What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) in call centers ensures that customer interactions meet defined standards. It involves monitoring and evaluating interactions, providing feedback and coaching to agents, and measuring key metrics. 

QA also focuses on compliance, customer satisfaction, and process improvement. It plays a vital role in delivering consistent, high-quality customer experiences, benefiting both the call center and the organization it serves.

What Are Quality Assurance Processes In A Call Center?

As rightly said, quality is never an accident but the result of intelligent efforts. Quality assurance (abbreviated as QA) is the art of enabling a finished product to meet expected outcomes. 

Call quality assurance helps in aligning customer interactions with business objectives. With call center QA, it becomes possible to identify common customer issues. 

Call quality assurance also enables the establishment of standardized communication processes that aid in boosting customer satisfaction. In short, call center quality assurance helps in fine-tuning agent performance while fixing various loose strings in the call center. 

With call center quality assurance, you can carry out call monitoring and scoring using software and draw actionable insights to boost your call center agents’ performance. 

Why Is Call Center Quality Assurance Important?

It is evident that more customers prefer calls over chats and emails. According to a report by Microsoft, 39% of people prefer phone or any other voice channel for customer service, which was the highest compared to the other channels. 

With voice calls, customer service becomes easier and faster. But, the calls become difficult to assess, which can undershadow many grievances. Additionally, calls can contain many opportunities that go unnoticed. 

Finding the root cause of many issues from 100% of the voice calls was impossible until automation came into the picture. 

Call quality assurance in call centers made 100% call monitoring possible within a reduced time without losing the human touch. 

Listed below are a few ways in which call center quality assurance helps in improving call center performance:

• Reporting on call center metrics like AHT, FCR, etc. 
• Using trends to track team performance
• Sentiment analysis to track customers’ feelings in their buying journey
• Insights on improving training programs

Get on a call to improve your call center QA program

Difference Between Quality Control (QC) And Quality Assurance (QA)

Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA) are two distinct but related processes that focus on ensuring product or service quality. Here are the key differences between them:

1. Quality Control (QC): QC is a reactive process that involves inspecting and testing the final product or service to identify defects or deviations from established standards. It aims to detect and correct issues before the product is delivered to the customer.

2. Quality Assurance (QA): QA is a proactive process that focuses on preventing defects or issues from occurring in the first place. It involves systematic planning, processes, and procedures to ensure that quality standards are met throughout the entire production or service delivery process.

1. Timing

1. Quality Control (QC): QC takes place after the product or service has been produced or delivered. It is performed at the end of the production line or at specific checkpoints.

2. Quality Assurance (QA): QA occurs throughout the entire product or service lifecycle, starting from the planning and design stages and continuing through production and delivery.

2. Goal

1. Quality Control (QC): The primary goal of QC is to identify and rectify defects or deviations from standards to ensure that the final product meets quality requirements.

2. Quality Assurance (QA): The primary goal of QA is to establish processes and practices that prevent defects from occurring in the first place. It focuses on continuous improvement and adherence to quality standards.

3. Focus

1. Quality Control (QC): QC is focused on the product or service itself and aims to verify its quality through inspection and testing.

2. Quality Assurance (QA): QA is process-oriented and focuses on ensuring that the processes used to create the product or deliver the service are effective and consistent.

4. Responsibility

1. Quality Control (QC): QC is typically the responsibility of a separate quality control team or department that checks the finished product.

2. Quality Assurance (QA): QA is a responsibility shared by everyone involved in the production or service delivery process, from planning to execution.

Call Center Quality Assurance Methods

Call center quality assurance methods are crucial for maintaining and improving the quality of customer interactions and services. 

These methods help ensure that call center agents consistently meet performance standards and deliver excellent customer experiences. 

Here are some common quality assurance methods used in call centers:

1. Call Monitoring

Supervisors or quality analysts listen in on live calls or review recorded interactions between agents and customers to evaluate agent performance. They assess communication skills, adherence to scripts, accuracy of information provided, and compliance with company policies.

2. Scorecards

The call center quality assurance scorecard is used to evaluate calls or interactions based on predefined criteria systematically. These criteria may include call duration, tone of voice, use of specific greetings and closings, and the successful resolution of customer issues. Agents are assigned scores based on their performance.

3. Customer Surveys and Feedback

Collecting feedback directly from customers through post-interaction surveys or follow-up emails provides valuable insights into their satisfaction levels. This feedback can be used to assess agent performance and identify areas for improvement.

4. Peer Review

Agents may review and evaluate each other's interactions. Peer review encourages collaboration and allows agents to learn from one another. It can also promote a sense of accountability among team members.

5. Coaching and Training

After identifying areas for improvement, supervisors or quality analysts provide one-on-one coaching and training sessions to help agents enhance their skills. These sessions may focus on communication techniques, product knowledge, or adherence to company policies.

6. Root Cause Analysis

When recurring issues or trends are identified, call centers conduct root-cause analyses to determine the underlying causes. This helps in implementing corrective actions and process improvements to prevent similar issues from arising in the future.

7. Benchmarking

Benchmarking involves comparing the performance of your call center to industry standards or best practices. It helps identify areas where your call center may excel and where improvements are needed.

8. Quality Management Software

Many call centers use specialized software tools for quality assurance. These tools automate the evaluation process, generate reports, and track performance metrics. They also make it easier to identify trends and areas for improvement.

9. Performance Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tracking and analyzing KPIs such as first-call resolution rate, average handling time, customer satisfaction scores, and agent adherence to schedules provide a quantitative measure of call center performance.

10. Regular Audits and Assessments

Conduct periodic audits and assessments of call center processes, documentation, and compliance with regulations and industry standards.

11. Continuous Improvement

Quality assurance is an ongoing process. Regularly review and update quality assurance methods and strategies based on changing customer expectations, industry trends, and internal feedback.

What Are The Functions Of A QA Team In A Call Center?

Quality assurance is vital in a call center, and we’re pretty sure you already have a QA team doing the necessary work to keep the organization going. 

But are you using quality assurance to its maximum potential? 

Using quality assurance for a fixed number of organizational tasks leaves many unperceived opportunities. 

Also, post-COVID has opened doors to remote working, which challenges aligning employees to their work and monitoring them. 

Not to worry! We have discussed some essential functions of a quality assurance team below that will help you assess your call center’s status better: 

1. Increasing the effectiveness of auditing

Quality assurance for auditing comes into the picture when interactions with a failure are detected.

Audits assess corrective measures that were taken during a failure. High-quality QA flags and tracks these corrective measures and helps in reducing manual efforts. 

Good quality assurance will also enable you to alert agents through email and make them aware of their QA scores. Agents will therefore be able to view the actions taken with their respective dates. 

2. Evaluating agent performance

One of the most common uses of call center QA is the evaluation of agent performance. Voted as the most popular way of assessing agent performance, QA in call centers grades the quality of customer service. Agent performance is evaluated on actionable items that are associated with KPIs.

3. Root-cause analysis

Often, call centers don’t dive deeper into quality assurance. Identifying gaps in performance and knowledge by root cause analysis is one of the most valuable functions of a call center. 

The bottom of causation and determination of correlation is achieved by monitoring and spotting discrepancies, pitfalls, and opportunities. Root cause analysis in call center quality assurance overall provides a detailed insight into these factors in the form of scores and reports. 

4. Compliance monitoring

Providing a great customer experience requires empathy, active listening, and responsiveness. With certain miscommunications, harsh tones, or language usage, a customer can walk away feeling negative about the company. 

Quality assurance ensures that an agent faces the customer decently while providing the best service possible. Moreover, companies can set quality parameters in BPO that an agent has to follow that would bring out the best results in facing the customer. 

5. Aligning remote workers by monitoring

Remote working has become more and more popular. With call center quality assurance programs, aligning the agents to collaboration tools, software, and productivity-tracking apps becomes easier. 

If your remote call center is using a cloud system, call center software is definitely the most vital tool you need in your tech stack. 

6. Coaching plans for learning and skill development

Quality assurance aids in providing proper training to managers and agents in call centers. With the right customer QA, you can save ample time and effort while not compromising on the quality of coaching your employees get. 

Good quality assurance eases the onboarding process and can decrease your ramp-up time to as low as 60%.

Improves customer experience 

A report by GetFeedback says that 73% of respondents have increased their efforts in delivering a personalized experience to customers since COVID-19. 

With call center quality assurance, you can operationally, strategically, and tactically measure how well you are at positive customer experience. You can also perform root-cause analysis to understand every customer interaction. 

The insights acquired with root-cause analysis can be used to fix identified issues that can help improve customer experience. 

Additionally, quality assurance for call centers has more benefits that help better understand the customer experience, like the voice of the customer, empathy, rapport, active listening, etc. 

How Is Quality Assurance Assessed?

Call quality in a call center is assessed by the team leader, quality assurance auditor, or sometimes the manager.

Commonly, there are two categories of parameters on which call quality is assessed:

1. Customer and Call metrics

Customer and call metrics include average handle time, average after call work time, service level, first call resolutions, average speed of answer, average time in call, average call abandonment rate, etc. 

2. Adherence to agreed parameters assessment

Every company agrees to a set of quality parameters in BPO to be followed by the agents while facing the customer. A QA is performed by a QA specialist or a team leader where the agreed parameters are assessed. The assessment indicates the agents’ professionalism and performance while opening doors to improvement and growth of the organization. 

What Makes A Good Call Center QA Analyst?

Quality assurance for call centers is evidently crucial. However, a quality assurance analyst is vital to running an effective QA. The quality of service sought to improvise continuously is determined heavily by the call QA analyst. 

Listed below are some of the skills every quality assurance analyst must possess:

• Attention to detail 
• Interpersonal skills 
• Exceptional customer care skills
• Solid written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent analytical skills 
• Great technical comprehension
• Outstanding problem-solving skills

How To Create A Call Center QA Framework?

Before we discuss the way to create a perfect call center framework, we need to understand the 3 types of contact center quality assurance frameworks with respect to call center quality assurance roles and responsibilities.

1. Operational 

Virtually all call centers start with an operational quality assurance framework. An operational QA framework is the building block of daily operations and supports core functions and workflows in your call center. 

To create an efficient and customer-centric quality assurance strategy, you can make a note of the following points:

• Daily measurement of QA.
• Monthly evaluations.
• Monthly score targets for call center agents.
• Identification of poor performers using QA.

2. Tactical

A tactical framework is more flexible and allows you to modify your QA process.

A tactical call center contact center framework that goes beyond customer service goals involves:

• Recognizing sources of low KPI. 
• Increasing customer retention.
• Investing money and time in training to reduce agent turnover.
• Deriving performance trends.
• identifying processes and workflows that need adjustment.

3. Strategic

For a strategic call center quality assurance framework, your call center structure needs to be structured in a different way. You should be able to share, analyze, and interpret data related to your business’s tactical objectives and goals.

Some factors of a strategic QA framework include:

• Increasing long-term customer loyalty.
• Understanding where customer sentiments, QA, and customer service intersect.
• Boosting net promoter score (NPS).
• Increasing revenue by examining the impact of customer service.

Now that we are accustomed to the three frameworks of call center quality assurance programs, listed below are some ways to create a perfect call center QA framework.

1. Metrics are essential to measuring against agents

To move the QA needle, you need to identify which metrics are important to your business. Your customer service team should look into the following essential metrics:  

• Customer satisfaction rates.
• First call resolution rates.
• Return contact rate.
• Negatives response rate.

2. Monitoring, analyzing, and measuring metrics

QA data storage has been a challenge due to the large amount and complexity of the process. Thanks to the integration of call center QA software!

With call center monitoring software, you can easily streamline processes by monitoring, measuring, and analyzing your teams’ performance data, 

3. Improving customer interactions

Once you have sufficient data, it is necessary to use it to improve customer interactions. 

For instance, agents can be trained better via coaching sessions once a requirement is felt by CSAT scores indicating gaps in training. 

Book a demo and improve customer interactions

5 Examples Of Call Center Quality Assurance Metrics To Track With Your Framework

Tracking call center quality assurance metrics is crucial to evaluate performance in call center quality assurance jobs, identify areas for improvement, and ensure a consistent and high-quality customer experience. 

Here are some examples of call center quality assurance metrics that you can track within your quality assurance framework:

1. First-Call Resolution Rate (FCR)

FCR measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues resolved during the initial contact with the call center. A higher FCR indicates efficient problem-solving and improved customer satisfaction.

2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

CSAT assesses overall customer satisfaction with the service provided. Customers rate their satisfaction on a scale, and their responses are averaged to calculate the score, providing valuable insights into customer sentiment.

3. Average Handling Time (AHT)

AHT measures the average duration of customer interactions, including talk time and post-call work. Monitoring AHT helps balance efficiency and quality, ensuring interactions are neither rushed nor overly lengthy.

4. Quality Monitoring Score

This metric quantifies the results of call monitoring evaluations. Quality analysts assign scores to calls based on predefined criteria, and the average score reflects agent performance and adherence to quality standards.

5. Service Level

Service level evaluates the percentage of incoming calls answered within a specified timeframe. Meeting or exceeding service level goals ensures that callers receive prompt assistance and helps manage call volume effectively.

Call Quality Assurance Best Practices You Should Know

Here is a call center quality assurance checklist that will help you improve your QA and achieve maximum results:

1. Choosing the right QA software

The right call center software will allow you to automate data collection and make the process of monitoring, analyzing, and interpreting way easier. 

An AI-backed conversation intelligence platform like Convin provides the right combination of features that you need to stay on top of your QA process:

• Automated call QA
• Peer-to-peer coaching
• Omnichannel contact center
• Call and chat transcriptions
• 100% auditing and compliance monitoring 
• Customer intelligence

2. Avoiding the fatal flaws

To make the most out of your call center quality program, everyone must be on the same page. A better experience needs the understanding of your team towards the word “better.” 

Your team must be well acquainted with the KPIs that assess them. If your team manages to avoid the unnecessary “I didn’t know” moments, your call center will never face another customer disappointment moment. 

3. One person to be responsible 

Call center managers and team leaders often have too much on their plate to handle quality assurance. So instead, it can be worth it to bring in a dedicated quality assurance manager.

QA specialists or department managers will monitor calls and improve training materials. If budget is a concern, look into outsourcing your QA process.

Call center managers and QA leaders often have too much to handle, which can be gruesome, along with the various complex issues haunting them. 

With a dedicated quality assurance manager, these tasks can be streamlined with ease. Outsourcing a QA manager is also a good way to go in case of budget issues. 

4. Consistency is the key

There are two key aspects to keep in mind:

1. Schedule of the call center quality program. 

2. How will agents adhere to the schedule?

A consistent schedule aligns agents and managers to analyze and exchange helpful feedback. 

5. Have regular agent feedback 

Constructive criticism always opens doors to new opportunities and improvement. Agents need to receive feedback on their performances to understand their status of work. 

With good call center software, this feedback can become easier to assess and deliver. 

Agents needing refinement in their performance can be coached and monitored. 

By the end of the day, skilled agents bring out the most results. Rewarding them with incentives is also a way to upskill your feedback process. 

6. Refine your KPIs and processes from time to time

Your call quality assurance is a continuous process. It is very necessary to revisit the processes and KPIs of quality analyst in BPO from time to time to ensure their effectiveness. 

The market is changing constantly. It is always healthy to frequently question your strategy, change frameworks, and revamp your team.

How Does Convin’s Call Center Quality Assurance Capabilities provide 100% compliance monitoring?

Convin is a versatile software solution that doesn’t claim to solve your contact center woos but resolves many challenges with a few capabilities. Customer management and experience creation are two areas in which Convin can help. 

By employing automated tools and influencing agents' performance, elevating CSAT by 27% is only a matter of time. 

Let’s dive in and learn how Convin can help with CXM.

1. Focus On Active Listening, And Eliminate Repetitive Tasks

Dedicatedly working on customer-centric tasks have a higher chance of creating the best customer experience. 

Ditch note-taking and manual call review. Focus on listening to the customer and developing strategies for high-quality follow-up meetings. In parallel, switch to automated call scoring and get 100% of calls reviewed without human interference, resulting in an uplift in call quality. 

Get timely reports with the Convin call center reporting tool. 

2. Real-time coaching

Real-time coaching aids in training agents during calls. Agents can be coached during live calls with various features, including suggestions, battlecards, guided scripts, access to the knowledge base, etc. 

3. Proactive measures with violation alerts

One aspect of a call that can ruin customer experience is unsolicited agent behavior that negatively impacts clients. Wrong information, unresolved grievances, long hold times, incorrect knowledge, and more are caught in time by Convin’s tool and alert the management team for corrective actions. 

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4. Learn Customer Sentiments

Customer sentiment presents an accurate picture of a call. How was the customer's overall experience during the call? And presents the chances of a new call or a painful goodbye. 

5. Reduction in cost using optimization techniques

A business owner naturally focuses on the bottom line as a key measure of success. The same principle applies to a contact center, a vital component of operations, where maximizing the value of the investment is essential.

Convin optimizes contact center operations to accomplish this and identifies any existing inefficiencies like manual quality assurance, customer intelligence, automated reporting, etc. By eliminating wasteful productivity, Convin helps create a more content workforce while simultaneously reducing operational costs.

6. Reduction in agent ramp-up time

Enhance your call center’s agent performance metrics by transcribing, monitoring, and analyzing calls, chats, and emails via Convin. Boost CSAT by 27% and reduce ramp-up time by 60% using call center quality assurance software. 

Implement 100% automated quality assurance and carry out 100% compliance monitoring. Convin shoots your agents’ performance to new heights and, as a result, helps you achieve lower customer service representative ramp-up and heightened CSAT. 

Evaluate the Best Call Center Quality Assurance Software Tool

What Are The Product Capabilities Of Convin’s Call Center Quality Assurance Software?

Convin monitors and analyzes 100% of calls automatically based on custom parameters set by your organization. The conversation analysis offers winning behavior identification and last-mile automated agent coaching. 

1. Automated Quality Management

Convin’s contact center tool automatically reviews 100% of customer calls using custom call evaluation forms and spots agent performance challenges and unhappy customer conversations. Through automated quality management, call center managers and QA generate call scores that help audit more calls with the same number of quality assurance (QA) managers and establish coaching needs and staff dissatisfaction. 

2. Call Behavior Analysis

With the help of conversation insights and deal status, Convin presents quality parameters in BPOs that drive positive and negative outcomes for the business. Spot violations, winning parameters,  customer sentiments, and threats to take proactive measures before the customer calls.

3. Agent Assist

Agent Assist aids in call center quality assurance service by providing real-time guidance and support to customer service agents during interactions. It ensures that agents follow best practices, maintain compliance, and deliver customer service. With features like guided scripts, proactive alerts, and dynamic battlecards, it equips agents with the tools to handle various scenarios effectively, making it an invaluable asset for improving agent performance in call centers.

4. Learning management system

The integrated knowledge base in ConvinGPT stores all documents uploaded by the auditing or documentation team. Agents can search for phrases to quickly find the most accurate answers and procedures, ensuring prompt and precise responses to customer queries. 

5. Quality management software

Automated call center quality assurance software enhances call center operations by efficiently monitoring and analyzing customer interactions. Unlike manual methods, this free software covers 100% of conversations, providing immediate feedback, flagging compliance violations, and enabling personalized customer service. 

Customizable scoring templates and omnichannel support ensure comprehensive call center quality assurance programs and elevate customer service quality, making it an essential tool for call center success.

Convin’s Call Center Quality Assurance is Safe and Secure

At Convin, we understand the customer and call data security important; that’s why we ensure your data is entirely secure and safe in our in-house transcription and NLP engine. We guarantee all data security in the following ways:

• In-house transcription and NLP
• Secure login and monitoring
• Hosted on AWS
• SSL data encryption
• Role-based access control
• Enterprise-grade application monitoring
• GDPR-compliant meeting recording

And before you go, as of now, Convin supports languages beyond English. And it takes only 2-3 weeks to get you onboarded. Try call center quality assurance for free.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is QC in BPO?

QC in BPO stands for Quality Control. It refers to the processes and measures implemented to ensure the quality of services delivered in a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) environment.

2. What is the role of quality in a call center?

The role of quality in a call center is to monitor, assess, and improve the performance of customer service agents and processes. It involves ensuring that customer interactions meet established standards and that customer satisfaction is maintained or enhanced.

3. What is QA for customer service?

QA (Quality Assurance) for customer service involves the systematic evaluation and improvement of customer service interactions and processes to ensure they meet predefined quality standards and deliver a positive customer experience.