Outsourced Contact Centers Need Monitoring for Customer Care

March 31, 2015

It can be generally agreed upon that raising the quality of a call center business and its dealings with clients can benefit everyone. Yet when it comes down to how to implement such a program, there are as many ways to fail as there are to succeed. That’s why it makes sense to move carefully when undertaking such a step.

Gerald Sinclair, WFO Practice Manager at Uptivity (an inContact company), about just such a program, and laid out some specific steps to follow to assure success.

“The art and science of determining just how good an organization and its front line agents are performing is a process that continues to evolve,” Sinclair wrote. “Today, many organizations have adapted QM [Quality Management] programs for all customer interaction channels.”

Sinclair went on to outline some specific steps a call center can take to assure a higher level of quality in all its dealings:

Decide on What Percentage of Calls Should Be Recorded and Evaluated: “A growing number of companies are using the ‘analytic driven quality’ at 100 percent recording to assist with a needs-based QM program,” Sinclair says. “However, most organizations evaluate less than one percent of an agent’s total monthly calls for quality. That sample size is too small to provide an accurate reflection of how that agent is performing or how your organization is doing.”

Create a Quality Standards Definition Document (QSDD): “A QSDD is a document that outlines and details the necessary information that should be evaluated and focused on when performing an evaluation,” Sinclair notes. “It also should contain the overall guidelines and procedures of the Quality Management program including examples of the positive and negative behaviors to observe during the call-monitoring process.”

Create an Evaluation Form Based on Your QSDD: “Your quality monitoring forms should be in line with the criteria established in the QSDD,” he believes. “Many contact centers have various monitoring forms based off of different lines of business, different customer interaction channels and different objectives such as customer experience, compliance or improving [and] maintaining efficiency.” In short, it’s not one size fits all, but instead what size fits best for your operation.

The basic standards for QM listed above can help provide value to your organization and customers, but consistency is key.

Sinclair sums it up thusly: “Adding these processes to your call center toolbox will ensure better customer experiences, internal integrity and increased accuracy/efficiency with meeting corporate goals.” And isn’t that what everyone should be striving for?