I recently attended the annual Quality Assurance and Training Connection (QATC) Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. At the “60 Quality Assurance Ideas in 60 Minutes” panel, I learned numerous best practices to implement in a QA program. Here are three great tips worth implementing:
 
1) Focus your Quality Assurance resources on high value calls – all calls are not created equal.
 
Typically today, we select a random sample of calls to evaluate from all calls and score a small number of calls for each agent. By using affordable and easy-to-implement tools like desktop analytics software that will automatically classify your calls based on the application screens or fields entered by your agents, you can focus on more high value calls such as calls from high value customers, high value transactions, costly calls that were not resolved on the first call, or new campaigns. When you evaluate low value interactions the only thing you can score is agent quality, but you’re unable to make accurate business decisions on your operational processes or the customer experience. Evaluating low value customer interactions only adds to the cost to an interaction that’s already cost you a lot of money!
 
You should also ask questions on your call center quality assurance form that are interesting to the business. Any question that makes the form should be owned and some should be held accountable for that question. For example, if “Upselling” falls below a certain threshold, who is accountable for making sure that those interactions are being evaluated and the agents are properly trained?
 
VPI Fact Finder desktop analytics is a powerful tool that can be used to quickly and cost-effectively pinpoint the specific information you need to monitor the health of your business, and make better business decisions. With VPI’s desktop analytics tool, you can save time and money by only listening to the high value calls you really want to hear that are actually coachable and worth the effort.
 
2) Establish a closed-loop process between Quality Management, Customer Satisfaction and New Hire and Ongoing Training.
 
Quality and training should be one workflow. If separate, you should consider combining or closely linking your Quality Assurance and Training departments.
  
You can also include a customer feedback process – compare QA with CSAT scores. Proactively maintain relevancy of your quality scoring forms and processes by periodic updates based on customer feedback. Make sure there is a feedback process in your operation to gauge customer satisfaction when interacting with your operation. There’s no point in assuming what your customers want in terms of call quality. A simple yet effective customer advocacy survey will help to validate the steps you are taking in your operation and will help identify where to fine tune the process.
 
VPI EMPOWER allows you to have your customers directly evaluate your agents on things like 'how friendly was the agent friendly?' so that supervisors and QA analysts don't need to subjectively . With business call recording and VPI Smart Evaluations, QA evaluation forms can be completed automatically and information from a customer survey can be entered automatically on the form.
 
3) Put the time into training and coaching.
 
The biggest issue where the call center quality monitoring processes fall down is a lack of thought put to training and coaching the skills the agents are going to need in order to succeed. Be sure you have spent some time with some experts who can show you how to coach these skills effectively into your operation when required. Also, don’t underestimate the power of an application to assist your agents and your team leaders through QA and coaching procedures.
 
Supplement your formal training program with ongoing, timely coaching and feedback that's integrated with your call center workforce management software schedules and doesn’t disrupt call handling.
 
Targeted desktop coaching is an incredible supplement to formal training. A recent study by the International Personnel Management Association found that coaching increases productivity by 22.4%, while training combined with coaching results in an overall productivity gain of 88%.
 
A Gallup poll found that companies that have implemented targeted coaching programs:
 
·         Are 50% more likely to have lower turnover
·         Achieve 27% greater profitability
·         Have 56% higher customer loyalty 
·         Reduce average handle time by 10% to 20%
 
VPI EMPOWER’s automated, targeted call center eLearning software and alerts rapidly address your agents’ skill gaps and expedite performance improvements. With VPI COACHING call center agent coaching software, you have the ability to automate your feedback and coaching process and empower your employees and supervisors to be highly effective by providing immediate feedback via tickers and delivering personalized training directly to the agents’ desktops.