Managing Quality

"Productivity and quality are the cornerstones of our success. In today's Call Center environment, it is simply not enough to handle a large volume of calls. As the type of transactions we handle become more complex and as customers become more reliant on us as the primary link to our organizations, equal consideration must be paid to quality to address customer needs and achieve our business objectives.

Historically, Call Centers have excelled at measuring performance in terms of productivity. Advances in technology have made it easy for us to track, report, analyze and manage the numbers, especially TSF (Telephone Service Factor), ASA (Average Speed of Answer), number of calls, talk time, hold time, wrap time, occupancy, abandoned and blocked calls.

As a result, it is a common error for call handling and customer service centers to stress productivity over quality - calls must be answered, and if productivity is not high enough service levels will not be met.

But consider, by not stressing quality performance in concert with productivity, how it can have a direct impact on call volumes and lengthened call times. Failure to assess, quantify, reinforce, recognize and reward quality can result in:

Quality Call Monitoring is essential to being able to fairly measure, manage and improve our center's overall performance. It is the primary source of qualitative data and it provides a framework that enables us to:

Let's start with the how. Following is a seven-step process for developing a successful Quality Monitoring Program.

1. Create a Mandatory Set of Service Quality Standards for All Agents.
These should be developed based on observable behaviours under the categories shown above. Input from front-line staff, supervisors, managers, other business units and customers are required to determine what constitutes quality in your organization and your marketplace.

2. Create a Monitoring Form and a Thorough Set of Quality Definitions as it Relates to How Behaviours Will be Assessed and Evaluated.
Test the format in your environment before officially launching your quality program. Allow sufficient time for agents and supervisor to work with indicators to verify that these are reflective of their efforts and abilities and these traits can be easily observed and measured. It is absolutely critical that you obtain agent feedback to ensure buy-in, understanding and accountability for the quality expectations you intend to incorporate into your performance measurement process.

3. Determine Available Resources and Their Roles, Responsibilities and Accountabilities for Implementing and Maintaining Your Quality Program.
Too often quality programs fail because insufficient consideration is given to who will administer the process. In addition to determining how much time should be devoted to this activity, it is also imperative that you assess the skill sets and competencies of your quality monitors. Like your agents, they will also require training and coaching to ensure that your quality standards are met.

4. Formalize the Review and Coaching Process.
It is not enough to simply collect quality data. It's what we do with that data that affects our performance. Standards must beestablished for the number of calls to be reviewed either through remote monitoring, side-by-side monitoring or taping. The success of any quality program is contingent on obtaining a statistically valid sampling of calls on a regular and routine basis. In addition, parameters must be set for establishing the number of calls that will be formally evaluated, reporting periods and the number of coaching sessions to be conducted. Additionally, feedback mechanisms must be developed to ensure that information gleaned through your monitoring program is utilized to improve not only performance but also business processes.

5. Determine How You Will Make Your Quality Results Visible.
Daily we bombard our staff with productivity reports. To ensure that there is an equal awareness of quality, information regarding quality results must be provided with the same energy and enthusiasm.

6. Reward and Recognize Both Quality Improvements and Superior Performance.
Too often monitoring programs fail because the only feedback our people receive is negative feedback. The purpose of a quality program is to ""catch people doing things right"" so we can build on our successes and improve our service delivery. Use your quality program to reinforce appropriate behaviours and eliminate performance anxiety and stress. Make it your mission to find creative ways to celebrate achievement of your quality objectives.

7. Continuously Review and Revise Your Quality Formats, Goals and Objectives.
The only constant in our world is change. As the types of programs we manage evolve, as we enhance our ability to define quality and as our people's skills and competencies improve we need to constantly assess the tools we use to benchmark our progress and direct our efforts.

At this point, you are probably thinking - it sounds good but where will we ever find the time to do all these things! Without a doubt, instituting and managing an effective quality program requires a substantial investment in time - a scarce commodity in today's call centers but technology does exist to help you balance both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of your call center.

Numerous advanced service-observing systems now exist to help ease the burdens associated with implementing and managing a quality call-monitoring program. These systems can help you automate the process of collecting, storing, retrieving, evaluating and consolidating quality data so that you can focus your energies and activities on what is most important - coaching your people to peak performance.

Technology can now provide a call center with the functionality required to:

Automate the scheduling and taping of calls for assessment and review at a time that is convenient for both staff and management. By eliminating the time-consuming process of manually taping calls, these systems can provide real-time savings. Furthermore, they ensure that you obtain a random and consistent sampling of calls. This allows you to statistically validate your quality results and reassure your agents that their performance is being assessed in a fair and objective manner.
Share qualitative data with agents, quality monitors, coaches, supervisors, management and other business units. Recorded calls can be archived to share best practices and augment training programs. At the same time, confidentiality of information is always protected as voice clips can only be accessed through a series of security procedures and passwords. Maintaining privacy is another fundamental key to ensuring the success of your monitoring program.

Customize your observation format and document your findings on-line. Some systems even allow voice annotation by the coach and the representative to facilitate timely feedback. By standardizing reporting and scoring of quality results, you can eliminate one of the major reasons quality programs fail - the inability to provide timely, consistent and relevant feedback.
""Observe"" not only what is said but also what is being done at the agent's workstation, during the course of a transaction. The latest enhancements, on the market, permit data capture of on-line computer use that can be synchronized with the voice clip to recreate the entire customer experience.

Combine productivity and quality scores to calibrate results, rank performance and record progress for agents, teams, supervisors and the call center as a whole.

These systems are not inexpensive but if you are committed but challenged to efficiently and effectively manage the quality aspect of your center's performance; you owe it yourself, your company and your customers to investigate these opportunities. Quality does not have to be an elusive goal. It is within your grasp and the ultimate differentiator that can set your organization apart from the competition."