How To Out-Smart Competitors with Call Center Quality Assurance

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When budgets, deadlines, and agent attrition conspire against the success of your business goals. It helps to have the call center quality assurance to back you up.  After all, ensuring the call center's performance in a predictable fashion means "outsmarting" and not out-spend your competitors in a predictable fashion.

In this issue, you'll discover:

  • How to use micro-level call center management to cut costs per call, hour, and decision-making?
  • How to foster customer loyalty through the right agent engagement?
  • How to satisfy customer expectations in a predictable fashion?
  • How to obtain the knowledge gaps regarding contact center quality assurance development and implementation?
  • How to provide positive customer experiences to achieve regular buyers and not one-time buyers?
  • How to develop a solid call center culture to apply the right knowledge gaps for long-term improvement?
  • How to use only essential contact center metrics for the long-term strategic framework? And many more.

Statista Research: Rate of customer assurance worldwide.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1074427/quality-assurance-call-centers-us/

 

What call center quality assurance is all about?

The telemarketing business is the second-cost expensive activity after face-to-face meetings. And many years ago, top telemarketers defined and employed the profitable impact of call center quality assurance tips to offset the cost per call, per hour, and per order for outbound and inbound calls. 

In short, call center quality assurance is tackled with the agent's efficiency. The big picture of the issue is represented by the entire quality assurance tips, all of which are related to matching customers' needs with the call centers' goals using resources and employees.

To get the key factors of quality assurance, best telemarketers look at various key performance indicators (KPI), quality of service customer behavior, and agents' success per call. It’s worthwhile to take all of the data accessible about customers’ likelihood of talking to see what is really going on.

How to distinguish quality assessment from call center quality assurance?

While call center quality assurance stands for (how to) improve overall customer satisfaction based on accessible resources and data. The quality assessment guides you through the process of collecting, identifying, and pinpointing the problems (building the roadmap), your agents and customers are facing.

What’s more, top telemarketers companies keep in the sight both of the parameters above, refine them when necessary, and as a result, come up with profitable call center quality assurance (QA) tips.

The reasons why you need QA tips for a call center 

There are two reasons for it. The first is that it’s impossible to reach “good enough” agent performance, over the long haul without the QA. The process usually is challenging. 

Yet collecting and using the data regarding quality assurance for a call center from previous shifts is a must-have. Why? Because every time (often when you are not expecting), there are obstacles you are unable to identify. 

The second reason is equally simple. The data about the call center quality assurance is perishable over time. It’s critically important to take concrete periods such as a week, month, quarter, and so on, to wet, refine and pinpoint your quality assurance for a call center. That's how you are opening the doors to the profitable calling. 

How to utilize the utmost power of your employees through call center quality assurance?

Let’s guide you from the beginning till the end in the utilization of the workforce towards customers’ talking likelihood as the top telemarketers do. 

Agents can be "better than that" by employing flexible QA tips for call center

You’ve probably already conducted your own research related to the most critical factors that influence the agents’ productivity. But you'll equally benefit from the research conducted by the top telemarketing firms. And here's what they defined.

Many of today’s agents, no matter whether they’re in sales or customer service, can be much better than they are today if following these tips:

Don’t let professional skills such as service or product knowledge suffer. The most frequent reports from customers identify the problem of the lack of knowledge of agents in sales or customer service. 

Over 80% and up, of present agents, in sales or customer service, are unable to satisfy customers’ needs because they are lacking basic knowledge about the products and services they represent. 

For example, if a company sells products, agents rarely know everything about: the products’ terms and conditions, technical specs, delivery, maintenance process, etc. The same is true for the services.

Agents rarely know about their problems unless managers show them

It’s obvious for a sales rep to make one or two mistakes on the same customer issue. For instance, not to notify about the major features or maintenance conditions. 

But when the overall mistakes about one or many agents, on the same common customer issues balloon – the callers lose their patience. And very fast.

What can managers do about it? Since managers of call centers possess a wide array of data (often they should have them), they have everything they need: 

  • Materials on products to give their agents to study; 
  • Coaching sessions to conduct for improving customer conversations;
  • Mistakes in customer conversations that urgently require managers’ attention;
  • Better quality standards and a reliable contact center quality assurance program.
  • Tracking capabilities to ensure agents hit the mark, and so on and so forth.

Frankly, the team has all of these coaching opportunities to foster positive feedback from their own customers. On this subject, there are many facts among top telemarketers that "know-how" constantly fix problems. Most of them you'll see below.

Cost of calling is what the call center quality assurance tips are all about

Call center business like all other businesses in sales or customer service is concerning the cost per call, hour, and order. Thus by improving call center quality assurance you are reducing these costs above, which come right out of your budget, to the minimum. 

How to improve the customer experience with the call center quality assurance tips today?

Expert analysis and careful research of both customers and products – the answer to this question. But that's only the beginning. By making a “snapshot” of what you have today, and forecasting the future agents’ shifts based on careful analysis and research – you are increasing the likelihood of customer interactions with the customers by an order.

The best call center quality assurance tips to achieve regular-time buyers 

Did you know this top tip from telemarketers? It’s much more cheaper and profitable to keep the customers and grow their accounts than acquire a single new one. 

And it's much more profitable to have a two-time buyer than a one-time buyer. Because they are likely to buy again as much as twice as one-time buyers. That was known by the top telemarketers that use call center quality assurance with rigorous intensity. 

Moreover, in today’s treacherous economic situation, customers are flocking to other brands as soon as they realize that their current business relationships could be better.

The proven by top telemarketers call center quality assurance tips

Take a look at this advice and insights from the best telemarketers.

The first step in the call center quality monitoring scorecard

Conducting the call center micromanagement by tailoring the day-after-day goals is essential to ensure call center quality assurance. But how this so-called "operational framework" works for the top telemarketers? We’ll tell you how. 

By employing call center monitoring of goals and obstacles, they are preparing the relevant scorecards to match the business goals. Then based on the results they are looking for improving the cost per call, agent hours of talking, and decision-making calls. 

It’s proven by numerous data to be ineffective to shortcut quality monitoring of the operational framework and to move to the bigger picture in advance.

To begin with, the right micro-level management direction and improve the call center quality assurance, take your last working shift and look for both successes and failures in customer interactions. Accurately outline the details in your personal notebook. 

Once you establish quality monitoring and clearly observe the problems such as long conversations without reaching the goals, customers' frustration by agents' questions, and sales pitching before building rapport, etc., you'll have the first-step direction data.

Apply the call center quality monitoring scorecard built on the data listed above, especially when the next shifts prove you were right. Move on to the next level of call center quality assurance.

Calling week for call center quality assurance "open doors" to forecast

The primary goal is to build a “system” and result-getting call center quality monitoring scorecard for a week. Based on data regarding quality monitoring, focus on tracking and summing up the results for the 7 days period. It’s more challenging but don’t be discouraged there’s a way to make it easier. Here’s what you do:

Conduct quality monitoring and new challenges. Each week you are working on the solution for the main mistakes and better ways to solve them in each customer conversation. 

Perhaps you need to listen to more audio recordings (often you need to listen to more audio recordings), of agents which include speech analytics of positive interactions. 

Test your new solutions for the problems which caused the most negative impact such as customer aggravation, escalation, or shrinkage. Are your new methods workable? If you are unable to honestly answer this question via intense quality monitoring then keep working on the solutions. 

Pay attention to the details, in developing call center quality assurance for a week until you get the confidence. Ready to move to the next and one of the most challenging steps in call center quality assurance development?

Working out the “system” for quality assurance in a call center

This is the kind of strategic planning for quality assurance in the call center payoffs. You are ready to go, soon after conducting intense research on quality monitoring, and data from customers' and agents' reports with call center QA reviews.

Up to this point, you have a lot of data about the call centers for a day and a week. And you are aware of call centers' main successes and failures.

Take heart and take your time because your research must include costs per call, per hour, and per order (or decision-making). Also, you need to watch your contact centers' current calling scripts' performance, rapport-building traits, etc. In the end, you will come out with your call center QA reviews matching the business goals.

What’s more, as soon as you are collecting the activities on the agent's and customers’ talking likelihood, you are likely to come up with an idea on how to actually develop the system for quality assurance in the call center. 

The reason why most call center managers are failing in developing strategic quality assurance call center systems is that they aren’t based their planning on the plethora of data. 

Essential call center quality assurance tips from top telemarketers

The first mistake that is leading to the disaster is related to the quality assurance call center development. And here they are.

First mistake, and let’s face it, the most frequent one: managers assume they have less important and more important customers’ issues. As a manager, you haven’t the right to think this way. Because many of the irrelevant customers’ issues soon become the snowball of the most relevant and urgent.

The way to tackle this problem is to pinpoint these little customers’ issues and solve them as the most urgent to the final satisfaction of the customers and the company's goal.

Agents reporting which are likely to mislead managers even with the best quality assurance call center planning

Yes, agents are hardworking and first-line employees. Many of today’s agents are simply afraid to report to managers about the little and especially big problems they face with customers.

Result? Customers which are not putting up with these agents’ underperformance are likely to escalate the problem. Not only they are quitting using services or buying goods from the current vendor. But they are likely to report on social media, and in some cases, even to regulatory agencies about the fraud they believe your company is committing. 

So, to ensure your customer service quality assurance makes sense, you need to watch closely each agent’s conversation and pinpoint the problem by working out with the individual agent and yourself – the workable solutions. The sooner you employ this kind of professional attitude – the faster you’ll ensure better call center quality assurance.

Back yourself up from the beginning with the call center quality assurance job description

Steve Jobs once quipped: “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” So the first brick, as a manager, you are laying with the right call center quality assurance job description.

In your description clearly tell what your best candidates look like. Whether you are hiring high-end professional telemarketers or novices, you need to write down all the specs which you are expecting from an applicant.

Watching agents’ performance and call center QA as top telemarketers do

The contact center industry makes wonders via phone and other digital channels. That’s why to ensure call center QA, you need to watch over the agents’ performance across phone, live chat, social media, and email. Many customers are willing to spell out clearly via phone what they like and dislike directly to your agents. 

And many of them, in some instances, do the same thing across other digital channels. To improve all center quality assurance you are looking for these digital channels closely and accurately pinpoint the customers’ talking and reporting likelihood. 

Encourage agents to improve call center QA with their own work

Agents are able to pick up their knowledge, talking skills, and performance through self-assessment. Managers just need to give them the materials necessary to study, the calling script to follow, and ensure everything is learned by due dates. 

Let’s say you pinpoint a certain group of agents that need to study the technical specs of the product by the end of the week. Don’t rely only on agent feedback and personal traits but conduct interview questions for quality assurance in the call center. 

Then you are moving to other subjects such as studying calling scripts and proposing their own view of how these scripts should look. And only then you’ll come out with the confidence that everything you are giving to your agents to study is really hitting the mark. 

Thus by conducting interview questions for quality assurance in the call center, viewing scripts, listening to agents' arguments, and so forth. You are establishing solid ground for future success.

The best KPI metrics for call center QA you need to constantly keep in your sight

The metrics enable us to watch the results in a remote fashion, which is pretty comfortable in today’s environment. Just make sure you pinpoint the most essential one such as:

Abandonment rate (AR). This kind of metric is critical to watch and track on the daily basis. Mainly because the AR reflects how many callers reach the live agent. 

Each customer and you need to remember this, means more business relationships. While high AR rates in customer calls are likely to create a negative reaction, customer aggravation, call center QA decline, and customer shrinkage. 

First, call resolution (FCR). The customers’ likelihood when you are reaching success during customer calls is a subject of paramount importance. What’s happening is that you are saving your cost per call, much more successfully during these kinds of calls. 

Average handling time (AHT). If your agents are capable to solve issues faster then it's good. But optimizing this metric is optional because the final result, in the end, should be placed first.

Moreover, as soon as the FCR is dropping to the second and even worst to the third and further, you need to quickly find out the reason why. With the tools such as call recording, you are likely to succeed in pursuing call center QA.

The managers' tools that increase the customers' likelihood

High-sound quality call recordings 

Which allows you to watch the actual results as they are. You listen to the major calls and then you are able to build the roadmap for future solutions, if necessary. 

The cloud call center software is capable to give you this kind of option to tackle various callers’ obstacles in the call center quality assurance tailoring.

Unify your call center QA fiercely

Keep the pace of the call center quality assurance by taking all digital channels for watching the customers’ likelihood of talking. Take a few of them, such as phone calls, live chat, social networks, and email. Then watch how the call center quality assurance goals are working.

Keep your costs per call in the profitable range

As a matter of fact, the performance of agents is directly impacting call center quality assurance, and most importantly revenue. What are the options for the call center managers in this situation? 

Here’s how you can easily keep your call center QA, and most importantly, costs per call in the predictable and profitable range:

  1. Calculate how many dollars, up to cents, you are spending on each outbound and inbound call. Know what is the salary of an agent versus profit per hour. Discover how much dollars it takes to make one successful outbound (decision-making) call. You must have precise figures.
  2. Define your “bottom line” of the call center QA, where your calls are offset by expenses per call. That would be the mark you always need to keep an eye on.
  3. Refine call center QA and count again. After you are improving your call center quality assurance, you need to check again your figures in numbers one and two above.
    Do these figures tell you you are in the profitable cost-per-call range or do you need additional improvements for the call center quality assurance?

Making the three steps listed above allows you to be you perform as your own accountant, not only as a head of a call center manager. 

Spell out clearly to agents what is expected from them

The worst situation imaginable is when the head of a call center presumes agents know what to do. Or they must identify the issues regarding QA in a call center by themselves. Nothing can be far from the truth, especially over the long haul of the call center operation.

Thus a manager, keep your agents on the same page and clearly tell them about:

  • What are your call centers’ range of the outbound and inbound cost per call?
  • What do they need to do in order to not only break even but to significantly multiply the cost per call?
  • What are the major mistakes regarding customer experience and QA in a call center
  • What are the relevant scripts they need to use in order to not develop wheels over and over again?

Specifically, pinpoint what actions they must perform such as reducing abandon rate, professionalism through knowing the inner of the product and service, and the professionalism and courtesy they need to have in order to keep customers satisfied.  

Once you’ll honestly achieve the answer to the questions listed above, your call center quality assurance will get a second breath. 

Talk with agents face-to-face

Discussing your call centers’ issues once in a while makes sense. In the end, you need the result for the call center quality assurance. Sometimes it’s more polite and effective to discuss certain problems with the concrete agent face-to-face.

The reason for this is that particular employees would be much more comfortable and open to the discussion about the current underperformance. 

Moreover, most employees, internally thank you for this because you are not disclosing their “professional state” publicly. And you will achieve the necessary results you wanted.

Have agents the right to say something about the subject? 

Of course, they do. And you need to urge them to do it because their problems are your problems as well. So why not ask directly an employee what is really going on and how you, as a manager can help?

Interestingly, Fortune 100 managers use this method professionally fiercely. And get results much more likely than their colleagues who are neglecting this kind of conversation.

Delegate to top employees to keep your agents in a shape

As your responsibilities as a call center manager are growing, you need someone who will keep an ear close to the ground to understand the current state and forecast future. 

Ideally, you need to promote individuals from your own call center and delegate the responsibility to observe the day-by-day performance of agents.

They can hold the position of quality assurance analyst, quality assurance specialist, quality assurance manager, or everything in the one box which is preferable today.

However, it’s up to you to conduct this role by yourself, promote someone from your call center, or hire a manager from outside of the company. Notice that it means additional expenses on salaries in the long haul. 

The only addition to hiring managers outside of your call center: this person must clearly understand how the call center and agents are working. Because knowing the "inner" of the call centers’ problems and issues is critically important to ensure higher call center quality assurance.

Customers are the reflection of how your agents are performing today

Notice the fact that customers are providing constructive criticism about your call center quality management objectively. They would often tell you what the major mistakes are. 

Begin with looking for constructive feedback regarding your call center. It is possible to obtain through listening to the audio records, customer feedback on social media, etc.

On the other hand, you put yourself in the position of customers as well as you are doing it when watching agents. Is there something to notice and understand to better call center quality assurance? In most cases, you are constantly achieving additional ideas on how to improve the actual performance.

Ask customers about their likes and dislikes directly via phone

Numerous studies by telemarketers have shown that customers are more likely to spell out their concerns via phone than in any other way. Why? The main reason: they don’t want to get into much trouble by filling out various evaluation forms or the many other kinds of surveys. 

The second reason perhaps they care about their own customer privacy. As a result, a single conversation via phone is much more valuable insight for your call center quality management.

Yes, in some instances callers will fill out the customers' forms and share their thoughts. But often that can mislead the manager because customers are providing you with the actionable insights they presume is right in a current period. 

As a result, positive feedback obtained via phone is more reliable than other sources of communication. These short talks will guide you in future call center scorecard development.

Urge agents to participate in creating a successful scenario for call center quality assurance

Agents are really capable of creating self-assessment and call center quality assurance scorecards with managers' participation. Perhaps it could be brief outlines of the successful conversation. And what is matter is the final result which is the cost per call and the revenue. 

What's more, the QA scorecard will be the roadmap for the whole call center staff. And prevention from putting forth excessive creativity that declines the results.

Two most frequent mistakes and solutions in the development of the workable quality assurance scorecard:

Each quality assurance scorecard should put the customers' goals first. Many managers assume their business goals come first but that's not the case if you want to establish strong business relationships.

One quality assurance scorecard performs only when agents understand clearly the value to reach the call centers' goals. Ensure your agents understood your call center's direction and frequently check the results.

If one agent has a problem – the whole call center is in trouble

Today’s real situation for call centers is this: a particular group of agents is performing noticeably better than other groups or agents. But don’t fret, it’s easy to fix. 

To ensure the agents who underscore the business goals keep up with the successful ones, you need to research the talking skills of both groups and implement additional training for the weak agents.

It may look as follows:

  • You outline the strong and weak sides of quality assurance agents that hit the business mark. By the way, the performers also constantly need to develop their skills and upkeep their knowledge in order to perform in the future.
  • Now you do the same for the quality assurance agents in the weaker group. And soon after you are seeing the differences, you have the list of what has to be done for the betterment of your professional skills and patterns.

Develop the professional ethic inside the call center

The divided team are losing while united teams are consistently increasing the revenue of the cost per call. That’s your goal but to hit it, you need to unite your call centers' agents. Continuous improvement to ensure professional contact center interactions will give you a second breath.

But how to actually do it right? First, you need to exclude the “law of the jungle” from your call center. The danger of this kind of culture is that it doesn’t work toward call center quality assurance at all. Moreover, it’s severely damaging internal processes and employee engagement by an order.

Result? Agents with this wrong attitude will hinder quality assurance and customer service by arguing with each other. Blaming someone else except them. And underreporting the key significant issues regarding the call center quality assurance process. 

Quite the contrary quality assurance customer service works on employee engagement when managers shape agents’ attitudes by developing the professional ethic. Where everyone is part of the whole by helping solve dozens of issues coming from customers.

Improve the call center quality assurance with training on a regular basis

The top telemarketing managers already employ training sessions for their agents on the regular basis. To keep it going, these top individuals have the training schedules' due dates. For example, they arrange brief training programs each week, preferably on Wednesday and Thursday. 

And they also have large training sessions by the end of the month to count the call center quality assurance results. These types of data include positive experience, customer satisfaction ratings, evaluation processes, etc. Each month managers look at the figures regarding the cost per call value and forecast the next month’s goals based on these data.

Relevant today for top telemarketers

All of these tips for improving call center quality assurance in any kind of call center are as relevant today as they were relevant decades ago. The reason why they are performing so well is that top telemarketers conducted research on the costs of operations of their call centers.

They come out with the idea that to keep the levels of customer retention high and profitable, it’s necessary to behave in a professional and courteous way. Which is mean constantly improving the knowledge and talking skills of agents.

Come join our call center quality assurance advisory

The Voiptime Cloud defined these data and now you are free to use them on a free and obligation basis to foster your call center quality assurance.

Outside of the advisory on the relevant telemarketing topics, we are furnishing the call centers with top-notch call center software to switch the cost-per-call profits to the higher gear. 

Since its introduction more than a decade ago, our call center software has been recognized by small and mid-sized businesses for its flexibility, performance, and affordability. And we are keeping to help outsmart (rather than out-spend) competitors in a predictable fashion.

 

 

 

 




Eugene Siuch

Content Manager and Copywriter

Focused on customer service measurement and improvement, SaaS marketing and industry insights, and researching different methods of staff motivation and performance management in the field of customer service providing.

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