customers (and agent) needs it the most. A productive and proactive approach is by call/chat barging and providing point by point input. Barging empowers immediate coaching and provides specific examples for agents to follow in the future. Customers feel nurtured and significant if an interaction in intercepted and handled at a higher level. 5. Customer Feedback No customer would superfluously give you a negative feedback if everything has been done to make him feel important. Feedback is a gift – listen carefully to your customers and map back to the core issue. It is critical that you incorporate customer studies along with analytics around VOC feedback to develop solutions that reduce customer effort and increase customer satisfaction. 6. Live Coaching When training new agents, rather than giving them hypothetical lessons and workshops, it would be more valuable for them to learn through at work demos and trainings. Connect with them in live discussions, live calls, call sessions, and environment observation. This will support their confidence and accelerate their learning. 7. Training Programs In the event tha you don’t consistently stay aware of innovative advances, odds are that your customers will begin searching for another option. To keep your call center agents in-tune with new programming, CRM overhauls, and the constant evolution of technology, you have to include them in trainings and keep their knowledge fresh. Effective training programs combine traditional classroom type learning with gamification and real-time support and reinforcement of learning. 8. Impetus Structure Through intelligent structure of data, including voice of customer feedback, you can replicate the most successful behaviors of your best performing reps. Play their calls for different agents on the floor and fuse successful behaviors. Peer coaching is a great motivation structure, which can be founded on the performance. The positive trickle down effect is that your agents get inspired and motivated by each other, which in turn is translated into positive customer experience and sentiment drivers. Establish a “Wow Factor” call library with exemplary interactions that can be used to propel others and act as a reward system for positive behavior. 9. Get your Scripts Right It is vital that your call agents sound confident and appear to know it all. All positive customer experience is driven more by agent confidence and ownership of a solution than any other factor. Your customers can have a flexible scope of inquiries, so empower your agents with effective scripting and resolution procedures.

6 Strategies to Optimize Call Center Quality Assurance

Quality assurance involves maintaining a desired level of quality and it is crucial for your call center to be aware of the ways to do this. In order to optimize call center quality assurance, take advantage of these six strategies. Focus on quality as a behavior One strategy to utilize is to evaluate the quality of your agents during training. Keeping them informed about the call selection process and telling them how well they are doing will keep them more engaged with the calls and more willing to improve. QA evaluations also allow you to measure the performance of your agents. Use analytics Another strategy is to use analytics to your advantage to find higher value calls. A few examples of higher value calls include calls that were tagged by an agent, called that were placed multiple times, calls which involved transfers, calls that were extremely long or short and calls that were directed to specific numbers within a small time frame. When you are able to pinpoint high value calls, you can detect issues you’re having and correct them accordingly. Automate QA workflow Something else to consider is to classify calls and collect data which can help determine criteria for quality monitoring. An automated QA workflow helps monitor calls with long handle times and identifies specific causes. Once again, you can pinpoint issues and decipher where the main problem lies. It can also help monitor calls with a lot of transfers and help you determine if customers are even calling the right numbers. Increase agent feedback Another strategy to consider is to speed up the feedback you give to agents. A few ways to do this is to make QA evaluations more frequent, allow the agent to have time before the call to review some information, provide call reviews on a regular basis, implement peer to peer coaching or even rotate the coaches to keep your agents from getting bored or comfortable with the same supervisor. Frequent calibration sessions A fifth way to optimize call center quality assurance is to schedule calibration sessions more frequently. This can eliminate the differences between supervisors on how they view various skills and agents may be less likely to object their ratings based on specific supervisors. Auto-scoring Lastly, you can use a speech analytics tool to use auto-scoring. Speech analytics software allows for you to set up buckets for various categories such as greeting, call recording disclaimer, contact terms and more. Utilizing these six strategies and focusing on improving call center quality monitoring can improve your call center and enhance the excellence of your agents as well as improve your customers’ experiences on the phone. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

5 Steps to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness in Your Quality Monitoring System

When quality monitoring for a call center is only focused on problem detection and resolution, it falls short of its full potential. A methodology that also identifies opportunities for building customer loyalty is essential for supervisors, upper management and strategic planners. These advanced, robust technologies should not forgo the “personal touch” — in fact, they are ideal opportunities to better incorporate it. These suggestions will aid anyone seeking to successfully fine-tune a call center quality assurance system. Make Sure Basic Protocols Are Followed Quality monitoring is a vital tool for ensuring that best practices in a contact center are observed. Placing new agents — as well as continuous improvement for current representatives — involves follow-up to determine if additional training is required. It is important to make sure agents get the basic protocols for call handling right, such as greeting, putting callers on hold, engaging the caller while researching information, and closing the call. With observation, it is easier to catch undesirable practices before they stick. Use Metrics Effectively Information does no good unless it is actually applied. Once gathered, it should be leveraged in order to train and develop agents as well as improve overall center performance. Call length, speed of answer, first time resolution percentage rates and other data can also be used to set performance standards, which can be evaluated and retooled as needed. Create Systems Gradually It is tempting to jump in feet first, but this can lead to being easily overwhelmed and decreases changes of meaningful application from a quality monitoring approach. Staring with simple monitoring is always a good start, and it assists with creating the building blocks for a future call center quality assurance plan. Make Data and Feedback Available Information and training intersect well when performance statistics are not only shared, but used to improve agent performance and motivate representatives who already demonstrate high levels of call handling and resolution skills. Group sessions are great for sharing best practices, and individual metrics can be used in performance reviews as well as awarding incentives. Build a Specialized QA Team Assembling a quality management team is crucial for operations. Once it is in place, these individuals must be given the necessary training and support. Identifying internal staff for this team or hiring externally based on needed skillsets are both options. Implementing call center quality assurance can often be a challenge. However, a properly executed system provides a host of benefits. Ensuring basic protocols are followed, using metrics effectively, building gradually, using the data and building a QA team are all keys in a successful plan.

8 Objectives of Quality Monitoring

Your quality program for customer service is the main way your company directly interacts with customers, and that makes it a key component in your strategies to retain customers and to convert first time purchasers into repeat business. This puts a lot of stress on the program, especially if your organization has any questions about the role of quality monitoring. Ensuring that your employees understand your quality monitoring objectives and the overall impact that they have on the company means getting better responses to feedback and better returns on your quality improvement gestures. Individualizing Forms and Procedures The first quality objective should be to move the customer service personnel away from a “one size fits all” method of responding to customer concerns. That means understanding the variety of concerns customers have, as well as using quality monitoring to address any issues with understanding different customer needs and concerns. Keeping Forms Up to Date Your forms and procedures also stop working at the point where they no longer reflect either your customers’ experience or your offerings. Unfortunately, it can take some time for outdated forms and procedures to work themselves out naturally. This is where quality monitoring has an opportunity to take responsibility for not only the revisions, but the proliferation of those documents after each change is made. Avoid Technology as a Cure-All It is tempting to think of technology as the eventual answer to any business challenge, but the fact is that more often than not, the real change needs to be made at the level of human implementation. That means your quality objectives should weigh both what technology is used and how it is used if you are to make the most of the role of quality monitoring in your organization. Track and Share Your Results One of the major goals of your quality team should be to get the entire department excited about quality improvement. That means sharing the results of your monitoring and making sure that everyone understands the ways that these results are used to make the entire organization better. Avoid Being Seen as the ‘Call Police’ There’s no doubt that your quality monitoring objectives include some direct and quantitative goals for your company, and that is great. Being a supportive resource for growth provides an alternative that makes it easier to build rapport and gain cooperation from all the employees in a department. Hold Periodic Calibration Sessions Just as your forms and procedures need to be updated to ensure that they are changed and detailed enough to support your customer support needs, your overall approach needs to be re-calibrated from time to time across the whole department. Use Representative Sampling Many call centers rely on small samples of their overall call volume to make decisions. One of your most important customer experience to move toward representative sampling. That way, you have the confidence of knowing that your results fit the big picture. Use What Works In the end, quality monitoring objectives are about understanding what your company needs to be successful. As you calibrate yours, keep in mind that some objectives might be lower priority for your business model than others. Throw out any that don’t work, and keep on running updates and re-calibrating your procedures until the right balance emerges. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

How to Integrate Quality Assurance and Coaching for Success

We all know the importance of offering exceptional customer service and the countless benefits that result from doing that. Quality assurance is at the core of ensuring that your customers receive quality services. In order to fully equip customer-facing employees, coaching programs must be comprehensive. How you train your staff determines the effectiveness of the quality assurance program. The seamless integration of quality assurance and coaching processes is critical to producing sustainable success. Define the Coaching Process You need to define the exact coaching process that everyone can follow so that this process can be integrated uniformly. Depending on the particular quality assurance goal, determine how much time, on average, the coaching session should require, what points will be covered in each session, how you will monitor the progress of the agent after the coaching session, and what elements should be documented in the resulting action plan following the session. Typically, front-line managers will initiate the coaching sessions, so consult with them on the best practices and methods in addition to your other subject matter experts. It is essential to have a mutual understanding of the process for consistency of the messages passed to the representatives. As you seek their input, you will also gain buy-in to the process, particularly if it is new or requires change. Document the process, you agree to follow for future referencing purposes. Train Your Coaches In addition to involving them in the process definition, you must train the coaches in order to drive lasting performance improvement. A well-trained coach knows that the employee should be able to both identify their errors and offer possible solutions. The coaches’ role is to guide them to accurately assess the situation and articulate how they will address the area of opportunity. The invaluable skills the coaches learn during their training will go a long way in ensuring that all employees receive consistent coaching. They will understand better how powerful teamwork is and instill the same spirit into the agents, without any bias during the evaluation and coaching stages. When the leaders are well-trained they will be positioned to develop consistent behaviors that promote quality interactions with the end customer. Build Partnerships with Agents The partnership means both parties own their roles and duties towards achieving the agreed goal. When the agents understand how they contribute to the success of the QA program they will be at the center of developing an improvement strategy. Leaders need to encourage agent participation in the evaluation process for an active partnership. For instance, seek their input as you draft the evaluation forms and involve them in calibration sessions. A great leader inspires others to be the best they can. You will motivate your agents to deliver quality services by demonstrating the behaviors you wish for them to emulate so that they learn from you even when you are not actively coaching. Choose and use words that will impact their attitude. Listen carefully to them and they will listen to your advice and guidance. Create an environment conducive for effective coaching to occur. Prepare in Advance Once you have looped in the managers and customer representatives, you need to prepare them mentally regarding the upcoming coaching sessions. Failure to do so will lead to one-way communication and mediocre results. A coaching session will be most effective when the agent is free to provide input on delivering quality services, identify where they believe they went right or wrong, and possible solutions to remedy the prevailing issues. An Acknowledgment under your guidance will equip the agent to take responsibility for his or her actions and encourage effective two-way communication. Leverage Technology Technology is always your ally when it comes to integration. There are countless technology options that will make your work effortless and seamless. For example, you can develop scorecards and dashboards to reduce the time you would otherwise use for data analysis and free up time for coaching. Information can be aggregated to make it easy to understand and provide targeted direction for program remediation efforts. Following these tips will enable you to integrate quality assurance with coaching: define the process, train the coaches, build partnerships with agents, prepare in advance and leverage technology. Your business will grow and thrive when every person actively participates in the Quality Assurance program.

4 Easy Steps to Check Your Call Center QA System Reliability

There’s a huge difference between having a quality assurance system and getting the most out of it. For Call center quality assurance to be effective, it has to be reliable, and center managers need to know how to check their quality processes to ensure that reliability is ongoing. Luckily, there are a few easy and sustainable call center QA program processes to help with this reliability. That way, your call center delivers more to its customers because your QA team is delivering more to the call center overall. Step One: Gap Assessment Knowing where you are and where you want to be allows you to break down the gap between those performance levels into steps that your employees can easily take. To get a baseline, start by comparing where your operations are at against what is generally accepted as standard operating procedure. Once there’s a solid measurement there, it is easier to set goals and to devise processes to bring those goals to fruition. To do that: Determine where your gaps occur and which processes create them. Devise a plan of action that avoids creating circumstances that lead to gaps. Put the plan into place to control for that situation. Measure any changes that occur to your overall call center performance. There might be numerous rounds of adjustment to make for each area where gaps are identified, both because incremental goals are easier to achieve and also because correctly identifying the best control for a process often takes a couple of pilot attempts before you lock in the best solution for your call center QA program. Step Two: Avoid Silo Processes Generally, businesses are more successful when their various departments and divisions pull together, because all of the various efforts throughout the company coordinate and synergize as the organization moves toward its goal. Practically, this can be more difficult to achieve, because larger companies often have departments or divisions that are spread widely enough to make close communication more difficult. The best way to combat this is by bringing together the various measurements and goals of call center management in different departments through the QA program, so that everyone is using everyone else’s data to ensure their quality controls are effective, without causing unintended consequences. This move also has the effect of streamlining the flow of information for call center quality assurance personnel, so they have access to the tools they need to be successful. Step Three: Measuring and Tracking Improvement Incremental improvement on a day to day basis is both more sustainable and more practical, in terms of meeting performance forecasts, than expecting a total overhaul. To promote this kind of growth, though, measuring and tracking performance is essential. That way, not only are you sure your new procedures are effective, you also gain the ability to address plateaus and surges, so your training and quality assurance continue to be effective. Step Four: Training for Every Day Improvement The last step in ensuring QA reliability is turning its processes and controls into actions that employees are able to monitor and use effectively. Disseminating information throughout the company, so that employees understand both the goals and processes of your QA program, is key to this. Employees who understand quality assurance goals are better able to report relevant developments to QA personnel, improving the flow of information and the reliability of the program overall. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

Six Pitfalls to Avoid with Quality Monitoring Systems

As you evaluate your quality assurance systems you are probably asking yourself, whether they are delivering the results that you and your stakeholders anticipated. If this is not true for your current situation, investigate the root cause and implement any change required to avoid negative impact to your operations and to your brand.A sound quality monitoring system is a foundation for driving agent performance, managing operational costs, revealing training needs and increasing customer satisfaction among many other benefits. Unfortunately, there are certain things which may hinder successful implementation of a quality monitoring system. Here are six pitfalls to look for and tips on how to overcome them. Documentation of Deliverables Lack of fully defined and documented deliverables presents a huge risk of failure, because if you have incorrect or insufficient information regarding your deliverables, you will create risk of failure in your implementation. Quality monitoring goes beyond technology; you need to understand what you it is that you want to achieve and create the necessary plans to achieve each objective. Your input into the software and program details determines your results. Tip: Develop and document a strategic quality framework that will guide all your efforts, and make it public for everyone on the project team to read and understand it. Allocation of Time for Evaluation At the core of any quality monitoring system is evaluation of the customer interaction through the contact medium whether it is a call or chat or other contact means. Allocating sufficient time for contact evaluation and assessing the correct sample size per agent is critical to effective implementation of the quality monitoring system. When you allocate too little time or a small sample size, you affect the accuracy and validity of the results. It is practically impossible to review all contacts, so evaluators need to determine the number of calls to review during what period of time. Tip: Consider using tools that can help you with planning, scheduling and replay/review function. Insufficient Coaching It is one thing to evaluate agents, and it is another to use that information for proper coaching. Inadequate coaching is a huge pitfall because the agents will not understand fully their areas of opportunity, and how to improve them. Coaching is the most effective way to continually improve employee performance by giving them an opportunity to point out their own mistakes and develop their own solutions. He or she will quickly implement the quality program through ownership of the process. Tip: Effective and efficient coaching starts with individualized feedback; empower and encourage agents to self-evaluate. Perceived Favoritism When agents receive evaluation feedback, some may feel that it was unfair especially if it was negative and others got positive feedback. This may lead to resentment and hurt feelings, which eventually affects service delivery. Lack of transparency in the scoring and grading procedures increases this perception. Tip: Use advanced solutions that allow you to incorporate an agent learning center. Reviewed contacts are tagged and notated to facilitate agent self-evaluation and coaching. Evaluators should be trained and calibrated to be fair and partial during scoring for uniform scoring results. Failure to Target Thousands of interactions between customer representatives and customers take place each day. It can be a challenge to determine which ones to evaluate for valuable insight into agent performance and areas that need development and improvement. Evaluating the right calls will ensure that you tackle the right problems, save time and improve agent performance. Tip: Install and utilize software that will allow you to target contacts for monitoring. Depending on which problem areas you want to monitor, you can set parameters to receive notifications regarding targeted behaviors. Ignoring External Factors External factors can paralyze your implementation efforts as much as internal ones. Ignoring the factors that are not within the evaluators and agents control can be a big issue. These factors not only produce difficulties for the agents during their customer interactions, they also generate unreliable quality monitoring results. For example, a product malfunction is a typical external factor which can generate a poor customer experience survey but be entirely outside the control of the customer service representative. Tip: Upgrade your software to include screen recording, because it will give you a 360 view of the process. In summary, lack of defined deliverables, insufficient time for contact evaluation, ineffective coaching, perceived feelings of favoritism, failure to target contacts for evaluation and ignoring external factors are pitfalls that will derail your quality implementation process. Follow these tips and reap the benefits of a sound quality monitoring system. This blog post was first published on LinkedIN

Get Insights to Customer Service Through Quality Assurance

Offering exceptional and seamless customer service guarantees steady business growth, because customers will be satisfied with the services you offer and will become loyal. Loyalty translates into consistent revenues and quality assurance is at its core. Quality assurance is the systematic process of monitoring how well products or services meet specific quality requirements. Most companies have a well- defined quality assurance program, because they know that to meet and exceed customers’ expectations, they need to continuously inspect the quality of services delivered. Poor customer service impacts your bottom line. You start by losing customers, who in turn tell their friends about your service, and then they also leave and the pattern continues. This downward spiral can be disrupted by an accurate focus on the correct customer service metrics. First Contact Resolution Rate : FCR is one of the most important metrics in the contact center. It measures how many customers’ issues are resolved on the first contact. When customers are satisfied with your services in the initial contact, they will trust you and come back again.A high first contact resolution rate indicates a high customer satisfaction rate. Measuring FCR leads to improved customer experiences, because your team will understand which behaviors are correct and which need to be improved. If you start with a low rate and with time it increases, you agents will be motivated, leading to job satisfaction and happy customers. Response Time : How long does it take your agents to respond to customer queries? Response time is the period between when a customer makes a request and the time that they get a response. Slow service indicates incompetence or lack of urgency. If you want to retain your clients, then respond to them in a timely manner. Not every issue can be resolved immediately, however, that does not mean that the customer has to wait very long to get a response.Response time gives you insights into the quality of services you are offering. When your average response time keeps reducing, it means your services are improving and customers are satisfied. Total Volume by Channel : This metric is the baseline of other metrics. It indicates the total volume of inquiries you receive per channel. If you are running a contact center, you attend to customers via different platforms. Measuring which medium customers prefer to use will help you meet them where they are and how they want to be met.It is also important for the company to focus on the channels with the highest return on investments. For example, if your clients like contacting you through live chat, then to offer exceptional experiences, upgrade your tools and ensure that staffing levels are appropriate to the volume. Quality assurance provides these insights into the customer experiences delivered. Abandonment Rates : Your contact center exists to meet customers needs, if they keep abandoning conversations, then there is a serious quality issue that needs immediate attention. Remember customers have many options and with an instant gratification need, you have to give them reasons not to look elsewhere. Statistics show that 71% of customers on live chat expect help in less than 5 minutes. If the handle time is more than that, they abandon the conversation. These rates provide insight into agent speed and staffing gaps. Adjustments you make from the insights gathered, affect the customers directly. Developing and implementing a quality assurance program is the only way to guarantee that your customer service meets the expectations of your customers. Begin by focusing on these metrics, first call resolution rate, response time, total volume by channel and abandonment rates, to transform your insights into the quality of services your customers deserve.

Implementing Quality Assurance Controls for Call Center Projects

If your Call Center already maintains an effective Quality Assurance (QA) program you have a leg up on other companies who do not invest in this resource. The best programs act not only as independent auditors of agent behaviors, they also provide valuable insight into the ‘how to’ of program or center improvement, including valuable Voice of the Customer feedback. When new projects are launched it is wise to spend some time planning how to incorporate this critical resource into the Project Implementation plan. Gather Requirements from Client You may find during the Discovery process as you gather requirements for the project from your client that there are particular deliverables required for a QA process. In the event that the client does not already use a QA process this would be your opportunity to introduce them to the concept, explain industry Best Practices and make recommendations about how to incorporate Quality Assurance as part of the overall Performance Management plan. Recommendations could range from the content of the Audit tools to White-Label configuration of the QA software. During this phase you can establish expectations and act as Trusted Advisor. Identify and Equip Personnel Dedicated to the Project QA personnel must be independent thinkers with attention to detail who can objectively score a call or chat with consistency. After being provided initial training on the subject matter and scoring forms, QA agents must also receive calibration including ongoing sessions so that all of the behaviors included in the Audit Tool are both defined and interpreted accurately. Effective calibration should result in variance of less than 5%. For new programs it is typical to arrange calibration sessions with your client to ensure that the team is correctly scoring all behaviors accurately. These sessions may result in additional or refined definition of the targeted behaviors. After the QA process is established and the personnel have been trained and calibrated, for ongoing program excellence you must also provide a mechanism to inspect auditor accuracy. This can typically be accomplished with an Audit the Auditor process, where senior or certified auditors are given the responsibility to sample the accuracy of the output of the QA agents. This step will ensure that high levels of accuracy are not only established but maintained and measured throughout the life of the program. Develop QA Audit Tools Once the process flow has been mapped, the specific behaviors which are critical to the success of each customer interaction must be identified, defined and weighted. The most typical rubric is to achieve a total possible score of 100% with higher values assigned to the most influential behaviors. With thought to the reporting throughputs which will be generated you may also consider creating logical groupings or sections with their component behaviors. For example, for an Outbound telemarketing project, you may wish to organize the scoring tool to mirror the desired selling behaviors such as Introduction, Needs Analysis, Product Presentation, Closing and Handling Objections. The subset of behaviors which could be included in the Introduction section might inquire whether the agent was ready for the call and whether the agent introduced themselves appropriately. Most audit tools would include a separate section for etiquette and language skills and a category of ‘auto-failure’ for any behaviors which are mandated by regulation or client requirement. Reporting Detail and Broad Trends As individual customer contacts are audited, a body of data will be created which can then be mined for purposed of targeted performance improvement initiatives. It is advisable to structure the reports which will be generated so that analysis may be made of individual agent behaviors, team performance, and broader segmentation if the project is located in multiple locations to target performance gaps. If the scoring tool has been segmented by groups of behaviors, the aggregated data will indicate which areas large groups of people may need additional training or coaching for. For example, if in the example above for the sales process, if each behavior section has been scored for the project in the 80 to 100 percentile except for Handling Objections, then the Operations Management and Training Departments can devise effective strategies to modify the training curriculum, provide ongoing training and target individual coaching sessions. Reports should be used to close loop the performance management process and should be an iterative process so that the tools accommodate the desired outcome. In addition to auditing critical behaviors, the QA process can and should also reveal insight into the Voice of the Customer. If significant numbers of customers complained of difficulty navigating a website, then that is critical feedback to report to the client and its programmers. VOC summaries will address issues outside the control of the individual contact center agent and identify both areas of opportunity and also those things which drive customer satisfaction. Monitoring and Improvement Once the initial implementation work has been completed, the longer term processes should include steps to seek constant improvement, both on the individual level and for the organization as a whole. A typical quality analysis over time will likely show that a few behaviors present a large majority of the quality failures. You should plan on identify each critical to success behavior and working on improvement plans until behavior levels are acceptable. Establishing a closed loop feedback process will become a critical part of the quality culture. QA: In House or Outsource? For some, the ability to develop a Quality Assurance department or program may not be cost effective or be may constrained by other considerations such as lack of software or scale. The qualified QA provider will supply the requisite software and personnel and a seamless consultative experience to those who find ground-up development too cost prohibitive to consider. Quality management can be the missing piece to move your brand ahead of the competition. Whether you create your own program or contract with a provider, Quality should always be integrated into all of your programs and will be in the long term, well worth the effort

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