Sales Reps and Agents

How to Evaluate and Improve Agent Performance with Survey Results

Every day, your support team would be getting hundreds of calls and inquiries. But are you confident that your agents are providing the right support and expertise for your customers? A well-performing agent can turn a disgruntled customer into a brand advocate, while a struggling agent can inadvertently send a loyal customer straight into the arms of a competitor.

To know how efficient an agent is, companies use several data analytics tools and reports. But while these agent performance measurement tools are effective, why not ask the customer to provide feedback?   

This is where post-call surveys come into play. In this guide, we will explore the challenges in agent performance measurement and understand how post-call evaluation can help improve and evaluate their performance in a holistic way.

Challenges In Customer Support & Service

Wanting to improve customer support and service is one thing, but is it really achievable for brands?

For most, digital acceleration has impacted every facet of their business. From traditional phone calls to online customer resolutions, brands have to manage multiple communication channels and meet customer expectations for each inquiry.

In a Hubspot Survey, respondents were asked about the biggest challenges facing service agents. The results show that the most pressing challenges included:

1. Dealing with upset customers

Dealing with upset customers can be emotionally taxing for support agents and can also impact their overall productivity. To support agents in this regard, organizations can implement a few simple solutions like:

  1. Train your support team to empathize with customers’ frustrations. A sympathetic and understanding response can defuse tension.
  2. Encourage agents to actively listen to customer concerns without interrupting. This helps customers feel heard and valued.
  3. Prioritize resolving issues quickly. Provide agents with the authority and tools to solve problems without escalation when possible.
  4. Use customer feedback to identify recurring issues and address them proactively.

2. Not enough time to handle customer complaints

Next comes the challenge of actually handling customer complaints. Agents often struggle with multiple responsibilities and time constraints, leading to rushed interactions or unsolved complaints.

As per a study from Qualtrics, businesses risk losing up to 6.7% of their revenue, while $3.1 trillion of global revenue is lost due to poor customer experiences. Thus, by properly addressing customer concerns and complaints, brands do not just improve their customer satisfaction rating but help retain valuable customers.

To address these issues, brands can implement a few effective measures for agent performance measurement and improving productivity. These include:

  1. Providing training in time management techniques to help agents handle tasks efficiently.
  2. Helping agents identify and automate repetitive tasks like data entry or ticket categorization, freeing up agents to focus on complex issues.
  3. Developing a robust knowledge base and FAQs to empower customers to find answers on their own.

3. Lack of organization and follow-up

As per research by Zendesk, 73% of business leaders say there is a direct link between customer service and business performance, and 72% say their organization views customer service as a critical business priority. However, despite this, many organizations lack proper processes and protocols to handle customer complaints and issues.

Disorganization can lead to lost tickets, missed follow-ups, and frustrated customers. To help address this, organizations can implement robust processes such as:

  1. Implementing a robust ticketing system to track and manage customer issues. Ensure that every issue gets assigned and tracked.
  2. Establishing clear workflows and processes for issue resolution. This reduces confusion and ensures consistency.
  3. Enforcing follow-up procedures to ensure that customer issues are resolved satisfactorily and in a timely manner.

4. Lack of prioritization of customer questions

In addition to lack of time or organization, most agents struggle when it comes to prioritization of customer complaints. This leads to urgent complaints being left on hold, while those that may not be timebound will be assigned for resolution. 

A few simple ways to ensure proper assignment and prioritization of customer complaints include the following:

  1. Categorizing customer queries based on urgency and importance. Allocate resources accordingly.
  2. Defining clear SLAs for response and resolution times. Ensure that agents are aware of and adhere to these agreements.

5. Not empowered to make the right decisions for customers

Customers nowadays expect an instant resolution to their issues. While support agents can handle primary issues, there are times when they need to get permission or go-ahead from the leadership team. This could be instances related to issuing discounts, upgrades, or other decisions that are beyond the realm of the support team.

Organizations can improve customer support by having standardized processes and escalation procedures to ensure that agents do not stumble into roadblocks and can get their questions resolved quickly.

Addressing these challenges requires a combination of strategic planning, agent coaching, leveraging technology, and a strong commitment to overall agent well-being. For this, brands need to adopt customer-centric processes while empowering their agents to help provide exceptional support and services. 

Best Practices for Post-Call Surveys

Now that we’ve established the critical role of agent performance, let’s explore how post-call evaluation can help you elevate it.

At its core, a post-call survey is a simple yet powerful concept. A post-call survey, also known as a post-interaction survey or post-call evaluation, is a systematic method where agents gather feedback from customers or callers immediately after an interaction.

These surveys can take various forms, from automated phone prompts to email questionnaires or web-based forms. The goal is to capture the essence of the interaction through the customer’s eyes.

A well-designed post-call survey typically follows these best practices:

  • Includes Rating Scales: These scales ask customers to rate their experience on a numerical scale. Common scales include 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest rating.
  • Has Optional Open-Ended Questions: These optional questions invite customers to provide detailed feedback in their own words. It’s where you can uncover the nuances of their experience.
  • Straightforward Questions: These are typically yes/no or multiple-choice questions that provide specific data points, such as “Was your issue resolved?” or “Did the agent demonstrate professionalism?”
  • Timing: You can administer surveys immediately after the call or at a later time, depending on your goals. Immediate post-call survey capture the freshest feedback and increases the likelihood of getting a response from the customer.

Designing Post-Call Surveys

Now that we’ve established the basics, let’s move on to the next crucial aspect: designing effective post-call surveys.

For this, we recommend using a two-step approach:

1. Align Questions with Performance Metrics

To effectively evaluate agent performance, align your survey questions with specific performance metrics. Some common metrics include:

  • For Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): CSAT is a metric that uses a rating scale to gauge overall satisfaction with the agent’s performance.
  • For First-Call Resolution (FCR): Ask if the issue was resolved during the call or if the customer had to contact the company again.
  • For Brand Advocacy (NPS): Include a question on how likely a customer is to recommend your brand post a positive interaction. High NPS scores indicate that the agents are creating satisfied and loyal brand advocates, while a low score means you need to make improvements in your service.
  • For Agent Behavior: Use open-ended questions to gather qualitative feedback on the agent’s communication skills, empathy, and problem-solving abilities.

2. Analyze Post-Call Survey Data

Once you’ve collected survey responses, the next critical step is to analyze the data effectively. This step is where you can uncover valuable insights into agent performance.

Some best practices for call-center quality assurance include:

  • Segmentation of data based on agent performance, time of day, type of customers, and other factors to identify trends and patterns.
  • Benchmarking your survey results with historical data or industry standards to understand where you stand.
  • Monitoring KPIs such as CSAT, NPS, and others to be on top of customer satisfaction and agent efficiency.
  • Recognizing good practices and top performers to boost morale and motivate the team to provide exceptional support.

Improve Agent Performance with Post-Call Surveys

As we can see, post-call surveys are not just about collecting feedback from the customer. Instead, it is about keeping the conversation going and analyzing agent feedback data to improve performance.

The customers provide direct insights into what worked, what did not, and areas that need improvement, ensuring the brands can improve their processes by gaining insights directly from their consumers.

JustCall Post-Call Survey Analytics

When leveraged effectively, these surveys help the brand provide optimal experiences to its customers. Invest in an automated Post-call Survey system like JustCall, which can help you get instant feedback on your agent’s performance.

The survey allows customers to rate the quality of their conversation, and you can even have easy workflows and templates to make sure that this gets triggered automatically after the call has ended. 

Sandy leads the US Sales team at JustCall and he has been integral in growing JustCall’s ARR by 5X while bootstrapped. He is a big believer in using tech to enable sales and is the first person to try out every new feature in the JustCall stack. While he’s not writing high performance email cadences for his team, he dabbles in blogging about Sales Strategy, Sales Tech and Sales Training.

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