Contact centers have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting the latest technology. Despite that, auditing is still stuck in age-old inefficient processes.
In an age where contact center solutions are at its peak, there have been some improvements in auditing as well.
Before we look at what these call center software options offer, let's understand why quality assurance is needed in a call center.
The Importance of QA in a Call Center
Quality assurance in call centers is the process of going through agent-customer interactions. QA ensures agents comply to processes, policies, and benchmarks established by leaders.
Auditors go through each conversation and score them based on certain parameters in manual auditing. They also note down feedback for agents to improve on.
Now that you know what auditing is, let's look at its importance in call centers.
1. Identify Agent Shortcomings
No agent has all their interactions with customers go as perfectly as planned. There are chances of something going wrong, knowingly or unknowingly.
When auditors go through agent-customer interactions, they notice such shortcomings. Agents are then informed about their mistakes so that they can improve.
Auditing can help call centers understand each agent’s strengths and weaknesses.
2. Elevate Customer Experience
When customer calls are audited, auditors can evaluate customer satisfaction using parameters like hold time and first call resolution. Since all these parameters are tied together, it is easy to have an understanding of how customers feel after interactions.
Since auditing covers these parameters, agents can know what parameters they need to improve to continue providing a great experience to their customers.
3. Insights Into Performance
Call center management and team leaders can use statistics from auditing to understand how agents are performing. This data can help in evaluating overall performance as well as making decisions with regard to future operations.
We've seen several benefits of quality monitoring in call centers. But why are contact centers opting for alternatives to manual quality assurance?
Replace manual auditing with 100% automated QA.
Why Are Alternatives Needed For Manual QA?
Despite the various benefits of quality assurance, manual auditing has annoying limitations. Let's analyze the limitations and understand the need for an efficient way to perform manual QA.
1. Inefficient Process
Most auditors use Excel Sheets or Google Sheets for their audits. This makes auditing a lengthy and inefficient process.
Auditors need to jump and switch between various applications to audit a single call. For example, this is how an auditor would audit a call:
- Access the call recording from the cloud-based phone system.
- Get customer information from the customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
- Note their comments on the call in an application like Google Keep for their notes.
- Move to Google/Excel Sheets to score the call once all this is done.
- Finally, use the agent database to assign actionable tasks to the agent.
Imagine doing this for each call every single day. Doesn’t this sound tiring?
The lack of a streamlined and efficient workflow in your manual auditing process offers a lot of limitations. Auditors can only evaluate a limited number of calls.
2. Lengthy Feedback Loops
Since auditors don't directly work with call center agents, feedback processes turn lengthy.
These insights are sent to the team lead, who takes these issues individually with agents. This delay causes a lot of problems with agent productivity in the long run.
If agents receive feedback immediately after audits are done, they can improve their customer experience delivery as soon as possible.
3. Painstaking Report Generation
The time-consuming work of auditors isn't over with the audits that make them jump between apps.
Once the audits are done, auditors must manually design comprehensive reports based on the auditing data. Since all of it is on Google Sheets, consolidating and creating a report becomes a really difficult process.
Accelerate Your QA Team’s Auditing Speed!
Now that you've seen the various limitations of manual auditing, let's have a look at what the free solutions offer to combat these limitations.
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How Can a Free Solution Shine Over Manual QA?
There are a few benefits of using free solutions over completely manual QA. Here are the major benefits:
1. 5X Faster Auditing Power
Auditors can focus on auditing while these tools create automatic reports, provide a smooth auditing template, and accelerate feedback loops.
2. Automate QA Workflow
Call center software solutions automate all your workflows so auditors don't need to have anything else other than auditing on their minds.
3. 3X More Calls Audited
Since auditors primarily focus on auditing based on the features mentioned above, they can audit more calls daily.
Does this sound like a dream come true? Don’t worry, as this is available at your fingertips for free!
Let’s dive right into the features of these free solutions.
Which Tools Offer Free Options?
If you look at G2's list of the 25 Best Contact Center Quality Assurance Software for free, you might think that's too many to choose from. But you'll see that's not the case.
Most of the options there offer only a free trial, while Convin is the only tool with over 50 reviews that offer lifetime Free QMS.
Let’s get introduced to the Free QMS Call Center Software by Convin.
How Does Convin Help Manual Quality Monitoring?
Convin's completely free Quality Management Software (QMS) helps auditors work efficiently. Here’s how:
1. Customized Input Templates
Auditors can bid goodbye to Google Sheets and work with input templates customized for multiple channels.
Auditors can create templates for each channel on the customer journey and directly start scoring. Auditors just need to select from Yes/No or score-based responses to each parameter in the audit template.
The auditor can select a call recording and start auditing right away, making things easy and efficient.
2. Record Video & Audio Feedback
Auditors don't need to stick to only text feedback. The audit templated provided by Convin also allows audio and video feedback as well.
There are certain scenarios where it might be difficult to give feedback via text. The possibilities of audio and video feedback help in such cases.
3. Audit Interactions Across Channels
Auditors can audit interactions across all channels without being limited to phone calls. When every contact center becomes omnichannel, Convin allows auditors to audit interactions across multiple channels at the same place.
4. User-Friendly & Easily Navigable Interface
The QMS has an easy-to-use interface. Once the onboarding is done, auditors can use the tool immediately without any difficulties.
5. Agent Rebuttal System
As soon as any audit is done, feedback is automatically sent to the respective agent via mail.
Agents also have the option to raise a rebuttal if they feel the feedback isn't satisfactory.
Since agents have the option to raise rebuttals and be part of the feedback process, agent productivity is sure to improve as they're also part of the process.
6. Automated Report Generation
Auditors don't need to worry about creating reports as it is done automatically by the tool. The reports take data from audits across communication channels and show valuable insights.
These insights are valuable for making strategic data-based decisions.
7. Monitor Your Team On The Go
It is the age of working on the go, and mobile apps are frequently used by everyone. The Convin mobile app allows you to monitor your teams on the go on your mobile devices.
Providing auditors with an efficient workflow allows them to audit more interactions and help agents get better in their customer calls. This is crucial in an age where customer requests and queries are increasing every passing day.
Give Your Auditing Team the QMS Superpower!
Summing Up
QA is a key part of assessing call center performance. Right from increasing agent performance to assessing customer satisfaction, it helps call centers in unexpected ways.
When it comes to manual auditing, there are many limitations that impact a contact center. The inefficient workflow that involves Google Sheets and manual report generation impedes auditors from doing their best work.
There are free call center quality assurance softwares that help make manual QA more efficient.
If your organization is struggling with manual auditing, why don’t you give our free tool a go?
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is quality assurance in a call center?
Ans: Quality assurance (QA) in a call center primarily refers to auditing customer calls and interactions across other communication channels.
A call center uses human auditors, cloud-based AI auditing tools, or a mixture of both to evaluate interactions and identify whether agents need to improve.
2. Why is QA important in call centers?
Ans: QA plays a key role in assessing agent performance and customer satisfaction in a call center. The insights from auditing can also help managers to understand performance across the call center and make data-driven decisions.
3. What are the limitations of manual QA?
Ans: Most of the limitations of manual QA are regarding the efficiency of auditing.
Auditors use Google/Excel Sheets to audit, which isn't streamlined. Similarly, a lot of an auditor's time goes into creating reports which could instead be automated.
4. What is an alternative software solution for manual QA?
Ans: Many free QMS software or free call center software for PC offer free trials to enhance manual QA. But only very few software offer completely free options.
The key features of such software include customizable templates for auditing and automated report generation.
5. What additional features do call center software have to help manual QA?
Ans: Certain call center solutions also include mobile applications for monitoring on the go and accessible agent rebuttal to make agents part of the feedback process.
6. What software is used in call centers?
Ans: Software commonly used in call centers includes customer relationship management (CRM) software, automatic call distribution (ACD) systems, and workforce management (WFM) software.
7. What is CRM software for call center?
Ans: CRM software for call centers is used to manage customer interactions, track customer information and history, automate processes, and facilitate personalized service delivery.
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