The Hidden Costs of QA: Why Traditional Monitoring No Longer Adds Up
Thomas Laird
Running a USA BPO, fixing QA with AI, and podcasting like the true Call Center Geek I am.
Contact Center QA: Understanding Current Operations and Challenges
What started as an "unscientific" LinkedIn polling exercise turned into a revealing snapshot of contact center QA operations in 2024.
Through a series of four polls, we gathered insights from over 200 contact center professionals across various organizational sizes and industries, focusing on QA staffing, workload, coverage, and compensation structures.
While we approached this with humility (and a touch of humor) about our informal methodology, the data tells a compelling story about the state and costs of quality assurance in modern contact centers.
The Structure of QA Teams
Our first significant finding reveals that the majority of contact centers operate with lean QA teams.
The data shows that 64% of organizations maintain small QA teams of just 1-3 managers, while 20% operate with 4-6 managers.
Only a small fraction of centers have larger teams, with 5% employing 7-10 managers and 11% having more than 10 QA managers.
This concentration of small teams raises important questions about scalability and coverage in quality monitoring operations.
How do these lean teams manage the workload of monitoring and maintaining service quality across growing contact center operations?
Call Coverage and Monitoring
The answer becomes clear when we look at weekly call review volumes. The data reveals a startling reality: most organizations can only review a tiny fraction of their total calls.
A majority (51%) review only 1-3 calls per agent per week, while 25% evaluate 4-7 calls. Even in the most rigorous operations, only 17% manage to assess more than 12 calls weekly.
To put this in perspective: assuming an agent handles 50 calls daily, reviewing 3 calls weekly represents just 1.2% of their total interactions. This minimal sampling raises serious questions about the statistical validity of quality measurements and the ability to detect emerging issues or trends.
All things we have known for a long time but struggle how to fix.
The Management Ratio Challenge
The relationship between QA managers and agents reveals another critical dimension of the coverage challenge. Nearly half of contact centers (48%) maintain a ratio of 10-20 agents per QA manager. The remaining organizations show an interesting split: 22% operate at 21-30 agents per manager, 9% manage/score a team of 31-50 agents, and another 22% stretch their resources to cover more than 51 agents per manager.
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This distribution suggests two distinct operational approaches in the industry: high-touch quality management with close oversight, or highly leveraged operations where QA managers oversee large agent pools. Each approach comes with its own set of challenges and trade-offs in terms of coverage and depth of quality monitoring.
Investment in Quality: The Compensation Picture
The investment in QA talent shows significant variation across the industry. The largest segment (34%) of QA professionals earn $19-25 per hour, while equal portions (24% each) earn either $10-14 (mostly near or offshore) or $26+ per hour. The remaining 17% fall in the middle range of $15-18 per hour.
This compensation spread reflects industry uncertainty about how to value QA work and suggests varying levels of sophistication in quality management approaches. The wide range in compensation also raises questions about the role expectations and skill requirements across different organizations.
The Economic Reality: A Breaking Point for Traditional QA
When we look at these numbers, the economic challenge is clear. The average wage for QA managers sits around $19–$25 per hour in base pay, which climbs to $25–$32 per hour once benefits and overhead are included. At 15 minutes per evaluation:
Because one QA manager can complete about 640 evaluations per month (4 evaluations per hour × 160 hours), the cost quickly escalates as volumes rise, while coverage remains limited.
At 2,500 monthly evaluations, an organization may need 8 QA managers, pushing costs to $38,500–$41,600 per month, or nearly $500,000 per year. Yet, this often amounts to reviewing only 2% of total interactions, leaving the vast majority unchecked.
The AI Solution: OttoQA
The economics of traditional QA simply don’t add up anymore.
Traditional QA faces significant economic challenges, especially as evaluation volumes grow. QA managers earning $25–$32 per hour (including benefits and overhead) and spending 15 minutes per evaluation create costs that scale quickly. Even at lower volumes, the numbers are difficult to sustain.
OttoQA uses AI to address these challenges, providing consistent scoring, better coverage, and analytic insights without the steep costs of manual QA.
With 95% accuracy and substantial cost savings, it’s a practical solution for modern contact centers looking to scale their quality monitoring effectively.
Learn more and explore how AI can transform QA at ottoqa.com. Come take a demo with me!