PISA-VET launch_El Iza Mohamedou_19 March 2024.pptx
Leading Practices in Quality Management
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3. In her 22 years as a customer service professional, she has held various positions responsible for all aspects of contact center operations – from CSR to call center manager to WFM director.
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7. Identify the company’s reasons for performing quality management processes.
45. All reviewers must listen to the same call, score it, identify variance in scoring approaches, reconcile their differences, and set a standard measurement that all will use going forward.
68. Develop a culture and processes that support and encourage continuous improvement of quality monitoring processes, including the gathering of information about customer satisfaction.
Document all existing transaction procedures and policies so that the contact center staff knows the appropriate steps for handling all types of inquiries. Give examples of the right and wrong way QA specialists/supervisors can also use the procedures and policies as a standard to make sure that they are evaluating different transactions properly. It’s important to set up a process that keeps the policies and procedures up‐to‐date.
Specify the criteria to apply when evaluating transactions and performing evaluations. The criteria should define what QA specialists/supervisors are looking for in each type of contact center transaction. The easiest way to create criteria is to use the contact center’s documented procedures and policies and note on each the most important aspects for each type of transaction. It’s also a good idea to identify agent actions that would cause them to lose points in a quality evaluation.
Define the mechanics of the QA program, including who (manager, supervisor, team leader, QA specialist, trainer) is responsible for conducting evaluations, the number and frequency of evaluations, how many coaching sessions per agent per month, and how to select calls, emails and chat sessions for evaluation. (If a QA application is being used, most of the mechanics will be automated, including the transaction selection process.)
Training: Establish a closed‐loop training process that addresses new content, system issues, updates and agent performance issues. The trainers and QA staff must work closely together to ensure that the staff is fully trained. (In many small/mid‐sized contact centers, the same people do both QA and training.) Prior to kicking off a QA program, all contact center staff – agents, supervisors, QA specialists, trainers, managers – must be fully trained so that they know how to handle all types of customer interactions. If new or enhanced procedures and policies are drafted to support the QA program, they should be reviewed with the staff before starting the QA program. In addition to agent procedural training, it’s important to build a training program that introduces the new or enhanced QA program to the staff. The more informed the staff is about the program, the more effective the initiative.
Coaching: Feedback should address where agents are performing well and areas where they have opportunities to improve. Coaching is one of the critical success factors in QM programs and plays a very important role in agent satisfaction and retention. However, as it can be very challenging to provide negative feedback to agents, it’s important to train the QA staff to produce effective coaching sessions and to make sure that management delivers coaching sessions consistently.
Calibration is the process of teaching all people involved in performing QA evaluations how to score transactions on a consistent and equitable basis. To make a QA program fair for agents, it’s essential for all QA reviewers to agree on the meaning and value of each question in a monitoring form. To achieve consistency, it’s important to run calibration sessions where all reviewers listen to the same call, score it, identify variance in scoring approaches, reconcile their differences, and set a standard measurement that all will use going forward. The only way to reach consensus is to run calibration sessions. Calibration is an ongoing process and should be run on a monthly basis. It’s also a good idea to involve agents in the calibration process so that they can appreciate the challenges associated with consistently evaluating transactions.
Evaluation feedback: Provide a process to facilitate two‐way communication between agents and reviewers. Agents need to have a mechanism for responding to their quality evaluations so that they feel empowered and not “put upon.” They also need a formal process for filing complaints when they believe that a QA reviewer is not being fair or is not listening to their input. QA reviewers should welcome discourse, as it will ultimately yield a better and more effective program.
The best way to know if customers are satisfied with the quality of an organization’s products, services, processes and agents is to ask them. QA measures how well agents adhere to internal policies and procedures; it provides an internal view. Surveying captures the customer perspective; the external view. When survey feedback is combined with QA results the company learns what customers consider good service and specifically, which agents provide it. They also find out what processes and policies need to be changed. When done right, sharing customer survey information about agent performance can help improve quality. Agents find it helpful when they see survey results and read or hear customer feedback first‐hand. It helps them appreciate how their performance impacts customer satisfaction and the customer’s perception of their company. Customer experience monitoring is intended to provide insights into the total customer experience. Typically, contact center managers use this process to track and review interactions that have multiple segments, are put on hold, transferred, required conferences, or are repeat calls. Customer experience monitoring is done to evaluate the overall customer experience, not just call segments. Analyze how quality monitoring measures relate to what the organization is learning through customer feedback methods (such as surveys). This correlation analysis can help you see whether agents are being directed and incented to perform in ways that improve customer satisfaction.
Once enriched by the inclusion of customer feedback and correlation with customer satisfaction information, your quality monitoring processes will enable the contact center to become far more strategic. By sharing information, the contact center can, for example, help Marketing develop more effective campaigns, enable manufacturing or other operational areas to identify and fix problems and give corporate executives early warning of potential legal or public relations problems.
Customer preferences change over time; if you set quality measures and methods in concrete, they will eventually become out-of-date. Develop a culture that encourages continuous improvement of quality monitoring processes, including the gathering of information about customer satisfaction. Make sure that models and processes are well documented so that they can be more easily changed.
Recognizing and rewarding top performers is essential for the success of a QA program. While agents should deliver outstanding performance because it’s their job, recognizing when they do encourages them to keep up the good work and motivates others to strive for recognition, as well. Rewards do not have to be large; they could include a plaque, a parking spot, lunch with the CEO, a gift card, movie tickets, etc.