Call center quality assurance helps improve customer service by monitoring, evaluating, and providing feedback on customer interactions.
Modern call centers always do their best to deliver an unforgettable customer experience. However, one call drops the ball, and the business can be doomed to failure.
Loyal customers are priceless to a business. But with competitors circling around searching for a tiny grievance to snatch your customers, conventional customer service can often fall short.
It’s also very difficult to stay afloat in the constantly changing market environment. According to a report from HubSpot, 88% of respondents agree that customers have higher expectations than in the past.
Call center quality assurance is the key to being responsive to customer needs and expectations. With call quality assurance, you can ensure you are creating loyal customers.
But easier said than done, right? Wrong.
Here is a complete guide on how call center quality assurance helps in converting your business into a memorable brand for your customers.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Conduct periodic audits and assessments of call center processes, documentation, and compliance with regulations and industry standards.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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,
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here is a call center quality assurance checklist that will help you improve your QA and achieve maximum results:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Motivate and boost agent performance, change behaviors, monitor compliance measures, and deliver positive business outcomes.
Convin is an AI-backed contact center software that uses conversation intelligence to record, transcribe, and analyze customer conversations.
