Archive for the ‘White Papers’ Category

The most important aspect of running a “Best in Class” Call Center is to develop an effective Quality Assurance System.   “When quality monitoring programs are well designed and institutionalized, they yield great benefits for customers, enterprises, contact centers and agents.” Donna Fluss, President, DMG Consulting LLC

Developing this system involves a number of steps

1. Ensure that you have the call monitoring equipment necessary for a quality assurance program, and determine which calls will be monitored. Make sure your quality measurement includes the data entry, as well as the voice quality and script.
2. Determine the frequency and personnel that will handle the quality monitoring
3. Calibrate!  Make sure that everyone monitoring are scoring employees the same way. The monitoring team should have meetings weekly to ensure they are all scoring the same way (calibration meeting). Develop a scorecard for every campaign, and make sure that all the personnel are on the same page. The call center quality assurance program must be consistent.
4. Institute specific performance goals for your employees and hold them accountable for reaching those goals.
5. Support the Quality program with proper reviews with the staff.   These should include side-by-side coaching, and monthly reviews.
6. Develop specific reward programs.

Monitoring Equipment
In today’s call center, it is important that you have the ability to record all calls, not just a sample.   In addition to having these calls for any compliance issues, it also allows you to select calls based on specific selection criteria for quality review.   This is also important so that the agent can review the call with the Quality analyst, which eliminates pushback or denial from the agents.

When and Which Calls should be Monitored?
If the objective of a Quality program is to improve the performance of the call center, and one only has the ability to listen to a small percentage of calls that an agent makes, then one must use strategic intelligence to determine which calls should be reviewed.  There are certain factors that should be analyzed in making this determination:

• Calls which are much longer, or shorter, than the norm for a particular campaign.
• Specific call outcomes. Though the tendency will be to monitor the positive call outcomes, it is important that refusals be incorporated as well.  We not only want to make sure the positive calls are good, but also make sure the agent is not missing opportunities with their refusals.
• Calls during a particular time of the agent’s schedule.  How does the agent handle their first call of the day, or the last?

There are other factors in making these decisions; the operations and QA staff should meet periodically to review the call selection criteria.

Quality Personnel
It is important in call centers that both the agent’s team leader, and an independent quality analyst conduct the Quality monitoring.   In small call centers, these two departments can share the monitoring responsibility; for example, if the goal is that an agent is to be monitored once per day, then the Quality department can handle Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the team supervisor will handle Tuesday and Thursday.

Scorecard
Scorecards should reflect the organizational and campaign goals, and be organized into specific categories.   These categories normally are:

1. Opening - This is where we evaluate how the agent introduces himself/herself to the customer.
2. Presentation - This section is where we explain what we are offering to the customer. The agent must make the customer completely understand what we are offering to them. We also want to answer any questions that the customer has.
3. Delight - This section is where the agent is scored on their attitude and composure. This is expressed by the way the agent speaks to the customer.
4. Closing - This section is to make sure that the customer leaves with positive thoughts about what they agreed to during the call. The agent uses a courtesy close (e.g. thank you for your time, I appreciate your interest, Etc.).

Calibration
The Quality Process can quickly lose its effectiveness if the agents feel they are being scored differently.   The fact that quality includes such things as “courtesy, accuracy, listening, and other subjective attributes, make calibration a necessity.  Calibration sessions narrow the differences on how these subjective factors are defined and scored.

“Calibration, by its’ very nature, is a conflictive process. When you try to get a group of people to analyze the same call the same way, there are bound to be disagreements. The calibration session is not focused on the 90-95 percent of the call a team agrees on, but on the handful of things on which they disagree.” Tom Vander Well, C Wenger Group

These calibration meetings should include all personnel that are responsible for monitoring.   A call is chosen by the quality manager, and played to the entire group.  Each participant should score the call, and then each of them shares their scores with the group.  If there is a significant difference, the facilitator leads the discussion to reconcile the significant differences.   It is through this continued process that the quality team build consensus.   This will translate to a fairer and more consistent evaluation of the agents.

Goals
It is important that Quality be included in an agent’s evaluation, in addition to production and attendance.   Agents must understand that any incentives they gain through their work must have the required quality scores associated with it.

In most organizations a 90% to 95% quality score is required to stay on a campaign.  This score should be evaluated weekly, and monthly.  If an agent’s score is below 90% on a given call, coaching takes place.  If they agent’s scores continue to fall below 90% for a given month, disciplinary action is taken.

As well as removal from a campaign for substandard quality, the agent should also understand that their incentive structure is tied to the quality metric; in order to receive their incentive, they must have met the stated quality level.  This sends the message to the team that quality is an important factor in their compensation.

Agent Reviews
Coaching is integral to an effective quality program.   It must be constructive and timely.  By constructive, it must be more than sharing the score with the agent.  The analyst must point out both areas of superior performance, and areas of improvement. Myra Goldman, a leading call center trainer, recommends to “Use the “sandwich” approach. Tell your employee what s/he did well, followed by constructive feedback, and then end with positive feedback.  When offering constructive feedback, share only one opportunity for improvement. The employee has likely observed and stated several improvement opportunities so there is no need to bring these up again.  Try to mention one thing the employee did not bring up and offer this as your constructive feedback.”  It is also important that the agent’s reactions be noted.  Did they understand the areas where improvement was warranted?  Do they agree with the quality analyst’s score?  Did they offer any constructive feedback that can be shared with other agents?   All these issues should be noted and discussed.  Most call centers digitally record all calls.  Allowing the agent to listen to the call in question during their coaching session will eliminate any “he said/she said” situations and shorten the learning/coaching curve.

Side by side monitoring, where the agent and the supervisor review the calls together, is a very effective tool, but it can be very time consuming, and therefore many call centers bypass this tool.  It should be mandated that at least two calls a month be side-by-side monitoring sessions.

Recognition
With all of the time and effort spent in quality assurance, it is important that the organization builds a culture where quality is the number one goal.   Recognizing the agents that consistently have the highest quality does this.   Reward high-quality work through mechanisms such as ‘agent of the month’ awards and staff excellence certificates, and highlight agents in your company newsletter and intranet site. And if consumers are pleased with the service, make sure the whole team sees this communication.

When your quality assurance reaches “Best in Class”, you can then begin focusing on Customer Delight…

By Joe Dawidouski – Joe is the Quality Supervisor for Thumbs Up Marketing, a 30-year-old Call Center Services firm in St. Louis MO   www.thumbsupinc.com