9 Ways To Take Your QA Analysts To The Next Level

Employing a QA analyst is an effective way to identify weaknesses and strengths in your call center’s customer service.

Your team of agents may receive hundreds or even thousands of calls a day, depending on your sector and the size of your company. Your agents have to be on top of their game to deliver the best customer service possible, as consistently poor experiences can impact your customer retention rates and loyalty.

A customer service quality analyst is core to improving your employees’ skills and your customers’ experience, but what if the QA expert themselves isn’t quite doing as well as they could? You may be missing out on valuable opportunities to build customer loyalty and help your team achieve its potential .

To take your QA analysts to the next level, here are 9 ways to do just that!

#1. Research the latest trends

Any QA analyst who isn’t given all the available knowledge could be missing out on easier and more practical methods of training, scoring and improving your customer service team.

Being aware and staying up to date of the newest trends doesn’t mean you necessarily have to adopt them all. But it does keep you in the loop so you can apply new and more efficient techniques where needed.

Industry trends can come and go fast, but a good quality assurance specialist will be able to adapt the newest trends to your benefit.

#2. Deliver goal-based coaching

Coaching is critical to guide employees towards better work. The customer service quality analyst may provide the coaching themselves or recommend options to management. Good coaching may involve role-play: the agent should be made to deal with a situation designed to play to their weaknesses.

Related: Call Center Coaching Tools To Get Call Center Agents In Shape

This gives them the chance to try different approaches and solutions without the risk of frustrating real customers. There should be a clear goal, such as talking the caller through a difficult technical task or leaving them satisfied enough to recommend the company to others.

#3. Monitor personal development

Following on from coaching, QA analysts should be monitoring agents’ progress to see how they integrate lessons learned.

Simply trusting the employee to make changes to their work may not be enough. Good quality assurance involves following agents’ personal development and delivering further targeted training when needed. Call monitoring and one-on-one feedback can help in this area.

 

#4. Create relevant scorecards with key metrics

Scorecards are a simple, fast way to assess call center agents’ skills. Playvox allows you to create custom scorecards featuring your own metrics, letting you ascertain how well employees are delivering the quality of service your company aims for.

Customer service quality analysts should discuss said qualities and KPIs with management, and build custom scorecards based on these details.

#5. Study data regularly

Any decisions that are made regarding tools, technologies and techniques should be based on data.

Gathering data from customer interactions helps QA analysts follow how agents are performing overall: customer surveys, scorecards, changes in sales patterns over select periods, customer referrals and researching response times can all help.

This data can be used when delivering feedback to agents and coaching them to boost their performance. Regular customer surveys are a great way to monitor the value of training or changes: if their feedback shows a drop in the quality of their experience, mistakes can be rectified before they cause further damage.

#6. Help to cultivate reward incentives for agents

More and more businesses are incorporating reward programs into their everyday operations, and a customer service quality analyst may play a key role in getting this right in your call center.

Simply giving their all for standard pay and pride isn’t enough for many agents: a tangible reward can be a real incentive to up their game. Playvox features a reward program for agents, encouraging employees to aim higher.

Quality assurance analysts need to monitor how performance changes after reward schemes are introduced. This can identify how effective these incentives are and how they benefit customers. If they’re shown to be a success, the rewards available could be tweaked to achieve even better results.

#7. Listen to calls with agents

Rather than simply giving feedback to agents after listening to recorded calls, your customer service quality analyst can actually play them back with the employee in the room.

This way, problems can be highlighted and discussed as the recording plays. It can be rewound and explored again and again, helping the agent hear their tone of voice, their choice of words and other elements of their service.

As a result, they can recognize their own weaknesses for themselves and create new responses to customer questions/comments/complaints in line with the recording. They will then be able to reflect on this next time they deal with a similar call.

#8. Pay attention to job satisfaction

Quality assurance isn’t just about improving the quality of service customers receive: it’s about making the workplace as productive and satisfying as possible. The happier employees are, the more respected they feel, the better their performance is likely to be.

Sadly, though, 85% of employees feel no engagement with their work. Dissatisfaction can build up over time and become a deep-seated resentment, ultimately affecting the customer experience.

Your customer service quality analyst should distribute employee surveys and gather ideas for improvement. This data can then be evaluated and used as the basis to make positive changes. Employees will feel they’re being heard and develop more loyalty to the company.

#9. Don’t be afraid to ask questions

If QA analysis reveals that certain managerial processes or oversights are affecting the customer experience, the quality assurance team should bring this up.

A customer service quality analyst needs to be focused on the overall performance of your call center and identifying core problems. No matter where or whom these issues stem from, they have to be addressed.

By following the 9 tips explored above, you can help your QA analysts make positive changes to your call center. Incorporating proper QA procedures and tools into your everyday operations enables faster, simpler quality assurance processes, helping to deliver a better customer experience overall.

Have you employed a customer service quality analyst, and if so, how did you find it helped your call center?