Call Center Quality Assurance Program Success Metrics

February 11, 2021

Call Center Quality Assurance Program Success Metrics

Call center QA??

In his bestselling book, “Hope is Not a Strategy,” Rick Page, CEO of the Complex Sale and one of the most sought-after sales consultants, highlights simple yet strategic steps towards winning sales. He guarantees that successful sales focus on pinpointing specific challenges and problems in order to create a solution.

This, if you observe keenly, is in direct contrast to the rather common sales practice of pushing products on the basis that they’re better or faster.

Basically, what Rick’s book is trying to communicate is that as savvy business leaders, we must first determine where our challenges are rooted, and then consequently tailor the right solution. This is where call center quality assurance companies come in.

You see, a great number of organizations continue to randomly select and monitor calls – maybe 6 calls per agent in a month, sometimes 10 calls per month for new hires – in the hope of finding at least one agent that is worth listening to and needs coaching.

What’s worse, in order to heighten their chances of getting a good call, call center managers will spend lots of time listening to longer calls, nursing the hope that the length of the interaction might be an indication of a problematic conversation.

But is this really the most effective use of your limited resources and time? Does this contribute towards helping your agents or supervisors improve? If hope is not a strategy, then why are you leaving your quality assurance to chance?

While Rick Page’s book intends to help salespersons improve their jobs and speak the language of prospects more fluently, the concept of not relying on hope is applicable across industries, geographies, and time.

In order to thrive and survive these uncertain economic times, you need to utilize every advantage available to you. Fortunately, QA programs from competent firms like Call Criteria offer this solution that is surprisingly affordable and easy to implement. Here’s more on what call center quality assurance services have in store for your call center:

What is QA in Terms of Value for Money?

Call center QA programs ensure that your customers receive a consistent standard of service whenever they contact your call center or when your call center agent contacts them. What the program does is that it assesses the performance of every individual call agent and helps identify trends in overall call center performance.

It is the data which is collected by the QA program that provides you with information for planning, training, and incentive programs that are aimed at improving both individual and team performance.

In addition, as customers continue to use an increasingly wider range of communication channels, your QA program must also monitor performance across instant messaging, email, texting, and website channels that are used by your call center. Simply put, QA programs structure your call center to produce consistent results, meet customer expectations, and reduce waste of time.

In addition, unlike leaving your quality assurance to chance, the value of your QA program will be reflected in consequent repeat business from satisfied clients and streamlined business processes which function efficiently. So what is the REAL value of a quality assurance program?

1. Reduces wasted time and money

The average company loses 12% of revenue because of bad data and uses as much as 50% of its IT budget on information scrap and rework. (Source: Lemonly.com/work/the-cost-of-bad-data/).

Given that the 4 basic traits that negatively impact data quality are inaccuracies, gaps, duplication, and outdated information, having any of these characteristics undoubtedly reduces the quality of your call center database as a whole.

Consequently, this will result in missed opportunities and ineffective outreach. Your QA program, therefore, provides requirements that must be adhered to by incoming data to save on costs that would have otherwise been used for scrapping or reworking information.

The lower failure rate for services also reinforces your impressive reputation and your customer’s perception of the services and products that you offer as high quality.

2. Increases customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of any QA program. Therefore, your QA program will compare what your business promises the customer to the customer’s expectations and what your business actually delivers.

If the delivered services match customer expectations and what they had been promised, customer satisfaction with respect to customer service is increased. If there are gaps, however, your call center quality assurance program will also facilitate improvements and track them.

3. Improves Employee Morale

Did you know that a well-employed QA program can be a great source of pride and motivation for both the company and its employees? When your call center agents know what to do to contribute to the company’s success because they are well-trained, employee morale is bound to improve.

What’s more, if you publicize that your company has an effective call center QA program provider like Call Criteria, you can further reinforce your reputation as a company that supplies quality, and strengthen employee commitment to the QA program.

Still, QA cannot be achieved with a one size fits all approach. Different call centers have different codes and rules for call center agent adherence, cost controls, productivity, and customer service.

Therefore, the measures put in place to address quality assurance are bound to vary from one business to another. Overall, at the end of the day, the most important metric for your business is customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

For call centers, quality assurance is fast becoming the cornerstone of quality management efforts. Boosting customer satisfaction and employee productivity while reducing costs, it is quite clear what a significant role quality assurance programs play.

However, it is important to keep in mind that it is not always what you are doing, but how you are doing it. Always ensure that your call center quality assurance program is striving towards the same goal as your business.