CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service)

Everything You Need To Know About Call Center Quality Assurance

“The customer care representative I just spoke to was extremely helpful, patient, courteous, and knowledgeable. I wish all contact center employees were like them.”

Feedback like this for your call center agents is a step closer to achieving quality assurance call center goals in your call center management strategy. But is it only about creating a good customer experience? No! It is also about delivering higher revenue, higher productivity, and better agent performance. So, let’s take a consistent approach to the fundamentals of call center quality assurance:

  • 62% of US customers have stopped doing business with a brand because of poor customer service. Most companies only assess 3-10 QA calls per agent, and if you catch anything big, it’s probably just luck. 
  • According to Microsoft’s 2017 Global State of Multi-Channel Customer Service report, 97% of consumers say customer service quality assurance is critical to maintaining loyalty.
  • Interaction analytics means that 100% of QA calls can be monitored, ensuring agents follow all business rules and regulations. This is the essence of a call center quality assurance. 

What is the Relevance Of Contact Center Quality Management in a Call Center?

Call Center QA or Quality assurance ensures that an organization’s services are as expected. In a call center, quality assurance is commonly used to detect emerging customer issues and enhance communication for a better customer experience. This is very important in achieving the desired customer service quality assurance evaluation results. This call center QA strategy follows a series of well-planned actions based on data collection and analysis, employee training, and development.

The introductory phrase of a conversation with the call center agent includes, “This conversation can be recorded for quality and training purposes.”

Thus, a quality assurance of call center is about creating the perfect balance between business goals and building positive customer relationships. It is an ongoing process that identifies opportunities for staff on the values of a healthy customer relationship, based on lessons learned through recorded and monitored QA calls.

  • Quality assurance also helps to cut costs as it identifies agent downtime and unmanageable call volume. Call centers must have a dedicated quality team to run the quality control program to monitor call center operations, collect and evaluate data, and use it to help agents improve their performance. You can have an internal team led by managers or supervisors, or you can hire external quality control specialists. 
  • Quality managers typically use methods such as call monitoring, call scoring, and side-by-side coaching to assess agent performance, call quality, and compliance with standards. Although the software performs some quantitative analysis, that human element is still needed to evaluate customer interactions.

Let’s take a look at the different quality control methods and how you can strengthen your call center as a key asset to your business.

3 Methods Of Contact Center Quality Management

The key methods to ensure quality assurance in call centers are:

Operation-Based

A call center quality operational framework guides your quality assurance process, helping you establish the criteria and metrics you should use to measure service quality and monitor agent performance. Generally, managers conduct monthly assessments that are primarily used to identify agents whose performance may require improvements.

Tactical

The next level uses monthly or yearly trending data, which is all about tactical trust with an emphasis on growth and scalability. The aim is to identify the root causes of poor customer service and reduce employee turnover by investing in better training. It shows data in real-time and allows call center agents to evaluate their interactions. It evaluates response times and sees how you can improve agent training.

Strategical

This is the highest level of evaluation of the quality assurance of call center as it focuses on achieving long-term, company-wide goals. This method improves your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and uses contact center quality assurance to build customer loyalty. Most companies work gradually towards this stage, as it is important first to fine-tune the operational and tactical parts.

Key Focus Areas of call center QA in Call Center Operations

Quality Assurance is all about controlling, verifying, checking, and correcting the following metrics:

First Call Resolution (FCR)

First call resolution means providing a resolution to the customer’s query in the very first attempt and is one of the most crucial drivers of customer satisfaction. According to reports from the SQM group, for each percentage improvement in the FCR, there is a 1% improvement in customer satisfaction. All call centers showing an 85% FCR score enjoy low operating costs and high employee satisfaction.

Self-service channel

Self-service channels include IVR services, chatbots, and self-help channels for their customers, but this is only helpful if the customer prefers using these ways. If you look for banking or ticket-booking solutions, the IVR will direct you to an AI-enriched system that will try and resolve your issue in the first go. This is not for customers who prefer speaking to a human for them. These channels are also hampered by obstacles and glitches.

Response time

Response time is the time taken by an agent to provide a solution to the customer in minutes, hours, or days. A shorter response time means greater customer satisfaction.

Forecasting and Compliance with planning

The average response time helps in checking employee compliance with the schedule. Metrics for evaluating expected caller load help ensure call center quality effectiveness. This helps in minimizing queues and maintaining customer and employee satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction score

There are many software and tools in the market to measure customer satisfaction. You can implement a system that sends automated surveys to customers to find out their experience on the call and test the agent’s variables. Assessing your customers’ satisfaction should be a regular task that needs to be completed within a set amount of time. It ensures a regular review of the quality of call center management.

Contact Quality

The way the customer is greeted when contacting a call center and the provision of appropriate information is of great importance for a quality service. Prompt response and resolving the caller’s problem with empathy courtesy are some parameters based on which the contact center quality assurance score is checked.

Social media overflow

This is the latest benchmark for evaluating quality assurance of call centers. Today, many customers are turning to social media platforms to connect with call center managers with their questions or complaints. Through several channels, the long-term goodwill of the brand can be influenced, and thus, it requires careful monitoring and management.

Advantages of Call Center QA

Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits call center QA can bring to your contact center.

Provides clarity on corporate goals and values:

Regular follow-up of contact center quality assurance disciplines for employees on the company’s goals, values, and mission is critical. The goals regarding customer QA calls are also regularly clarified.

Customer retention 

When quality assurance of your call center program is effective, your agents should be able to deliver consistently positive customer experiences. Customers should feel like your business takes care of their needs — or at the least can solve them competently and without wasting time — which builds brand loyalty. One of the things you can do to ensure quality is to create guidelines for interactions, whether they’re by phone, email, or social media.

Employee experience

Contact center quality management programs create positive experiences for both employees and callers. Providing your team with the right management and tools will make them more productive and happier at work, making your customers happier too. Call center quality management, when done correctly, helps you create a collaborative and trusting environment in which employees are actively involved through regular training programs and coaching sessions.

Productivity and development

In addition to increasing productivity, contact center quality management programs have many other uses for optimizing call center workflows and identifying areas where you can enhance productivity and efficiency.

Identify Training Needs

Call center QA checks first call resolution (FCR) and average handling time (AHT) to see which agents need further assistance. This can help keep conversations on track and find a solution at the optimal time. They also ensure consistency and compliance. Quality addresses deficiencies in customer service quality assurance so that you can ensure improvements and corrections before the situation gets worse, saving you the risk of losing a loyal customer. 

Conclusion

Call center quality management is critical to call center’s success. Developing and delivering a solid call center QA program will ensure that your call center goals are closely aligned by tracking and evaluating the right metrics that provide deeper insights.

Support your frontline agents with support management and the best tools to foster a collaborative environment where satisfied agents make every customer interaction a success. Today, it is imperative to integrate call center quality assurance into your business to ensure routine review of work culture and company performance.

Vijaya heads the Global Support team at JustCall, where he has played a pivotal role in expanding the support team and diversifying its channels and services. Under his guidance, the team consistently earns top customer satisfaction scores. With a passion for team-building, Vijaya is committed to empowering his staff to deliver unparalleled customer experiences. In addition to his managerial responsibilities, he is a certified Leadership Coach, specializing in helping leaders overcome their unique challenges to achieve success.

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