Why Should You Outsource Your Contact Center Quality Assurance?

October 31, 2023

Why Should You Outsource Your Contact Center Quality Assurance?

All contact centers share a common objective: to offer exceptional customer service. To accomplish this, it is crucial to perform quality assurance on all contact center procedures. Contact centers can either opt for in-house quality assurance or outsource it.

With many companies having little knowledge of the benefits of outsourcing quality assurance for contact centers, coming to the right decision might be a challenge. Here is why you should outsource quality assurance for your contact center.

Why Do Contact Centers Prefer Outsourced Contact Center Quality Assurance?

Outsourcing QA Leads to Cost Savings

Contact center quality assurance is often seen as an unnecessary expense, but outsourcing the work can save costs. Customer service relies on QA, and there is little to no chance that you can ensure your call center functions correctly without it.

However, many people believe the cost is too high to warrant the labor costs, no matter the hourly rate. However, what if we told you that you could considerably reduce these expenses to an extent that you wouldn’t even notice them? With the reduced costs of pay by the minute, offshore outsourcing is much cheaper than any contact center with in-house QA. 

Let’s use an example of in-house QA: (The numbers are used for illustrative purposes only, they may not reflect actual costs.)

One in-house QA agent in an inbound call center can listen to, review, and score ten calls a day at an average of 10-minute call length.

They work 8 hours a day.

You pay them $15 an hour.

That means you are paying $120 a day, or $12 per scored call, or $1.20 per call minute.

Here are some estimated figures for outsourced QA and the reduced costs that go with it:

You outsource your customer support team QA using a company dedicated to the job.

You pay per call minute, not how long it takes to process, analyze, and score the call.

You pay $0.15 – $0.25 per call minute, depending on call volume.

It is pretty easy to see why you would want to outsource your QA team by the cost savings alone. However, that is not the only reason.

Most people presume that it’s cheaper to run an in-house contact center quality assurance compared to an outsourced one. At the very least, you will incur extra labor costs and get new infrastructure. Eventually, the costs of running an in-house contact center quality assurance will catch up with you. 

Outsourcing to a third party means having your service partner manage the daily quality assurance operations of the contact center in return for a contract fee. You will pay the QA company for their services, but it will be cheaper in the long run.

Improved Quality and Customer Satisfaction

How do you and your call center team measure performance? Some of the ways of ensuring you have an effective call center are as follows:

• Key performance indicators
• Customer experience through the understanding of customer interactions
• Call volume
• Individual agent performance

Measuring those performances as a call center services provider is the major challenge. Poor performance is too easy to slip into, even if your business and all of the operators have all the core competencies that you require.

For inbound and outbound call center services, you need a Quality Assurance provider with the right contact center software, analytic tools, and the perfect blend of artificial intelligence mixed with a human element for checking.

You also need a customer support manager to increase your center operations proficiency. Sometimes, businesses find that task too daunting and too expensive to do themselves. That’s why outsourcing call center QA can dramatically increase your quality.

Outsourcing companies such as Call Criteria often have QA experts with extensive knowledge and experience in contact center operations. They provide a higher level of expertise in quality monitoring and improvement. 

With such experience and resources at their disposal, they promptly identify and address issues affecting the customer experience. This improves the quality of service in your contact center, which in turn expedites customer satisfaction.

Objectivity and Neutrality

In-house QA teams often struggle with staying neutral and impartial. Even with a dedicated team and agent coaching, it’s difficult for Quality Assurance teams to avoid interacting with customer support operations staff. This can lead to biased evaluations and affect the overall quality of customer support.

It’s common for people to develop friendships, which can lead to biases- a phenomenon we witness frequently. However, if your QA personnel or customer service agents are friends, this bias can become more prevalent, and it can be challenging to address it without a powerful tool at your disposal.

Independent QA teams can provide a more impartial evaluation of customer interactions. They don’t have the same biases or preconceived notions about the internal workings of your organization that in-house QA teams might have. 

This objectivity ensures assessments are fair and unbiased, leading to a more accurate evaluation of agent performance. Additionally, because their primary objective is to ensure positive customer feedback, they take a customer-centric approach, which helps identify areas of improvement. 

Reliability

Customer loyalty must be earned through conversational intelligence; therefore, ensuring reliability in your QA performance management processes should be a priority. Quality monitoring is a critical business aspect that requires a well-structured plan, which should be carefully managed. 

Reliability is so important in Quality Assurance that it becomes one of the more relevant core business processes. It is crucial that you ensure your QA staff are equipped with the right analytics tools and that they are supported by a dedicated customer support manager to guarantee consistent, high-quality work.

An external QA company’s only focus is to improve contact center activities. Thanks to efficient resource management, adaptable shift scheduling, and exceptionally low rates of absenteeism and turnover, outsourcing your quality assurance operations can guarantee the consistent achievement of your call grading volume targets. 

You can have peace of mind knowing that factors such as team absences, vacation requests, and individual performance won’t hinder your ability to grade call volume at any given time.

Customizable QA Approaches to Align with Specific Needs

There are some essential elements to getting your Outsourced Call Center QA right. The truth is, you never know your exact call volume, especially not taking into account the call minutes. Even outbound call centers that plan for a certain number of outgoing calls a day will never know how long they will last. 

That’s why flexibility in your outsourced call center QA is vital. When you have more calls to handle, you need to factor in your cost of expansion to your QA team. Every business has unique goals, and these influence the operations of a contact center.

 An external company knows how to tailor quality assurance approaches to suit specific needs. They have experience working with numerous businesses and the necessary resources that help achieve success.

Allows You to Focus on the Core contact center Functions

Operating a contact center alongside your primary business operations can lead to distractions. If you lack an in-house customer support team, your employees may end up juggling two roles: their regular duties and customer support. This will cause confusion as the employees won’t know what to prioritize. Additionally, they may get overwhelmed and lose morale.

Outsourcing allows your team to concentrate on their core strengths, such as product development, marketing, or sales. This focused approach enhances their overall job performance and contributes to business growth.

You Get Access to Expertise And Experience

When you hire an external quality assurance company, the package comes with trained agents, software tools, and managers to oversee the process. Outsourcing grants you access to this specialized expertise with minimal administrative burden.

Additionally, if you need to address specific quality issues, do contact center analytics, introduce new evaluation criteria, or implement training programs, an outsourced QA partner can provide the necessary expertise and resources as required.

Easy Scalability

Quality assurance companies can flexibly adapt and expand QA services in response to changing business needs and fluctuations in contact center activity. They can quickly allocate resources to match the call volume. This ensures that quality assessment and monitoring are consistently maintained, even during peak times.

Provides Data-Driven Insights Through Detailed Analytics.

Advanced analytics, by AI-powered tools like speech analytics, identify patterns, trends, and correlations within the data they collect. Organizations use the data to make informed decisions and develop strategies based on evidence rather than intuition.

Data-driven insights offer a deeper understanding of customer behavior, operational efficiency, market trends, and other critical aspects of business. With in-house QA, access to such data may be limited because they may lack resources and expertise. 

Can Help You Meet Regulatory Requirements

Because contact centers collect a lot of data from customer conversations, they must adhere to compliance and regulatory rules. They are required to inform the customer several things, including call recording. Additionally, if they need to collect sensitive information, they must tell the caller how they intend to use the data. 

Agents are trained to follow these regulations to avoid lawsuits. In case an agent misses a point, the system flags it, and the quality assurance company manages the issue before it escalates. 

Let Call Criteria Handle Your Contact Center Quality Assurance

Contact center quality assurance determines business success because of its influence on customer satisfaction. This necessitates contracting the best quality assurance company. Partner with Call Criteria for the best contact center quality assurance.

We don’t just rely on AI but incorporate the unique human touch to it. While you can get good results from using AI solely, you can’t have 100% accuracy. What separates us from other providers is our unique AI-backed human review. 

The speed of AI and human precision work together flawlessly to deliver 99.5% efficiency. If you want an edge over your competitors, get a quality assurance provider that can deliver results. 

Whether you need speech analytics software, agent coaching, or sales performance review, you can trust Call Criteria to set you apart from your competitors. Partner with Call Criteria today to elevate your contact center quality assurance.