{"id":927849,"date":"2019-04-03T11:29:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T18:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/?p=927849"},"modified":"2019-04-03T11:29:48","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T18:29:48","slug":"4-tips-to-get-value-from-contact-center-quality-scores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/4-tips-to-get-value-from-contact-center-quality-scores\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Tips to Get Value From Contact Center Quality Scores"},"content":{"rendered":"
I have two scenarios for you regarding contact center quality assurance. In the first, imagine a manager or supervisor listening to a phone call and using a set of criteria to grade that call. They then add up all of the points and deliver that evaluation to the agent who handled the call. While we\u2019d like to think this quality coaching session holds some special transformational power, what\u2019s more likely is that the eyes of both the coach and the agent go straight to the score and all opportunity to help that agent improve at their job is lost.<\/p>\n
Now picture a second scenario where an operations manager is running through a slide deck to talk about the performance of their team over the past month. They arrive at the quality slide and proclaim, \u201cOur average quality last month was 91%.\u201d When you dig a bit further you realize that it\u2019s always right around 91% and we have no clue how to improve that number or if it\u2019s good or not. It\u2019s just a number.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been a bit of a debate among my peers in the contact center industry in recent years over the relevance of quality scores and there are a couple hotly contested issues. One is whether or not the knowledge of a score helps or hinders individual agent performance. The other is whether an overall quality score offers any value at all? Is it even worth tracking as a key performance indicator.<\/p>\n
While I believe quality scores are indeed important, there\u2019s some balance and thoughtfulness required in our approach to them. In this article I\u2019ll give you four recommendations around quality scoring that will actually help drive what\u2019s really important for your contact center \u2014 agent and customer engagement.<\/p>\n
At its core, a quality assurance process is a set of criteria that\u2019s critical for agents to complete on every customer interaction. Simply put, it\u2019s what they must do to be successful when interacting with customers and it typically emcompasses communication skills, the application of job knowledge, and the ability to follow specific policies and procedures.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019ve seen happen many times is that after determining the criteria, leaders spend more time on their elaborate scoring system than they did on the criteria itself. In my opinion it doesn\u2019t really matter if the scores add up perfectly to 100 and that certainly shouldn\u2019t influence the number of questions on the form. Keep in mind also that when creating a scoring schema \u2014 let\u2019s say it\u2019s a 5 or 10 point scale \u2014 you need to clearly define what\u2019s a 1, versus a 2, versus a 3, and on down the line. That\u2019s time consuming and difficult for quality teams to calibrate with one another on for consistent grading. <\/p>\n
In favor of simplicity and keeping the quality process about quality and not a score, I prefer a simple yes\/no scale. The agent either exhibited the behavior at or above the expected standard or they didn\u2019t. Remember that your quality form isn\u2019t a work of art \u2014 it\u2019s a tool for helping your team provide better customer service. You\u2019re better served spending more time reviewing interactions and coaching agents.<\/p>\n
If you want to improve the quality of your customer service team you most certainly have to measure it, but a percentage on a slide once a month won\u2019t do. Leaders need to be able to break that percentage down in order to improve it. I recommend looking at team and individual agent performance on each individual question on the form. You\u2019ll then see the areas on the form where the team excels and the areas where they struggle and you can better focus both individual coaching and team-wide training. <\/p>\n
When you look at it through this lens it also helps you in building the criteria for your quality form and determining the weight for that criteria. Those behaviors and skills that you really want to track and improve should be included on that quality form. Depending on your industry, there are going to be specific aspects of the customer interaction that carry a critical level of importance. For example, your agents may be required to pause a call recording while taking payments over the phone or announce that a call is being recorded when they place an outbound call. This stuff needs to be tracked to minimize and eliminate these errors.<\/p>\n
One more thing that\u2019s important to address in this recommendation is tools. There are many great quality tools on the market that can help get to this level of reporting but this can also be accomplished with a form and a spreadsheet. Though an actual quality tool is so much better for a lot of reasons.<\/p>\n