Call Center Quality Assurance |
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Call Center Quality Assurance |
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Call Center Quality AssuranceAll
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 the level of
customer satisfaction. In many
organizations, the responsibility of defining the behaviors that describe
excellent service falls on the Quality Assurance group.
The
Q.A team, as the quality folks are often called, has the unenviable task of
monitoring and analyzing the interactions of agents and customers, so they
can provide feedback to the employees.
This task is challenging because aside from the job’s monotony,
agents do not like to have their work “criticized”.
Nevertheless, the quality assurance effort, when properly structured,
can serve as a first line of defense against poor service and can also be a
valuable source of information for contact center managers. A
good quality program includes various factors such as a competent staff,
relevant quality guidelines, a good feedback system, and consistency. In
some operations, quality monitoring may be a task that is performed by
whoever has time to take on additional work.
Of course, this approach is a recipe for disaster.
In world-class operation, by contrast, quality assurance is performed
by specialized staff. Aside
form being dedicated to the quality effort, these individuals have an
exceptional understanding of the products, processes and procedures of the
contact center they are monitoring. Another
important factor of a quality assurance program is the scoring guidelines
that are used. The best rules
for grading interactions are not static, and instead are regularly reviewed
for relevance and accuracy. When
the guidelines used to score contacts are no longer relevant or useful in
terms of the coaching and development of reps, they must be revisited and
updated. Involvement from
operations and training personnel is crucial to keeping the effort relevant
and in line with the needs of the operation.
Regular calibration sessions are a great starting point for keeping
scoring guidelines up to date. In
addition to monitoring and scoring, the quality team has the responsibility
of providing feedback to the people they have observed.
Regular feedback must always be conducted with agents after their
interactions have been scored. While
providing immediate feedback may not be feasible in every occasion, only a
couple of days should pass before an agent meets face to face with his/her
grader. In every meeting, the
rep should have the opportunity to see or hear the interaction that was
graded, so that the appropriate context in given to the feedback. One
last tenet of effective quality control is consistency.
All agents must be treated the same way on every occasion if the
system is to work properly. By
providing a stable frame of reference for contact center employees, the QA
team will be most successful in driving desired behaviors and eradicating
undesirable ones. Even is all
else is in place, lack of consistency will render the most highly structured
quality assurance program useless. In conclusion, a well thought out quality assurance program can help contact centers provide excellent customer service. At the very least every program should have components that address the proficiency of the staff involved, the appropriateness of the guidelines used, the effectiveness of the feedback system, and consistency in the application of rules. |
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