One of the common, unrecognized problems our group sees in many contact center quality assessment (QA) programs is simple ignorance. Front-line Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), supervisors and managers simply don’t understand the QA scale/scorecard, nor do they understand the process of how calls are captured, analyzed, and scored. Over the years, whether we’ve assisted clients in establishing their QA program or provided QA as an objective third party, we’ve learned that improving knowledge of the process across the enterprise is important to the overall success of the program. But, it doesn’t happen over night.
Here are some suggestions for improving your team’s QA IQ:
- Have CSR score call using scorecard before they come to coaching session and review. There’s no better way to get to know the scoring process than having to do it yourself. Even if calls are scored in a software package that is not available on the agents desktop you can still print a copy and let them do it the old fashioned way. This allows the CSR to think through the process before they even get to a coaching session.
- Analyze a call together in a coaching session. Another alternative is to analyze a call together in the coaching session. Once again, it can be a great training tool because it walks the CSR through the scorecard one item at a time and allows for questions and discussions along the way. Be careful. I’ve witnessed situations when a particularly pushy CSR can intimidate the call coach, and the coach will end up making allowances that they wouldn’t have made were they to analyze the call independently. This can create problems down the line.
- Take time in team meeting to discuss process. Most contact centers have some kind of team meeting with some regularity. Taking time during a team meeting to discuss the quality process can be advantageous. It ensures that everyone is hearing the same thing direct from an authoritative source.
- Temporarily assign CSRs to quality team. One of our clients started a program in which CSRs are temporarily assigned to the quality team for a period of a few weeks. It gave CSRs a break from the phones, provided an incentive to do well (only CSRs who did well in quality got the opportunity to participate), allowed them to experience what life is like on the Quality Team, and helped management identify talent and train CSRs to quickly fill in if the Quality Team was short staffed.
If and when the quality assessment process and the QA scorecard cease to be a mystery, everyone wins.
