10 Ways to Improve Quality Assurance in a Call Center

Quality assurance (QA) in call centers is pivotal for ensuring customer satisfaction and improving the overall service quality. However, many centers struggle with inconsistencies, misaligned criteria, ineffective feedback mechanisms, and more. This blog explores practical strategies to enhance QA processes in your call center.

CHALLENGE #1: QA Analyst Consistency

The primary concern among agents who receive QA feedback is the lack of consistency across different QA analysts. This inconsistency leads to confusion and can result in agents dismissing the feedback entirely. Inconsistencies may arise from differing interpretations of performance standards, personal biases, or varying levels of experience among QA analysts. Such discrepancies can undermine the credibility of the feedback process, making it difficult for agents to take constructive criticism seriously and apply it to improve their performance. To address this issue, it is crucial to standardize feedback criteria and provide regular training to QA analysts to ensure that evaluations are both fair and uniform.

How to Improve?

• Develop a QA Playbook or Rubric: A QA Playbook provides specific detail about what is (and is not) considered to be acceptable based on your call center's standards. This comprehensive guide ensures that everyone – agents, supervisors, team leads, trainers, and agents -- knows what expectations are.

  

• Conduct Regular Calibration Sessions: A calibration session is a meeting where supervisors and QA analysts review and discuss call interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy in evaluating agent performance across different groups. Ensuring everyone is on the same page is vital in communicating and coaching agents.

• Create a Library of Best Practice Calls/Emails/Chat: One of the most powerful ways to communicate expectations is by providing agents with best practice examples. Create a library of audio/files that illustrate a great interaction overall or where an agent demonstrates a specific skill particularly well.

CHALLENGE #2: Aligning QA with Customer Perspective

The concern about internal quality assurance (QA) teams potentially scoring higher than external reviewers is well-documented and supported by insights from industry experts. Internal QA teams often develop an unconscious bias due to their close relationship with the processes and personnel they evaluate. This familiarity can lead to a more lenient assessment (as much as +15%) compared to external QA, which tends to be more objective and critical.

How to Improve?

• Balance Internal + External Perspective: For a balanced and effective QA strategy, it's important to incorporate both internal and external assessments. This approach can help mitigate the influence of bias and provide a comprehensive view of agent performance and customer satisfaction.

• Create an External Benchmark: While predominantly conducting QA internally, it's beneficial to engage an external QA firm to evaluate a portion of your assessments. This approach provides a benchmark for comparing and assessing the effectiveness of your internal QA processes. Additionally, it grants access to third-party experts who can offer valuable insights and support, enhancing the overall capability and perspective of your internal QA team.

CHALLENGE #3: Aligning Training with QA

It's crucial for the training that agents receive—whether in the classroom or through eLearning, as a new hire or refresher training —to be consistent with the QA standards they are expected to meet. Discrepancies between training content and QA criteria can seriously undermine the effectiveness of a QA program. To prevent confusion and ensure cohesion, it is essential that expectations, methodologies, tools, and skills are thoroughly aligned across training and quality assurance frameworks. This alignment helps streamline the learning process and reinforces the correct practices among agents.

How to Improve?

• e-Learning Skill-based Modules: Provide access to e-learning modules that align with each QA standard that agents can complete at their own pace to learn a new skill or refresh their knowledge and skills.

• Role-playing Exercises: Regularly conduct role-playing exercises that simulate challenging customer interactions and give agents the opportunity for ‘safe practice’.

CHALLENGE #4: Crafting Specific and Actionable Coaching

A common pitfall in call center QA is providing feedback that is vague or not actionable. Feedback should be specific to foster improvement, pointing out precisely what was done well or could be improved, coupled with actionable, clear steps or strategies the agent can implement. This approach helps agents understand the expectations and how they can meet them.

How to Improve?

• Technology Support: If your QA software doesn't already provide it, consider investing in an application that allows for customizable drop-down fields to capture specific insight related to each standard. Not only does this enable QA analysts to capture details quickly, but it also support QA consistency.

• Behavior-Specific Praise: When giving positive feedback, be specific about what the agent did well and how it aligns with QA goals and impacts the customer.

• Constructive Criticism: Provide clear, constructive criticism with specific examples from call recordings or customer feedback.

• Action Plans: Develop specific action plans for improvement that include clear steps and goals for agents to achieve.

CHALLENGE #5: Measuring the Right Things

A common mistake in designing a QA scorecard is including every behavior – even those that don't directly enhance customer satisfaction or operational efficiency. Lengthy lists of standards prolongs the evaluation process and shifts focus away from critical priorities. It's crucial to critically assess each standard or skill; for instance, while frequently using the customer's name might seem beneficial, evaluating whether this practice genuinely influences outcomes positively is important. Does mentioning the customer's name just once suffice, or is it even necessary? Examining your criteria through a customer-centric perspective ensures that your quality assurance efforts lead to substantial improvements.

How to Improve?

• Align QA Standards with Outcomes: Analyze trends to understand how specific behaviors impact customer satisfaction; for example, investigate whether demonstrating empathy early in the interaction enhances customer satisfaction, or if summarizing the customer's request improves the rate of first contact resolution.

• Regularly Update QA Standards: As business goals and customer expectations evolve, periodically review and update your QA Standards to stay relevant. However, don't make changes too often as it can confuse agents; instead look at an annual review.

• Employee Input: Involve agents in the process of defining meaningful QA Standards; this can increase their engagement and adherence to these metrics.

CHALLENGE #6: Focusing on the Right Things

QA standards are not all equal. There are some non-negotiables (e.g., compliance criteria or ownership), while others help to set the stage for a positive customer experience (e.g., empathy or courtesy.  Weighting them accordingly helps to put the focus on those behaviors that matter most to you and your customers.

How to Improve?

• Balance Efficiency and Effectiveness: Strike a balance between efficiency and effectiveness by ensuring that metrics such as call duration do not overshadow crucial factors like first contact resolution. While monitoring how long agents spend on calls to manage costs is essential, measuring how often they resolve customer issues on the first attempt is equally important, as this impacts cost (and customer satisfaction) more significantly.

• Dynamic Weighting: Adjust the weighting of QA standards based on current business priorities, such as focusing more on expressing empathy during periods of service disruption.

CHALLENGE #7: Delivering Timely QA Feedback

The effectiveness of any QA program is significantly reduced if there is a delay in delivering that feedback to agents. Immediate or near-immediate feedback helps agents to quickly correct mistakes and reinforce positive behaviors.

How to Improve?

• Feedback Variety: Don't rely solely on scheduled, formal coaching sessions. Instead, delivering feedback in a variety of ways can help maintain the timeliness of your QA feedback. This may include:

  • “Fly-by Feedback” - brief, impromptu coaching sessions that occur spontaneously, usually right after a QA analyst or supervisor observes a specific behavior.

  • “Real-Time Recognition” – great for positive reinforcement; call out an agent for demonstrating best practices in a team huddle or team email.

• Real-Time Tools: While many QA evaluations will go to an agent’s team lead/supervisor, more experienced agents can benefit from receiving their own evaluations directly upon completion.

• Scheduled Review Sessions: Establish regular intervals for feedback sessions to discuss performance and areas of improvement. They can be varied in length, for example, one 30-minute coaching session once a month and six 15-minute coaching sessions.

CHALLENGE #8: Balancing Human + Technology-Driven QA

Call centers can improve the quantity of QA evaluations by integrating advanced technologies like speech analytics and AI-powered monitoring tools. These technologies can automatically analyze voice interactions for sentiment, keyword usage, and compliance with protocols, providing detailed insights that can be used to enhance agent performance. However, when it comes to delivering actionable coaching, technology isn't there yet.

How to Improve?

• Balance AI and Human QA Analytics: Utilize speech analytics to automatically evaluate call recordings, ensuring adherence to mandatory language such as compliance statements and standard greetings or closings, as well as to assess emotional tone and stress levels. Then focus your human QA to review those calls that significantly impact customer experience or brand perception.  QA analysts are best suited to provide coaching feedback on how to improve the interaction.  This approach combines the efficiency of automated tools with the nuanced understanding of human reviewers to improve overall call quality.

• Performance Dashboards: Implement real-time reporting that gives agents (and their team leaders/supervisors) real-time access to their performance metrics and feedback.

CHALLENGE #9: Development of QA Analyst Skills

Many QA analysts find their way into the quality assurance role having been a frontline agents.  That’s great as they come with indepth knowledge of policies and procedures.  However, very few QA analysts receive the necessary training to do the quality assurance job effectively.  That is vital.

How to Improve?

• Ensure that QA analysts undergo thorough training that covers not just the technical aspects of their job but also focuses on soft skills like communication, empathy, and effective feedback delivery. Training programs should include sessions on interpreting data correctly, understanding the nuances of customer interactions, and making unbiased evaluations.

  
  

CHALLENGE #10: Getting Management Buy-in

Quality assurance is (unfortunately) seen as solely a necessary cost, when it should be seen as a major contributor to corporate profitability. Quality Assurance -- when supported with timely, effective coaching -- has a direct impact on customer loyalty and can provide tremendous insight into corporate-wide improvements. Engaging all levels ensures that QA objectives align with the broader organizational goals and that feedback loops are comprehensive and constructive. However, getting everyone on the same page can be challenging. The key is to demonstate quantifiable value.

How to Improve?

• Benchmarking: Before beginning any new QA initiative, take the time to create a benchmark upon which to measure your success. Whether it is a new QA form, more robust coaching notes, or a coaching huddle -- capture the impact QA has on customer satisfaction, reduced calls, improved agent retention, etc. Be deliberate about your effort and the expected outcome.

• Cross-departmental Meetings: Hold regular calibration sessions involving agents, supervisors, and executives to listen to calls and discuss QA results and strategies.

• Voice of the Customer: Invite Marketing or IT to a calibration session to listen to calls from customers impacted by a new product launch or system change that they are responsible for.  Encourage and facilitate other departments within the organization to listen to the voice of the customer on a regular basis.

Call Center Quality Assurance Challenges - Conclusion

Improving quality assurance in a call center involves more than just monitoring calls and providing feedback. It requires a strategic approach that aligns with broader business goals, leverages technology, involves comprehensive training, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. By addressing these areas, call centers can significantly enhance their service quality, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By following these strategies, your call center can transform its QA processes, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, and ultimately, a stronger bottom line.

VEREQUEST is dedicated to helping organizations keep the promises they make to customers and employees alike. Our third-party, quality monitoring service pairs VereQuest’s highly skilled Coaches with our proprietary quality monitoring software VQ Online™. This system provides detailed insights into customer interactions across all communication channels — including calls, email, chat, video, etc. The outcome? Precise, actionable coaching insights that elevate and maintain agent performance. For teams preferring to manage contact center QA internally, VQ Online™ is also available in a hosted SaaS model.

Additionally, our Check-Up™ e-learning program is customizable for service, sales, and chat/email agents, as well as the coaches who support them. These SCORM-compliant e-learning modules can be hosted on your own LMS or ours, with the advantage of no per-learner fees.

Get in touch with us today for a no-obligation demonstration and to experience our top-rated quality monitoring and e-learning firsthand. Reach out at info@verequest.com for more details.