What are the best practices for conducting QA audits for contact center agents?

Here are my top 10 focus areas for Quality Audits. 1. Set clear standards and communicate them to your team. 2. Utilize a standard evaluation for all team members which allows for fair and equitable monitoring as well as makes reporting much easier across your team. 3. Utilize random sampling for a fair assessment. 4. Conduct regular audits to track performance trends. 5. Provide specific, actionable feedback to agents. 6. Offer targeted training based on audit findings. 7. Align evaluator perceptions through regular calibration. 8. Integrate customer insights into the QA process. 9. Leverage new technology monitoring tools for efficiency and analysis. 10. Implement rewards for high-performing agents to build morale.

In my view conducting Quality Assurance (QA) audits for contact center agents is crucial for maintaining service excellence. This can done by following the below best practices. 1).Clear Quality Standards 2).Regular and Consistent Audits 3).Structured Evaluation Forms 4).Feedback and Coaching 5).Calibration Sessions 6).Self-Evaluation 7).Agent Involvement 8).Training and Development 9).Data-Driven Insights 10).Customer Feedback Integration 11).Recognition and Incentives 12).Process Improvement 13).Quality Assurance Technology 14).Continuous Improvement 15).Compliance with Regulations 16).Quality Culture 17).Documentation 18).Stakeholder Communication

Also educating employees that a positive auditing culture will help them and the organization long-term. Too many times employees are worried about the 'clipboard and red pen' image and mask their true behavior and performance. Closing the loop by a robust and positive follow up post-audit will also help to build trust and an environment where people want to be compliant.

In my experience, Quality Assurance (QA) is undergoing a notable evolution to transform into a role centered around analyzing existing data and offering valuable suggestions for improvement. In The availability of numerous tools that can comprehensively analyze 100% of the data in real-time, including aspects related to service, technical processes, and compliance, is facilitating this transformation. By shifting the focus of QA towards identifying and narrowing down the primary drivers of performance & providing coaching and guidance, improvement can be significantly accelerated, leading to more expeditious and impactful enhancements within the organization.

Define clear and measurable quality standards: Establish specific criteria and guidelines that agents should adhere to during customer interactions. This could include aspects such as professionalism, product knowledge, empathy, call resolution, and adherence to company policies. Clearly define what constitutes a successful interaction. Develop a comprehensive evaluation form: Create an evaluation form that covers all the relevant aspects of a customer interaction. The form should be easy to understand and use, with clear rating scales or checkboxes for each criterion. It should also allow space for comments and suggestions.

In the dynamic world of contact centers, it's crucial to have a 360-degree view of agent performance. ?? Combining different QA methods not only gives a well-rounded perspective but also keeps the evaluation process fresh and engaging for agents. Remember, a happy agent equals a happy customer! ???? #ContactCenterExcellence #QAInnovation #AgentEngagement

With advancements in AI technology, manual call scoring is quickly becoming a thing of the past. With manual call scoring, you can only get about 1-5% of your calls scored. More and more voice analytics vendors are adding generative AI-powered auto call scoring to their platforms, which allows 100% of your calls to be scored in a completely objective manner. This provides full and complete visibility into agent performance so QA managers can truly focus on the agents that need the most help.

Taking advantage of multiple methods is helpful but understand you may get different results based on the persons comfort level. Not everyone is able to focus on their call when someone is shadowing, throws them off their game. If you have call calibration in your telephone system take advantage of it and maximize what you can listen to and share with the employees. Grade a call and send it to them immediately, allow them to digest and then ask questions. Don't be afraid to have a team meeting and pull calls randomly and grade as a group. You must first establish trust and transparency with the team for this to be successful. Feedback from any source is knowledge.

Ask your agent to grade their own calls, once the skillsets are established and the expectations are understood, they will actually provide you with more feedback than what you would have imagined. Sit side by side and listen and let them grade, be prepared for what you hear. They may surprise you with their insight.

Create a culture of quality improvement: ? Demonstrate a sense of urgency by providing timely feedback. ? Begin each coaching session with a recap of the last. Engage agents about their improvement journey. Finish coaching sessions with an attainable action plan. ? Help the agent connect both positive and negative behaviors with potential KPI outcomes. ? Compare KPIs of the agent with those for their team as a whole. ? Focus on behaviors instead of scores. ? Develop mutual respect with agents instead of micro-managing them. ? Listen to your agents, instead of assuming WHY they aren’t following standards. ? Teach agents WHY to do things instead of just telling them WHAT to do. ? Tell agents that you believe they can succeed.

This is super important for agents to feel more comfortable and improve in areas required. Additionally, more listening should be embraced on both sides.

The audit review should be strategic, with only one or two opportunities reviewed, to set clear goals for their interactions going forward. The next audit review should be focused on the goals from the last audit. This is how you ensure the agents improve.

Feedback on call reviews should never be viewed as punishment. I can't stress this enough. In almost every contact center I've worked in, when it came time for call reviews, the agents would dread it. Make sure you're relaying your feedback in a positive light. Make it a collaborative effort with the agent and be open to hear their feedback on your feedback.

When crafting contact center scorecards, you really need to be mindful that the scoring criteria is aligned with what you're training your agents on. If your agent training is highly focused on relaying compliance messages, include this in your scorecard. Also, your scorecard questions should be as objective as possible. Stay away from highly subjective questions like "was the agent empathetic?"

Use the call calibration sessions to learn where the gaps or holes are in your processes. Listen to the feedback you receive from your staff and how something works, you might get an earful of why it is not successful. Don't be afraid to take the feedback and let them help change a process, if you obtain a better member/customer experience, isn't that success?

We all call other businesses and listen and react to the interaction. Take notes when you call somewhere and the interaction is a WOW, don't be afraid to copy. None of us are inventing the wheel. Look at your process and decide if you are really providing a great customer experience. If not, change it!

We should always seek to improve the QA process. The best way to do this? Ask the agents! Ask them for their feedback on: 1. What they liked about the process? 2. What they think can be improved? 3. Any other general feedback/recommendations.

Here are some tidbits for Successful Quality Programs: 1. First thing to do is Remove the perception of QA as being a punitive process idea. 2. Map your QA process to business goals 3. The QA team should be regarded as experts in driving the customer experience agenda 4. Keep your QA forms fresh and relevant 5. Get the entire organization involved in the process. Build processes and systems to share information across the business: Share Voice of the Customer feedback with other departments. 6. Hold regular round tables with Product, Marketing, and Sales: highlight trends, risks, feedback 7. Include agents and team leads in the calibration process I could share so much more, but I'm running out of characters. Stay Quality!

Got some awesome feedback on here. Inwould always go back to basis. 1. Side by side is always key as it establishes ability. 2. Silent measures effort. 3. Calibrations are key 4. Common sense will always be paramount for a qa person to display. Remember the agent had one shot. 5. I've your nps, csat and effort scores to your qa scores. 6. Finally, keep business in mind but paramount is service. Is your scoring meant to steer towards business accuracy or servant. If too much business then build a better mousetrap.

Quality Scorecard Best Practices ? Question scores calculated on binary vs. gradient scoring with definition and distinction between all possible scores. ? All questions non-weighted, so that "scores" reflect degree of compliance. ? Quality Score = the percentage of times that an agent or team met standards: for a specific question, for a group of questions, or for all questions combined. ? Positive and motivational language used on scorecard question texts and answer labels. ? Each scorecard question measures a unique behavior. ? Scorecard questions grouped into standard categories that should be applied across various scorecards. ? Performance of the quality program is objectively measured.