A call center’s very reason for existence is to provide quality customer service. However, call centers have taken on new levels with advanced technology and tactics. With all this noise, how do you ensure quality is always top of mind? Here are six steps for implementing a call center quality assurance program.

Successful call centers focus on team members, technology, and the customer experience. The latter is significant because call centers exist to help customers with their questions or problems. But how do you know if your call center is making the grade?

The answer is quality assurance. A call center quality assurance program can help ensure that all customer inquiries are handled in a timely and professional manner and provide feedback to agents on areas in which they can improve. Here’s how you can set up your own quality assurance program:

  1. Define the goals of the program
  2. Identify areas of improvement
  3. Develop quality assurance metrics
  4. Create a training program
  5. Monitor performance
  6. Make updates as needed

6 Steps for Implementing a Call Center Quality Assurance Program

1. Define the Goals of the Program
Call Center Quality Assurance Program

Before you start implementing a call center quality assurance program, you need to first define the goals of it. How will it benefit your customers, agents, and business? That will help you determine the program’s scope and the metrics you’ll use to measure success.

Some examples of goals include:

2. Identify Areas for Improvement

Once you’ve set the goals for the program, you can then identify areas for improvement, such as:

  • Improving customer service responses, processes and procedures.
  • Reducing average call handle time.
  • Increasing first call resolution.
  • Increasing customer retention rate.
  • Improving customer satisfaction ratings.

Identifying these areas can help you focus your quality assurance efforts and ensure that your program addresses the most important areas.

3. Develop Quality Assurance Metrics

Now that you know the areas you want to improve, you can develop quality assurance metrics that will help you track the performance of your customer service team and identify areas for improvement.

There are a few categories of metrics your call center should focus on:

  • Agent performance
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Operational metrics

Agent Performance

Given the pivotal role of agents as the main point of contact for customers, it’s essential for them to perform their duties well. To ensure this, consider tracking the following agent performance metrics:

  • Average speed to answer: How long it takes for an agent to answer the customer’s call.
  • Average call abandonment rate: How many calls are ended before they reach an agent.
  • Average handle time: How long an agent is on the line with a customer.
  • First call resolution: How many customer requests are resolved during the first call to the call center.

Customer Satisfaction

When you want your business to succeed, quality customer service is key. In fact, 89 percent of consumers are more likely to buy again after they have a positive customer service experience. But how can you track customer satisfaction? Here are a few metrics to follow:

  • Customer Effort Score (CES): How effective your customer service was in resolving a customer’s query or issue.
  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): How satisfied customers are with your product, service or customer service.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely a customer is to recommend your agent or company to others.

Operational Metrics

Keep track of operational metrics to ensure your contact center is running efficiently. This will help you guarantee you have enough agents to handle the volume of calls but avoid a scenario where you have too many agents and not enough calls. Check out these operational KPIs for your quality assurance program to track:

  • Calls Handled: How many calls are handled by an agent.
  • Cost Per Call (CPC): How much each call costs a call center. This is determined by various factors, including the type of services your call center provides, the size of your call center, and the number of calls you handle.
  • Call Arrival Rate: How fast calls arrive at your call center. It’s calculated by taking the total number of calls received by the call center in a given period of time and dividing it by the total number of hours in that period of time.
  • Peak Hour Traffic: How busy your call center is at its peak. For example, your call center may be busiest between 8:00 am and 11:00 am and again between 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

4. Create a Training Program

Now that you know which KPIs you want to track, it’s important to set up a training program for your agents. This gives your agents the knowledge and skills they need to provide exceptional customer service that aligns with your organization’s overall goals.

During training, you can provide agents with feedback on areas where they excel and areas they can improve. This keeps your agents engaged and striving to perform at their best while reducing turnover.

5. Monitor Performance

Finally, you should monitor the performance of your customer service team to ensure your customers receive a consistent and satisfactory experience every time they call. This can be done by:

  • Assessing customer satisfaction surveys.
  • Tracking customer service metrics.
  • Providing feedback to agents on their performance.

Monitoring performance helps ensure your agents follow company guidelines and policies and can help identify any potential issues with customer service delivery.

6. Make Updates as Needed

Your call center quality assurance program should never be “set and forget.” Your customers’ needs are constantly evolving, which means you should make necessary updates to your goals, the metrics you track and how you train your agents. Doing this allows you to keep up with customer expectations and continue providing quality customer service.

You should also be on the lookout for industry trends. Following them allows you to identify new best practices, adopt new technologies, and ensure that customer service meets the highest standards.

For example, the right telephony solution can help to streamline your call center operations and equip your agents with the information they need to handle every call, including:

  • Screen-pop: A feature that automatically brings up a caller’s information on an agent’s screen when a call is received.
  • Custom reporting: A reporting system that tracks crucial call center metrics.
  • Click2Call: A VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) feature that helps agents contact customers with one click. 
  • Job Engine: A tool that automates product, system, database, web service, and other integrations to streamline processes and eliminate manual labor.
  • Recording & Voicemail Integrations: Having call recordings, voicemails and call metrics automatically archived into your system means that you can access them at any time. This allows both managers and agents to track calls for improvement.

Conclusion

If you don’t have a quality assurance program established for your call center, it’s not too late to implement one. Start by determining your program’s goals, recognizing areas for improvement, developing metrics to track, establishing a training program, monitoring performance, and updating your program periodically.

Doing so will help to improve the quality of your customer interactions and make your agents more effective in their roles.

Need software that helps you track KPIs and makes life easier for your call center agents? Check out the CDC Solution and contact us to learn more.