If you operate a Contact Center, you know that staying on top of quality is key to retaining a competitive edge. Consumers' expectations are sky-high to get the answers they need as fast as possible from a friendly rep.
Technology has made it easier to stay on top of quality through call recording, voice AI tools and more. A blend of high tech and tried-and-true best practices is your best bet to being a standout leader in contact center ops.
Here are the top 10 call center quality assurance best practices for a more successful call center.
1. Keep a Call Center Quality Assurance Checklist
The best way to ensure quality in your call center is to have an objective, clearly stated standard. While you probably have training manuals, you should distill the essentials into a scannable, easy-to-read, and easy-to-post format. Make this checklist visible everywhere and use it to rate agent performance.
Here are some things that could be on your call center quality assurance checklist:
- First call resolution rates
- Call rates
- Response times
- Average handling time
- Overall resolve rates
- Agent attitude
- Customer response
2. Use a Call Center Quality Assurance Scorecard
Performance ratings must be just as objective as the standards themselves. This can be hard to do, especially if you realize that a call center employee’s “tone” is a problem. Make sure there are embedded items on your QA checklist that make it clear that a personal approach, empathetic position, and good attitude are part of ongoing call center quality.
Your call center quality assurance scorecard should be reviewed with the employee, and don’t forget to cover more than just the facts. As you coach employees, you want to identify goals, ask for their perspective, give feedback not just on weaknesses but areas of strength, and offer motivating incentives to get them excited to crush it.
3. Ongoing Contact Center Quality Management
Instituting and communicating the right standards are your two foremost priorities, but so is ongoing contact center quality management. New issues will emerge. Your Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) software will uncover fresh trends. Pay attention to patterns and make sure you always have an eye to continuous improvement.
A sophisticated CCaaS system should have rules and alerts built into it, letting you know if a rule is being broken, a standard needs to be reset, or there are any “red alert” emergencies to attend to. You don’t want to just pay attention to staying out of the “red zone,” though. Watch your areas of mediocrity and consider how you can steadily go from “good” to “great.”
4. Use the Latest Greatest CCaaS Features
Every year, new technology emerges that can improve practices in your call center. Pay attention to these innovations, and thoughtfully incorporate those that fit your goals into your tech stack. CCaaS suite features deliver a unified contact center experience, enabling seamless interaction on any channel and maximizing the productivity of your workforce.
5. Learn From the Data
Voice artificial intelligence (AI) has become a powerful tool for call center operators. Algorithms can sift through vast quantities of voice recordings, pinpointing not just the raw facts (call time, nature of the call, outcome) but nuances like interest, attention, and tone (we talked about that a second ago). Use call recording software with voice AI to share and interpret the data to inform strategic decision-making.
6. Integrate Business Tools Holistically
Contact centers don’t just take calls. More likely, you have a call center as part of your customer service department. Even if all you do is operate a contact center, there are a myriad of additional business functions, including other verticals and departments. These all use tech-based tools which can (and should) be integrated as holistically as possible. Integrations reduce silos and make it easier for leaders to get a full picture of the performance of the company.
7. Create a Team Approach
One of the key differences between contact centers 30 years ago and contact centers now is tech enablement and the insights it yields. If these findings stay relegated to leadership, you miss a huge opportunity for on-the-ground buy-in and application. Fostering a team approach not only supports a healthy workplace culture, but it could also give you ideas you hadn’t thought of, not to mention the execution you need to succeed.
8. Give (and Get) Feedback
That team that you are working so hard to keep informed not only needs performance-based feedback, but to be part of a feedback loop. What you know, and must share with them, is data-based and important. What they know, and should share with you, is experiential, and equally important. Creating a two-way street of communication between people taking calls and people interpreting data is vital to ensuring real-world verification of strategic orientation.
9. Assign QA Ambassadors
Management will always be the one enforcing protocol and issuing formal directives. Having a call center QA ambassador who’s on the ground and one of the people could be useful. Consider how you might make this enjoyable, not punitive or authoritative. Foster a team spirit based on shared goals. “When the company wins, everyone wins, so let’s rock it every day.”
10. Create a Voice Intelligence Strategy
Want to ensure future growth for your CCaaS or contact center department? The future is in voice intelligence. Anywhere humans interact via voice, data is being amassed. Unified communications platforms pull not only the voice data but ancillary data sets and data types. Once you can gain visibility into these aggregates, it is game-changing. This is the future: voice intelligence for elite service experiences.
Contact Center Operations Management: Best Practices for Winning Operations
Yes, reading a list of the top call center quality assurance best practices is a solid start. But you can’t just stop at “the knowing.” At Evolve IP, we regularly equip our customers with “the doing,” offering world-class tools to support your call center.
When you’re ready for an upgrade, or simply to connect with an expert, reach out.
Up next: read How to Choose the Best CCaaS Provider for Your Business in 2022
