Quality Assurance in Call Centers Is the Key to Providing Exceptional Customer Experiences

I was working for an IT services organization that was certified by ISO as well as for CMM levels. Every month, the QA will sit with project delivery heads, assess each project on a scoring matrix, and assign scores to them.

The QA team would also come up with areas of improvement and share those reports with the customers religiously.

I was always perplexed by this activity as it took a lot of time out of everyone’s schedule. I always used to question the amount of time spent on it. I did not have a direct influence over this activity as I was on the functional side of the business and not on the technology side.

However, I was in a conversation with one of our long-standing customers. I asked them about the best thing they find in us and why they continue to work with us. They said that the QA reports they receive every month are an eye-opener for them, and they have started practicing them internally in their organization as well.

This is one report they look forward to reading every month. That gave me an idea of how important QA is in any organization.

Let me give you a recent occurrence in the world of chess and its relationship to QA.

The 18-year-old Indian Grandmaster D Gukesh recently achieved a historic feat by becoming the youngest-ever world chess champion.

His triumph was not solely attributed to his strategic acumen on the chessboard but also his mental conditioning.

Gukesh credited his mental conditioning coach, Paddy Upton, for helping him handle the emotional pressure associated with the world championship event.

Quality assurance (QA) in call centers is like having a coach for the sports team. The aim is not just to spot mistakes but to enhance performance, build consistency, and ensure customers leave satisfied.

QA process can be a game changer in the call center industry.

How Do You Define Quality Assurance (QA) in a Call Center?

Quality assurance is a process that every call center should follow. It includes monitoring, evaluating, and improving the performance of agents and the customer experience. QA ensures that your interactions meet the quality standards you have set out for your organization and also comply with industry standards and regulations.

What Does QA in a Call Center Involve?

Monitoring

You monitor every interaction that happens between your agents and your customers. It can be customer service calls, emails, text messages, chats, and other interactions. Besides, you record your calls and screens while resolving a customer’s query. You monitor those recordings as well.

Evaluation

You evaluate every interaction that happens between your agents and customers. You go through the recordings to see if your quality standards are met. Calls generate humungous data, and they remain in storage servers without being listened to in most call centers. With an analytics tool, you’d be able to automatically evaluate your recordings and flag any misselling, improper responses, and compliance issues.

Improvement

Once you monitor and evaluate the interactions, you’ll understand areas that need improvements. Some of the improvements can be behavioral, and some can be fundamental. You may want to intervene and train your agents to ensure the interactions follow the quality guidelines and compliance standards.

How Do You Improve Call Center Service Through Quality Assurance?

Everything starts with listening. You just have to follow the steps mentioned in the previous section – monitoring, evaluation, and providing actionable feedback and training to agents. This can help shape a better experience for everyone involved.

Imagine you call a customer service number to check on how to operate your music system, which has started malfunctioning. You feel unheard as the agent keeps interrupting during the conversation. A QA analyst can flag this and coach the agent on active listening techniques. Any conversation with this agent after the intervention, the customer will feel valued, and the agent will grow more confident in handling conversations.

What Are the Steps to Improve Customer Service?

• Define clear expectations – you have to define what great service looks like for your organization. Break them down into tangible outputs that agents can follow. For example, it can be broken down into greeting, empathy, and problem resolution.
• Regular coaching and training sessions – use real call examples to guide agents on what works and what doesn’t.
• Leverage technology – tools like voice analytics can pull out everything irrespective of how humungous your data is. You can use that to define training needs and areas of improvement clearly.

How Do You Improve Quality Assurance in a Call Center?

Quality assurance is the measure by which you are improving the customer experience you provide by directly or indirectly enhancing the performance of your agents.

The key traits of measuring QA:

• You should standardize the scoring, and everyone should be aware of it. Evaluate calls by using clear, agreed-upon criteria.
• It is not about policing or pointing fingers; it is about helping your agents grow and perform better.
• Allow agents to review their calls and share their thoughts. This would make QA feel less like a report card and more like a learning opportunity.

Let us assume your QA analysts notice frequent complaints about delays. The complaint says that your agents take an inordinate amount of time to respond to queries. When the QA analyst looks at those activities, they realize the time delay was genuine, as they needed to figure out several things to provide a resolution.

The analyst could introduce a script tweak that ensures agents set clear expectations about wait times, like: “This may take 3-5 minutes. Is that fine with you?”

Small changes like these can make a huge difference in how your customers perceive your service.

Call Center Quality Assurance (QA) Checklist

While this checklist is not a comprehensive one, it will serve as a signpost for you to create your checklist per your business needs.

Greeting and Identification

• Did the agent greet the customer warmly and professionally?
• Did they introduce themselves and state the purpose of the call?
• Was the customer’s name used appropriately to create a personal touch?

Listening and Understanding

• Did the agent actively listen without interrupting?
• Were relevant questions asked to clarify and understand the customer’s concerns?
• Did the agent confirm the understanding?

Resolution

• Was the customer’s issue resolved within a reasonable timeframe?
• Were alternative solutions or next steps offered if immediate resolution was not possible?
• Did the agent use positive and reassuring language?

Empathy and Tone

• Did the agent acknowledge the customer’s emotions?
• Did the agent sound friendly, professional, and calm throughout the interaction?
• Did the agent avoid sounding robotic or dismissive?

Closing

• Did the agent confirm the issue was resolved or provide clear next steps?
• Was the customer thanked sincerely for their time and feedback?
• Did the agent leave the customer with a positive impression of the interaction?

Compliance and Professionalism

• Were all company guidelines and policies followed?
• Did the agent avoid using jargon or overly complex terms?
• Was sensitive customer information handled securely?

What Is the QA Score in a Call Center?

QA scores are typically used to encourage and motivate agents to punch above their weight. It is usually expressed as a percentage and derived from a checklist or scorecard.

Let us assume that your scorecard has six criteria, each worth 20 points – Greeting, listening, resolution, empathy, closing, and compliance.

If the agent excels in everything except empathy (20 points), their score would be 100/120 or 83.3%.

How do you use these QA scores?

You should celebrate high scores by rewarding agents who consistently perform well. When an agent has a low score, use them as an opportunity to provide targeted training.

The most important thing about QA scores is to avoid micromanaging. Your focus should be on trends and not obsessing over individual scores.

Now that we have looked in depth at QA in call centers, let us spend time summarizing all of these as guidelines.

Call Center Quality Assurance Rules

Rule #1: Set measurable and achievable objectives with time-bound improvements.

Rule #2: Share findings with agents and provide actionable coaching. Keep measuring at regular intervals to see performance improvements.

Rule #3: Review a meaningful sample of calls at regular intervals. Focus on depth over breadth.

Rule #4: Invest in technology that automates monitoring and evaluation of customer interactions.

Rule #5: Update your scorecards and QA processes as customer needs change.

QA in a call center is an all-hands collaborative process. Your agents are the most important cog in the entire QA wheel, and you need to have their buy-in to make this work.

A focus on coaching, closing the feedback loop, setting clear guidelines, and implementing collaborative processes will ensure that every customer interaction is a step closer to providing excellence in customer experience.

Besides, you should implement the right technologies that allow you to monitor, evaluate, and offer actionable feedback to improve agent performance and customer experience.

QA in call centers should be tuned towards empowering your agents to deliver above their weight and keep them happy while serving your customers.