A call center is a team of people that handles incoming or outgoing customer calls and other customer interaction channels for a business. It may be an in-house department of your company or could be part of another organization that you use as an outsourced call center. Call centers around the world are tasked with effectively managing customer issues through a wide variety of channels — websites, social media, emails, chats, applications, etc.
Call center agents often deal with live calls on the phone, but may commonly also send text messages or email as a follow-up to service calls. How they handle voice interactions and other contacts with customers can make or break a business.
To ensure the optimal performance of your call center, its workflow, and its agents, call center monitoring and performance management is key. In this article, we'll cover everything you need to know about the benefits of call center monitoring, as well as the best practices and key tools that can help you maximize call center staff efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Call center monitoring, a form of quality assurance (QA) or quality management (QM), is a crucial aspect of overall performance management that looks at how call center agents respond to calls based on customer expectations and requirements. Continuously examining quality, in combination with agent performance, is an effective method for improving the call center’s service. Call center managers can then look for actionable insights in real time to identify and deliver solutions that ultimately improve call center operations and agent performance.
As part of performance management, call center monitoring helps in identifying inefficiencies and areas for improvement. For example, frequent monitoring may reveal that agents are spending too much time on the computer instead of talking to customers (silent time). The root cause may be a process issue, a technology issue, or it could be a training issue, or a mix is all three! Understanding and addressing these issues are key to ensuring agents deliver a strong customer experience — but it takes metrics found via a quality monitoring system and associated detailed analysis to make that happen.
Call center quality assurance is a standardized, yet customized process based on specific business, service, and products supported, that determines whether a call center meets quality standards based on defined call handling processes and customer engagement success (e.g. active listening, empathy expressions, and proper resolution). It also provides a measurable objective so your agents know what they should strive for while solidifying your brand message. QA is vital to helping call centers ensure consistent, high-quality customer interactions to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Specific agent behaviors can occasionally lead to mistakes. Something as simple as keeping the caller on hold for 90 seconds while the agent searches for an answer can lead to a customer hanging up the call. This is something that QA easily measures. To prevent this issue, quality assurance may create a 60-second hold time as a benchmark, which then prompts the agent to check back with the customer before that minute is up.
One common business goal for all organizations is improving caller satisfaction by satisfying customer needs. To do that, you need to ensure that the way you do business meets or exceeds customer expectations. It’s important to know that the people responsible for providing the client experience are doing so in a way that aligns with your company's standards and values.
There are several types of tools commonly used in performance management and call center monitoring. Here's an overview of some of the more popular ones, along with their key functions:
Call center monitoring software lets supervisors listen in on live or recorded calls. By doing so, they can ensure adherence to call quality standards and provide feedback to agents as necessary. Some call monitoring software solutions also come equipped with AI-powered analytics tools to automatically identify trends and pinpoint common issues in recorded calls.
Call recording software is essential for maintaining records of all customer interactions. By automatically recording all inbound and outbound calls, call recording software ensures that these records are available whenever you need them. A recorded call database can serve as a valuable resource for training, quality assurance, and dispute resolution.
Speech analytics and call transcription automation tools are designed to convert conversations into written text. This allows call centers to generate a written record of all calls. Many types of call transcription tools also come equipped with speech analytics features that leverage artificial intelligence to analyze recorded calls for valuable insights.
Call center metrics and analytics dashboards provide a comprehensive, "single-pane-of-glass" view of all your call center's important KPIs. These dashboards compile data from numerous sources, allowing managers to track quality monitoring results, agent productivity and overall service quality in real time. Along with organizing all your data into a single platform, metrics/analytics dashboards also feature data visualization tools that make it easier to spot trends and interpret data for more informed decision-making.
Customer satisfaction ratings are an essential metric for evaluating the success of a call center. Customer feedback collection tools often use post-call surveys to gather direct feedback on a recent customer service experience. Consistently reviewing and acting on feedback ensures that call centers can swiftly address issues, improve overall efficiency, and maintain high standards of customer satisfaction.
Successful quality monitoring and performance management not only create a better customer experience but also help provide employees with clearly outlined goals and expectations for their work. Quality monitoring and associated coaching can increase the efficiency of employees as well, which in turn leads to benefits for the entire company.
There are several objective metrics that continuous call center quality monitoring can inform. These key performance indicators (KPIs) provide objective, quantifiable measures of call center performance, customer experience, and progress toward business goals.
Common metrics like quality monitoring scores, first call resolution rate, average speed of answer, average handling time, and customer satisfaction can easily be tracked via call center monitoring software. Of course, the specific metrics you track should be customized based on the type of support being provided (e.g. customer service, sales, technical support, etc.) however reviewing performance in these defined areas is crucial for your organization to track successes and opportunities for meeting customer needs.
Monitoring the quality of a call center produces reams of data that appear on dashboards, graphs, and analysis reports. Managers and customer agents no longer have to rely on a general feeling (such as call responses seeming lackluster) or an exceptional event (such as a screaming customer) to define whether a team is doing well or poorly.
Paired with a broader set of performance management measures, call center monitoring can provide additional clarity on what is driving key metrics like increased average handling time or service wait times, or reduced customer satisfaction that can prompt and justify changes in your call center processes process. This transparency increases understanding and trust, which adds to the benefits described later.
It’s no secret that many call center service providers suffer from high turnover, in some cases, employee attrition can be as high as 100 percent in one year. The high-stress environment, abusive customers, low pay, strict schedules, and constant repetition can take their toll.
Businesses working with TDS Global Solutions won’t experience this particular issue, as TDS Global Solutions only partners with the best, highest-quality outsourcing providers all around the world. However, it is important to note that high attrition can be a concern if you don’t select the right outsourcing partner.
Quality monitoring measures help reduce agent turnover by providing an objective way to measure and supportively coach agent performance. A clear path to improvement allows agents to set goals, particularly if they’re given time each week to reflect on their performance and learn from mistakes.
These measures empower agents and also act as the foundation for training. When leveraged properly, standardized education and measurable objectives boost morale, in turn increasing job satisfaction and encouraging employees to remain on the job.
Call centers exist to keep customers happy and increase their retention, which is crucial for any business. The odds of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent, as reported by Forbes, while that percentage drops to around 5 to 20 percent when trying to convince a new buyer.
Quality monitoring leverages clearly defined metrics to improve customer experiences and increase retention. Modern consumers expect high-quality and personal service; if your company does not align with their expectations, they can easily jump to a different competitor with the click of a button. So quality assurance should not only happen with call centers but with all your contact center channels, whether you’re routing customer interactions through email, chat, social media, or a form on your website.
When performance management tactics identify unique agent characteristics that improve customer experience, those factors can be utilized to identify potential hires who would be a good fit for staffing your call center. You may, for example, discover that agents who have strong empathy, good listening skills, and an outgoing personality have the highest conversion rates. If you’re interviewing individual candidates, this can be something you screen for.
Your KPIs may also reveal issues with your call center that can only be addressed by hiring applicants with particular skills. One example may be a lack of foreign language skills among your agents, which may lead to high abandonment rates from certain customers. You could then hire interviewees who can speak that language fluently.
When you’re ready to start quality monitoring and effectively managing performance at your call center, you can follow several strategies, including the one outlined in the following steps. If you need help in implementing quality monitoring and performance standards or want a resource for outsourcing your call center, contact us at TDS Global Solutions. We provide a variety of business solutions for a variety of industries across the globe — finance, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, tech, etc.
A quality assurance manager can implement and take charge of your quality monitoring. They can assemble and efficiently lead a team of call quality analysts, streamline your call center's quality assurance process to ensure proper focus and work with your management team to develop high-performing agents. Creating a closed-loop quality process that combines best practices with a focus on your specific business drivers and unique customer needs is key to success, so someone who brings this experience in creating proven quality processes is key.
For the manager and team to succeed, a sound process must be put in place. Then you can overlay brand value proposition and differentiation, and define how exemplary customer service impacts the brand. Ultimately, the QA Manager is responsible for the success or failure of the QA process.
A smart way to develop effective quality standards and performance goals is to start with best practice metrics, and then overlay the unique aspects of your brand, products, and services. Data from your operation should be utilized to determine the specific customer thresholds that impact customer satisfaction or propensity to buy, then relevant KPIs and targets should be set and processes put in place to effectively measure, manage, and improve against those benchmarks. Eventually, every customer interaction must meet those standards to be considered a success. A typical goal might be to answer 80 percent of calls in 20 seconds or less, a minimum quality score of 85%, or a customer satisfaction level of 90% or higher.
It’s important to measure certain KPIs in real time and others on a daily basis for more insightful analysis. Call quality monitoring forms and scorecards should be created to best reflect those metrics that are most important to your customers and overall business results. Specific to quality assurance, the scoring form should be concise and organized to follow the flow of a typical call with a combined focus on process accuracy and soft skill proficiency. The flow of the form and scoring approach should help facilitate the feedback process when coaching employees.
Off-the-shelf training programs may seem to save time and money because they’re readily available. However, these programs don’t take into account the different experience levels, skills, and learning styles of individual call agents. They also don’t reflect your specific brand values and help agents tie the direct value of their work to business outcomes. As a result, using purely off-the-shelf training will only get you part of the way to achieving desired KPIs.
Leading call centers customize agent training, adapting the format and content to the learner’s individual needs and learning preferences and tying training directly to the specific products and services supported. Personalizing the program increases employee engagement, making trainees eager to meet the goals set by the QA team. This leads to more productive call interactions and boosts the satisfaction of both the employee and his or her customers.
Call center scripts or call flows are often used to guide customer interactions during live calls. They provide accurate company-approved responses that advance the company’s message. These scripts can range from basic outlines that allow the agents to personalize their encounters to a detailed dialogue with specific language that ensures compliance with regulations and standards.
You can use many techniques for script development and optimization. Call recording reveals how customers respond to specific agents, positive reinforcement assures callers that the company will handle the issue, and apologies to calm irate customers.
All call center agents should be trained on how to use scripts properly, as they’ll vary from business to business. These documents ensure consistency in customer responses and produce more efficient and effective solutions.
Call centers can leverage a variety of real-time monitoring tools to analyze the effectiveness of their quality monitoring process. This includes call recording software, speech analytics software, and text analytics software.
By allowing you to document and analyze all customer calls, these real-time monitoring tools can provide a lot of helpful insights including specific agent needs as well as overall trends. Call centers can use these insights for training purposes or to identify areas where there is room for improvement, and also detect product or service trends that are impacting customer satisfaction.
These tools also allow for more effective quality management, as automated monitoring can detect specific calls that require attention, versus random selection of a small percentage of calls for monitoring. By targeting call reviews based on the results of automated monitoring, call centers can much more efficiently pinpoint issues and coach for improvement.
One-on-one coaching should be completed on a regular basis (weekly or bi-weekly) and should utilize a consistent process that is tracked over time. Coaching should be interactive, providing direct feedback on what an agent has done well, and where they have opportunities to improve when compared to clearly defined performance expectations. Empower agents to set their own goals by reviewing specific recordings and discussing ways to improve. You can also do role-play examples to help the agent observe first-hand the best way to handle a call.
To ensure effective coaching, the supervisor should have information to analyze an individual agent’s calls and review his or her quality and performance scores, to form a plan that magnifies their positive skills and leverages one-on-one coaching to improve performance and customer satisfaction in other areas.
In some cases, quality tools can allow agents to assess their own call: noting what succeeded, how frustrated the customer was, and what could be done differently. This allows the agents to feel like they are part of the process and creates a more interactive and open approach for agents to receive both positive feedback and constructive suggestions for improvement.
The call center often stands out as the only person-to-person contact that your company has with your clients. Performance management and quality monitoring leverage call center software to measure the effectiveness of your customer interactions through business metrics called key performance indicators (KPIs). Utilizing these benchmarks to feed the quality assurance process can help find the root cause of any issues and determine if the call interaction is meeting customer expectations.
In addition, by implementing best practices such as bringing in a dedicated QA manager, utilizing scorecards to track KPIs, customizing call center agent training programs, optimizing call center scripts, using real-time monitoring tools, and establishing regular agent coaching sessions, you can ensure that your call center agents meet customer expectations. These practices not only improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your call center operations but also enhance the overall customer experience.
When it comes to quality monitoring and performance management, partners in the TDS Global Solutions network understand how to leverage business information to generate real results for our clients and their customers. Whether you want to stay close with nearshore outsourcing, score major cost savings in Asia Pacific, or benefit from multi-lingual agents in Latin America, we’ll help you skip the hassle of setting this all up yourself. Contact us today to see how we can help you connect with the right call center partner for your BPO needs.
