Quality Monitoring in Contact Centers

Quality monitoring for contact centers is a process to analyze and evaluate phone conversations between customers and service agents. It is conducted to improve call handling, customer service, and of course, loyalty and revenue. Call monitoring can be conducted post-call if the company employs a call recording system or live/ real-time call monitoring as the call is in progress. While post-call monitoring is usually done by quality auditors, live/ real-time call monitoring is done by supervisors in case a call is getting flagged.

Its primary purpose is to improve agent performance and drive business and improve sales/service. This is why it is so prevalent today, and it does so by quantifying the output of employees concerning the service provided to customers. The belief here is that any quantifiable data can bring about a much steeper change and understanding of business practices than the mere creation of models and theories.

7 Best Tips For Quality Monitoring in Contact Centers:

1. Establishing a Team for Quality Control:

Every company needs to adopt and establish a quality control (QC) team with a preset routine. They must be adamant in checking for quality purposes and rigorous with their inspections conducted for customer interactions. These teams are set up to coach agents primarily, more than any other purpose. By such coaching under QC teams, it ensures each employee is working at the highest level for the customer.

2. Quality Assurance Software:

All calls made from the organization should be saved on a secure system that only QC team can access. The QC team further analyzes these calls. Agents are required to deliver the critical brand messages before pitching the product to the client. These set markers for the call are then incorporated into a scoring matrix by the QC team to monitor agent calls. Feedback captured within the Quality Assurance software allows effective and consistent communications with the individual's performance between the agent, quality controller, and the campaign manager.

3. Multiple Methods To Ensure Quality:

The QC team needs to be extremely skilled, flexible and deploy multiple ways to analyze every area of the company's customer service metrics. If you're looking to improve your company's quality control, it could be worth having a look at some of the best practices which are employed at other call centers:

- Recording of all calls

- Call scoring criteria

- Agent feedback & coaching

- Team feedback & coaching.

- Tracking the progress of reps.

- Call leveling sessions – where calls are jointly evaluated by auditors to avoid any biasness

4. Improvement Is Constant:

Even though some see quality monitoring for contact centers as crucial, it cannot be used as a tactic to generate stress for call agents and destabilize them. It is an integral part of the sales process and benefits the clients and the agents. A significant responsibility of the QC team is to continuously develop agents through education and practical experience. By striving to make constant and incremental improvements, you can help your business deliver a high level of consistency within each customer's campaign. It will streamline all customers' experience across all fields and agents, ensuring that each agent at the center is delivering their full potential.

5. Planned Development Of Routines And Culture:

Whenever conducting quality control, it is essential to have a well-demarcated structure with specified roles in place. The quality control team should be used to reinforce training and development within a contact center. It has been observed that agents respond positively to such activity and benefit a lot in improved sales results. Development plans are used to:

- Help enrich the skill-set of underperforming agents and help them improve should they be struggling with meeting sales targets, compliance, and providing a service of high quality.

- Development for agents to achieve new skills and roles.

- Develop agents to achieve targets or KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) as established by clients

6. Call Whisper And Call Barging:

Call whisper or real-time assistance is a good idea when helping agents develop their skills. Call whisper is helpful, especially at the start of a new campaign. This is when agents may not be familiar with the scenario of how to conduct sales pitches or produce sales, or if somebody is struggling over a phone conversation providing the appropriate service request. By implementing call whisper or side by side listening, instant feedback or suggestion can be provided to the agent for steep improvement.

Call barging is another way to listen to live calls without the caller or call center agent knowing and then barge into the call to speak with both the agent and the caller. Managers can quickly resolve the customer concern and the agent can get real-time training on how to handle such calls and improve the call outcome.

7. System To Maintain Scoring:

It is essential to have something to standardize quality control (QC) and businesses should do this by employing QC scorecards. Agents must score a minimum of 75% when assessed on their calls, and any calls that fail this standard can be immediately passed on to the team leader. Henceforth, the team leader will make all decisions on who will have to undertake any mandatory coaching and development with the agent. This information is supplied back to campaign managers and is used to resolve any current problems and deliver feedback. Campaign managers can also look for trends and developments when assessing performance based on scoring criteria. The scoring is relatively standardized and marked on a scale of 1-5 over the following key areas:

1. Introduction

2. Probing questions and embarking on a business conversation

3. Handling objectives

4. Rapport

5. Leadership

6. Active listening

7. Closing

8. Call handling

Much of any call center productivity essentially depends on measuring the right metrics, hiring correct people, and then, providing adequate training. These trained agents with a remarkable eye for trends in data can then provide peak productivity in the way the company desires.

Similar approach can be applied for non-voice transactions as well. Because of high attrition level, regular quality monitoring for call centers is critical to keep the team well trained and provide a consistent customer experience.