What Is Needed To Build A Quality Assurance Program
Have you ever been so unsatisfied with a business’s customer service that you simply refused to buy from them again?
If so, you’re not alone. Almost 50 percent of consumers will abandon a brand — even one they have used for years — after experiencing bad service.
Good service is vital to keep your customers happy whenever they reach out to your call center, and effective quality assurance can help you deliver each time. But what do you actually need to do to build a QA program for your call center?
Set clear standards and goals
When considering the most important tools and techniques for quality assurance, you should start by deciding what standards you want your call center to adhere to.
- What goals do you want to meet?
- What is your mission?
- How do you think customers should feel after an interaction with your agents?
Create a concrete set of standards and objectives that everyone in your company should aspire to achieve. This should be realistic enough for agents to actually incorporate into their interactions, and provide the encouragement they need to be better.
Look into ISO 9001:2015 too. This is a global quality management standard that all contact center managers should be aware of, so make sure you’re following the requirements. This is important for the overall quality of your service.
With your standards, values and goals solidified, your center will have a clearer identity and sense of purpose.
You and your agents will find it easier to realize if/when you deliver a sub-par customer experience in the future.
Put procedures in place for each department
With your standards ready, another of the crucial tools and techniques for quality assurance is building awareness throughout the company. All agents and managers have to feel they’re working towards a common goal and understand what the new quality assurance program means.
Make sure all department heads know what is expected of them and their team. Standard operating procedures should be put in place and followed as closely as possible. This will inform your training and management techniques, and help to focus your quality assurance program.
Make employees aware that performance monitoring and tracking will be implemented to measure results, but that they have nothing to worry about. You aren’t ‘spying’ on them. Rather, your quality assurance program is about building a better, more efficient contact center that will help build everyone’s skills.
One way to make the transition into your new way of working is to integrate a rewards system for employees. This gives extra incentive to follow procedures put in place and demonstrate that their efforts are valued.
Related: 12 Easy And Creative Call Center Rewards And Recognition Ideas
Measure results with tools and techniques for quality assurance
Scorecards are a terrific way to measure performance across all departments. These allocate scores to agents’ work in different areas, such as greeting, attitude and everything you need to create a perfect customer interaction.
Implementing scorecards into your quality assurance program offers a standardized and measurable technique to monitor agents’ development and spot flaws.
You can later analyze the results based on individual and team performance and identify where they need to improve and where they’re shining.
Playvox QA software features personalized scorecards as just one of its tools and techniques for quality assurance, empowering you with the ability to create bespoke scorecards to suit your center’s standards, goals and values.
Adding your own metrics helps you keep your quality assurance beneficial to your business rather than relying on something more generic.
Through Playvox’s user-friendly interface you’ll not only be able to create scorecards, but quickly create reports to further analyze and coach to improve your KPIs.
Related: 8 Steps To Creating An Effective Call Center Scorecard
Monitor customer interactions
People are reaching out to your team for a reason. Perhaps they want to complain about the way in which they’ve been treated, change their account details or simply ask a question they can’t answer themselves.
Related: Top 10 Customer Complaints Have About Your CX
Whatever their reason, your customers have a problem that has to be resolved. If your agents lack the knowledge, resources or will to do so, your callers could be left unsatisfied — and prepared to turn their back on you.
Monitor calls and all types of customer interactions to ensure this doesn’t happen. Listening is one of the most powerful tools and techniques for quality assurance; alongside personalized scorecards, making an effort to hear your customers will give you a deeper insight into agents’ service skills.
Play calls back and identify opportunities to improve your service, even with your best agents.
- Are they making the best impression they could?
- Are they accommodating the customer’s unique needs?
- Do they seize chances to upsell?
You may find common mistakes and patterns across multiple calls. Once you know how you can make the customer experience stronger, you can start implementing this into your feedback and training. You should play certain segments back for agents to hear, as examples of what to do and what not to do.
Listening is never to be underestimated as one of the leading tools and techniques for quality assurance.
Related: 6 Secrets To Train A Growing Customer Service Team To Stay Personal
Embrace ongoing training
Training is vital to your quality assurance program. Scorecards and call monitoring equip you with the knowledge you need to create individual training schemes for each agent. You can tailor feedback and development ideas to every member of every department, rather than delivering generic group-based training.
Your employees will find this more engaging and relevant to their own needs, giving them the foundation for better performance overall.
Related: 10 Call Center Training Ideas You Can’t Miss Out On
As part of its tools and techniques for quality assurance, Playvox allows you to provide targeting training through the learning management system, via quizzes and other easily-digestible content.
They can undertake this at their desk while they work, without having to attend lengthy meetings.
Such streamlined training means education and refinements become an ongoing part of your call center, rather than just consisting of one or two sessions throughout their career with you. As a result, feedback and development plans are less intimidating and simpler to adapt to.
All of the above is key for building your own quality assurance program. Providing your managers and employees with the proper tools and techniques for quality assurance can transform your contact center entirely.
Have you integrated a QA program into your call center? What results have you seen? Share your experiences below!