As we continue to push through each unpredictable turn in the age of COVID-19, we remind ourselves, “We’re all in this together.” But these are times of high anxiety, big emotional swings and coping strategies we can’t always count on.
Yes, we’re all in this together. And we’re all only human.
For contact centers, that means customer patience may be waning at the same time agents are increasingly stretched and taxed under the weight of high (and higher) call volume. But this is when positive customer experience will earn brands the long-term loyalty necessary to sustain—and even thrive—through and beyond crisis.
Your agents are your front-line champions, and with every interaction comes an opportunity to deliver a loyalty-building customer experience. This is when quality management becomes essential.
Quality management is a key contributor to boosting the customer experience because it pinpoints where your team is doing well, as well as areas for improvement. Contact center quality management solutions like CxEngage Quality Management monitor and evaluate agents’ interactions by recording calls, capturing agents’ desktop screens and facilitating agent performance evaluation. With this critical information, you can identify exactly where each agent is delivering great service while uncovering opportunities for additional training, coaching and tools.
There are many ways to approach a successful quality management program—and to get the most out of the quality management tools you use—but the contact centers we work with find these four best practices critical to success regardless of size, industry or where agents work.
4 Contact Center QM Best Practices
1. Establish a Framework for Success
Before recording and analyzing any calls, clearly document the goals of your quality management program. This includes determining:
- The KPIs you measure
- What your scorecard will include
- Who will monitor the calls
- How many calls per agent will be monitored, in what time period, and who will be evaluated
- How the numbers will be analyzed
- Who will review the data and recommend changes
- How changes will be implemented
CxEngage Quality Management provides call recording, screen capture and quality assurance capabilities that empower you to review interactions and identify common mistakes. You can determine the coaching and training that will have the greatest impact on customer experience.
2. Communicate the Benefit to Agents
Knowing they are being monitored can cause stress for agents already working under extreme conditions. Assure agents that coaching is a tool to identify where they need help and to alleviate stress by providing training and tools that will make them more successful.
Also, encourage their feedback in the process. When your agents are engaged and successful, your customer experience will improve.
With the data you gather through tools like CxEngage Quality Management, you can incentivize agents and reward those who score well. Agents can also learn from recordings and improve further with learning tools embedded in the solution.
These on-demand tools give agents autonomy to learn at a pace and in the ways that are most effective for them. They provide a sense of control in an otherwise uncertain time—when control often feels impossible.
3. Go Beyond Random Sampling for the Complete Picture
If you sample random calls for evaluation, you won’t get the complete picture of the customer experience. With CxEngage Quality Management, you can monitor all calls.
We recommend you take a closer look at high-value calls: those with VIPs, high-dollar values and calls where customers are following up on an issue. Monitoring these interactions will provide the most valuable insights into how to improve the process and identify where agent coaching and education is needed most.
4. Calibrate the Process Regularly
It’s important to regularly gauge your quality management process for consistency. To do so, ask all evaluators to review the same call and compare notes. Data-driven feedback is most useful for helping agents improve, and this kind of calibration ensures consistency.
The Right QM Approach and Tools Withstand the Test of Time (and a Pandemic)
With the right tools and best practices, your contact center’s quality management program will have a direct and positive effect on customer experience no matter what’s happening in the world.
To learn more about Serenova’s CxEngage Quality Management, contact us for a demo or download our guide Quality Management and Your Cloud Contact Center.
