Call Center quality assurance (QA) is a process of monitoring and analyzing agents’ interactions with customers.
It is done to ensure that the services agents provide meet the standards of quality an organization has set for them. Quality assurance monitors and evaluates all types of agent-customer interactions, including calls and chats.
But, quality assurance goes beyond mere performance tracking. A well-executed call center quality assurance strategy should be able to:
1. Provide Consistent Service Quality
Consistent quality of service is the number one driver of customer satisfaction. In order to provide consistent service, call center agents need to be familiar with a culture of quality and why it matters for customer experience. For this reason, motivating and encouraging agents through collaboration and rewards can enhance the quality of interactions in the long term.
2. Perform Root Cause Analysis
By leveraging QA scorecards, managers and supervisors can uncover deeper insights into every interaction in the call center. This way, small inconsistencies and gaps in knowledge can be identified and analyzed to understand what is causing them. Once you spot common pitfalls in call center performance, you can implement suitable improvements. What's more, if organizations identify and resolve the root of the issue during the first interaction, they can prevent customer churn by up to 67 percent.
3. Identify Coaching Opportunities
In a similar vein, identifying coaching opportunities can help both the call center and the agent. Through detailed analysis, supervisors can pinpoint areas for improvement and offer agents coaching opportunities. Supervisors can also identify whether an agent is struggling due to technical difficulties or other reasons, and provide additional support.
4. Encourage Best Practices
Recognizing and rewarding best practices in customer service can do wonders for productivity and quality of interactions in future. A WorkHuman Research Institute study revealed that 79 percent of employees said that recognition makes them work harder, and 78 percent are more productive after being rewarded. In line with this, managers and supervisors should regularly reward top-performing agents and share their best practices to empower others.
5. Acknowledge Feedback!
Acknowledging both customer and agent feedback can help call centers to improve efficiency, spot weaknesses and boost loyalty. Organizations can collect feedback through sentiment analysis of customer calls in which customers provide unsolicited feedback with every interaction. Alternatively, agents can just ask customers to rate the quality of service once the interaction ends.
Effective quality assurance is one of the most important elements of a well-functioning call center and can lead to better customer service, increased customer retention and more.
Incorporating a reliable QA system will streamline the process and give your quality assurance team the tools they need to achieve the best results.
