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3 Big Discussion Points From the Customer Engagement and Transformation Conference
Last week, we participated in the virtual Customer Engagement and Transformation Conference to talk about the evolving customer experience and Contact Centre landscape.
EvaluAgent Co-Founder, Michelle Dinsmore was joined by leading UK insurance providers First Central, Accenture, Ageas and Busuu for a roundtable session on how actionable insight and data-driven coaching have the potential to skyrocket both customer satisfaction and overall business performance.
From here, thanks to an attentive and lively audience, the discussion quickly expanded into a broader examination of how QA is evolving, and what this looks like across different organisations. The discussion went on for over an hour, so there was plenty to get stuck into!
Below, we’ve summarised our key take-home points.
1. QA Data and Customer Feedback Data Go Hand in Hand
Businesses now both collect and generate more data than ever before – but they often aren’t using it to optimum effect.
One area where this is apparent is QA and customer feedback. Whilst contact centres collect both, they are often siloed into different areas of the business. The reality is that one enriches the other, particularly from a performance improvement point of view.
This is because:
- You can ensure that your QA process is measuring what’s important for your customers – and hence your business. If interactions which generate great CSAT scores are evaluated as poor internally, it’s time to reconfigure.
- Your agents can get a more rounded view of their strengths and improvement areas. Looking at customer feedback alongside QA data allows you to provide more accurate feedback, more targeted coaching and better performing agents as a result.
To implement this, you’ll need a system that can capture, store and link both in real time. In some cases, you could even use customer feedback (CSAT, NPS) to flag which interactions should be a priority for human evaluation. This will become increasingly useful as organisations adopt hybrid human/autoscoring QA processes to ease workloads on evaluators.
2. QA Is At A Major Turning Point Right Now
As businesses push to compete on CX, how you approach contact centre QA will become essential in making efficiency gains and being able to evaluate your CX as a whole.
Firstly, as a result of this drive towards offering a standout CX, businesses are looking for more coverage. For QA data to stay accurate and relevant, this coverage needs to be efficient – in other words, businesses need QA to do more in the same timeframe.
Having the right processes and the right software in place is essential here. First Central have leveraged this powerful combination to knock a staggering 20 minutes off their time to audit, meaning they can deliver QA-based feedback to agents quicker, evaluate more interactions and get a deeper insight into contact centre-wide trends.
Our audience also discussed how QA teams are also evolving from measuring single instances across the customer journey to evaluating the entire journey itself. So, rather than evaluating single instances of customer interactions across the business, QA is now starting to follow the journey that each customer takes with your brand.
This is important, because customers are less forgiving than ever. Now, a third of customers will leave after one bad experience, with 90% leaving after two or more. A customer journey-based approach to QA helps you identify potential pain points and take action quickly, so you minimise the impact it has.
3. QA Transformation Needs Buy In Across The Whole Contact Centre
If you’re looking towards your QA department as your next big transformation project, you’ll need to nail down two things:
- Clear goals for your transformation. Do you want to increase operational efficiency, or cut repeat contacts, for example? How do these support your business’s wider CX strategies?
- Buy-in from your contact centre as a whole, from senior management to frontline agents. Without this, your project will have limited success.
Your QA team can be a real asset here – there is still a lot of work to be done with regard to perceptions of QA across the business. Experienced and enthusiastic team members are essential in convincing execs and frontline workers alike of the value of QA.
Alongside this, asking for agent input is essential for long term buy-in too.
Agent engagement surveys can be a great sense check – FIrst Central described how they’d seen great feedback on their QA transformation as a result of listening to and taking on board employee suggestions.
Finally, don’t forget about your professional network when it comes to QA transformation. We discussed how your industry connections can be a fantastic source of advice and recommendations. Don’t just use Google – start some meaningful conversations and you’ll find yourself with a much more rounded knowledge of the landscape as a whole.
By Tom Palmer
Tom is EvaluAgent’s Head of Digital and takes the lead on developing and implementing our digital and content management strategies which results in creating a compelling, digital-first customer marketing experience.
