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10 Ways to Improve Call Center Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is a filtering system set up under the watchful guidance of a qualified personnel who ensures all call scripts and procedures are compliant to process guidelines and conform to standards of quality and service as committed by the process outlines. Quality Assurance is extremely critical especially when it determines or governs the frequency of visit of a customer and in creating avenues for customer loyalty. Quality is of prime importance for client retention because after sales support is what inspires customers to keep returning back again and again.

Here are a few tips for improving the quality assurance of a call center and in turn improving the figures for business consumption.

1) Define customer satisfaction by measurable data

Define and quantify Customer Satisfaction by outlining parameters to adhere to, enforcing salutation and greetings in script and making performance gradable for ascertaining C Sat scores. This way every team member can be aligned in a consistence for striving to achieve a collective goal of C Sat scores.

2) Encourage self-assessment

Encourage and inculcate self assessment as a positive reinforcement to adjudge oneself on a routine basis to ensure every individual is at par with the rest of the team’s adherence to quality parameters. This way despite a slip in the quality check, every individual strives for a higher goal thereby making the team’s quality scores incremental.

3) Make monitoring the norm & record subtly

Having said what needs to be done about encouraging self assessment it needs to be kept in mind that self check is not the best form of measure of capability and score. So in order to ensure best results, it is imperative to ensure a  greater frequency of quality checks to ensure identification of those who are falling below par and isolating them for performance evaluation and counselling on setting expectations right. This could be done through the use of acall center software, however, call recordings should not enforce the enigma of surveillance or they become easily discernible and agents reserve their best delivery for the call that is recorded for quality. In order to ensure consistency across calling time for all calls, recordings should be subtle and unrecognizable in order to catch violations by complete surprise.

4) Share evaluation criteria with agents & establish a dispute process for agent evaluation

Unless agents are periodically intervened and subjected to one on one performance report cards and identified areas of improvement, it does set precedence of management not taking kindly to failure to adhere to its performance guidelines. Repeat offenders need to be given warnings leading to dire consequences. In an event of a dispute with the format for agent performance evaluation, it is always advisable to immediately review the disputed area and immediately addressing so that things are not suspended and operations do not get stuck in a limbo.

5) Standardization is key & evaluation results should prompt coaching and development

Setting standards is imperative and in order to ensure those standards are met and adhered to on a regular basis, it is important to identify and reward exemplary agents with incentives for their adherence to standards not just in quality but other parameters of gauging excellence at operations. As mentioned earlier, evaluation process is two way and should include mutual expectations and identification of areas of improvement and counselling on improving that area of operations. Weak or struggling agents can be subjected to a coaching module to ensure they are up to the mark to get back to the job again.

6) Seek out a third-party perspective & recalibrate often for reliable data

In case of a conflict of objectives resulting from an enforced quality assurance parameter with both parties wishing to uphold their best interest, it is appropriate to seek a third party perspective for a smooth settlement on the conflict. Any measurement device or instrument used to gauge quality is bound to be prone to error due to fluctuations in the system. In such circumstances it is always advisable to have a wide array of data and large number of calls for arriving at any conclusive inference.

7) Gather all stakeholders periodically to share call center quality assurance tips

A monthly or suitable periodic meeting including all operations team members, stakeholder, management cadre and quality assurance team is essential to have across the table communications from all quarters of a working system in order to come to any decision keeping in mind the best interests of all involved parties. This way employees who do not have direct access to those higher up the hierarchy get to set their expectations to them and management has a opportune platform and audience to address its concerns across all laterals and verticals at the same time.

8) Define what is on-script and what is off-script & save examples of rock-star calls to use for training

Make a very well defined outline for what is advocated as best performances and practises with a view to achieve a collective objective on improved quality scores. Having said that provide every agent a bound script with clear instructions on opening and closing of every call and how to verify a willing sale. This way a common consistency can be hoped to be achieved with a parity in communications of most calling agents. Any agent knowingly fond to violate these norms is subject to investigative action. Exemplary performances require aloof treatment and reservation in the knowledge base hub and hall of fame for do’s and don’ts future agents need to reference for achieving excellence.

9) Make training and coaching a natural extension of quality monitoring & assign a dedicated individual or team to monitor quality

As mentioned earlier, training and coaching facilities need to be evolved from a generic module to be customized for every lacking agent to improve themselves. For the agents lacking performance criteria these models can be used as supplement to quality monitoring and assistance. This goes unsaid that there should be a trained and qualified personnel for gauging and assessing adherence to quality assurance parameters.

10) Solicit customer feedback & reward agents regularly

Encourage rapport building and feedback from customer and value customer opinion, by introducing it in implementable plans and actions in the near future. At team meetings, encourage crowdfunding of customer feedback apart from the documented feedback process. Choose the best feedback as a practice to follow and bring it up for discussion in implementation feasibility and endorsement of the same from all operation quarters as a reasonable expectation. Achieving excellence in a demanding process is no mean feat and deserves thorough appreciation and gratification to motivate agents to repeatedly achieve these levels of success and make a habit out of it.

Although there is no single road to success and no guarantees to success the above-listed recommendations are tried and tested ways of improving declining scores of quality assurance affecting a better overall performance. Overseeing supervisors and implementing personnel are expected to try and imbibe the prescribed ways over here and continuously evolve more methods with a view to their immediate work environment. Contemporary atmosphere is the best platform to learn and devise strategies that are directly prone to affect quality assurance scores for the better.

 

Written By

Apoorv Bhatnagar is a Digital marketer at Freshworks Inc. He generally writes about software that improve your marketing, sales or hiring process.

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