Call Center Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is about training agents and enhancing their skills to deliver the best service according to customer’s expectations. 

Ensure uniform customer service by monitoring calls

The customer service provided by the company is a part of the company’s identity. The reputation can influence the decision of other customers/clients. 

A single instant of  poor customer service is enough to upset the customer, leading to a negative perception of the company. One unresolved complaint or negative comment can convince customers to leave the company. 

Call monitoring is thus important to ensure that the interaction is uniform. Greetings, positive phrases, empathy, the right tone of speech, and other such approaches should be incorporated in every call. This ensures that the customer remains happy with the agent’s behavior and appreciates their experience.

Regulatory Compliance

Call centers need to follow specific guidelines to protect their customers. A call center should not take risks in regulatory compliance. The agents as well should be well aware of these guidelines to ensure there is no issue involving the company. 

Certain guidelines that call centers need to comply with are – 

Consent to call monitoring: the parties involved in the conversation should be aware that they are being recorded and must agree to it.

DNC registry: this registration allows customers to withdraw their contact from telemarketing calls. A call center that fails to comply can be fined. 

PCI Data Security Standard: it is a set of standards that every call center needs to follow if they want to process credit card payments.

And many more guidelines like Fair Debt Collection, Truth in Lending Act, are part of the Federal Trade Commission that call centers require to adhere to. 

Managers should ensure that the agents are aware of such rules and the system is not avoided to prevent any lapse in standards. Any misstep would lead to fines and harm the company’s reputation. 

Monitoring quality assurance can prevent any such scenarios where agents are unable to provide customers with the required information. Managers can identify such cases and avoid making mistakes.

Evaluating Agent Performance

Evaluating agent performance is one of the most important features of Quality Assurance. The quality of services delivered to the customers depends entirely upon the agent. 

Managers and agents can develop benchmarks together to compare their performance metrics. The agents can self-analyze to understand where they need to develop more in order to deliver a quality customer experience. 

By analyzing the interaction between agent-customer, managers and specialists can determine how to meet customer’s needs and expectations. 

Feedback on agent performance

Managers can provide feedback to the agents in their individual coaching sessions. Managers should work along with the agents to identify the issues and plan how to overcome them. 

Feedbacks with data and scoreboards can ensure that the agent understands what it is that they are doing is wrong. Agents should acknowledge their mistakes and with the help of managers, come up with ways to improve future interactions

Customer Feedbacks to align with Quality Assurance 

Matching your quality assurance score with the customer feedback can show you the differences between the point of view of customers and the company. 

Call centers sometimes fail to align what customer believes is good customer service with what the company believes is good customer service. This difference in perception leads to poor customer service. 

Use the customer feedback to compare with the Quality Assurance score of the company to identify the areas which may need change. Identifying the difference will help deliver an effective and efficient customer experience and continuous improvement.

Training and Gaps in Knowledge

When the agent is unable to provide the customer the required information it leads to frustration. 

Quality assurance score gives you extensive information on performance and knowledge. It can help you identify the gaps in knowledge, the pitfalls but also the opportunities to improve. The managers can identify the area where an agent lacks knowledge so you can develop an action plan to help the agent. 

You can use Quality Assurance Score to track progress and examine if all the agents have received the necessary training in the intended skill.

Quality Assurance as Audit

Quality Assurance can be used as an audit because it can flag a failure while also keeping track of the corrective action that was taken. This can reduce paperwork and the struggle of a manager to keep up with the workflow. 

An agent can be alerted of their quality assurance score. Also, you can combine these records with actions taken to improve the performance along with the associated dates.