Insights

The Applications of Quality Assurance Software for Directors, Managers, and Team Leaders

Quality assurance is paramount when it comes to keeping both call centre agents and customers satisfied. It can be used to monitor how customers are responding to agents, as well as helping team leaders identify any agents in need of help.

Essentially, quality assurance is the process of determining whether a product or service meets the specified requirements. It’s essential when it comes to helping create products and services that meet the needs and expectations of customers.

What can quality assurance software be used for?

Quality assurance software can make the process of quality assurance more seamless. Hours spent working through customer feedback using a spreadsheet is inefficient and frustrating. A CRM-integrated QA software will streamline your QA process.

Let’s take a look at some of the primary uses of QA software.

Comparing QA scores with customer feedback

There is often a disconnect between what team leaders think is great service, and what customers think is great service. Ensuring the QA scorecards and direct customer feedback align is a good way to check whether your QA metrics are what they should be.

Ensuring consistency and fairness

A quality assurance platform used across the entire contact centre will ensure agents feel they are being treated fairly. Every interaction can be monitored and re-visited.

Quality assurance software can also facilitate remote working. If a remote agent is struggling, it can be hard for managers to tell whether this is due to technical difficulties or distractions. Monitoring and analysing phone calls helps to uncover the reasons why a remote team member may be falling behind.

Improving employee engagement

Having a comprehensive QA system can improve employee engagement for a number of reasons. The first is that it offers agents control over their scores. As opposed to solely relying on customer feedback, agent self-scoring will encourage agents to reflect on their performance.

Quality assurance gives agents confidence in their performance, as they’ll know in real-time whether they are meeting, exceeding or falling short of expectations. They’ll head into work with confidence in how they are performing and, if they are falling short, they’ll be able to see why.

Finally, a QA platform can help improve the relationships between team leader and handler, which can go a long way towards boosting employee engagement. A QA scheme with clear scoring makes for simpler coaching and more objective performance reviews.

Manage compliance risks

A quality assurance framework isn’t just there to improve customer experience, it can also improve compliance within your contact centre. Compliance risks might include failing to verify the customer, not disclosing selling disclaimers or failing to maintain data privacy.

A study by McKinsey suggested that transparency around how businesses collect and use customer data plays a critical role in customer experience. Up to 87% of respondents said they wouldn’t do business with a company if they had concerns about security risks.

Auto-QA automates the manual processes within a quality assurance system, which enables 100% of conversations to be analysed. Interactions can be evaluated on a much larger scale, spotting risky behaviour and conversations so that they can be addressed before they become a problem.

Evaluating agent performance

Call centre Quality Assurance is most commonly used to evaluate agent performance. EvaluAgent’s Auto-QA platform automatically checks and evaluates every call, chat and ticket to ensure agents in need of help are quickly identified.

QA in call centres will improve the quality of the service provided on an individual level, while agents have confidence knowing that they will receive support and feedback if needed.

Auto-QA makes it easier for agents to dispute their evaluations as 100% of conversations can be viewed and analysed. Contrary to belief, the customer is not always right, and unjust complaints against call handlers do happen. An auto quality assurance software will allow team leaders to look back on the conversations and provide agents with actionable feedback.

Providing better training

Poor training can increase a call centre’s costs for a number of reasons. Poor training will result in a higher staff turnover. Agents will have less confidence to do their jobs, and attrition will be higher. Call centres will then spend more time and money on training new employees. Meanwhile, existing employees are overworked and stressed.

Employees who have received adequate training will have better job satisfaction and be able to deliver a higher level of service.

Quality assurance software can provide team leaders with feedback on individual agent performance, and this information can be used to shape coaching systems and develop more concise training.
Improving customer service

A quality assurance platform can rapidly evaluate conversations which can drive improvements to your customer service. Feedback can be shared with agents, while hidden problems can be uncovered.

As opposed to traditional QA which allows leaders to analyse just a small percentage of conversations, EvaluAgent’s QA platform rapidly analyses each and every interaction an agent has with a customer to ensure customer service standards are being met.

How to Improve Performance

Improving performance across a call centre comes down to more than just the right staff and script. Quality assurance provides team leaders with a comprehensive view of performance, both at an individual and company level.

Ensure you have a clear QA strategy

A clear QA strategy can be created using EvaluAgent’s Auto-QA platform. This platform allows you to evaluate every conversation across all channels to train and motivate your agents, improving both the customer and agent experience. Auto-QA scores are available alongside manual QA scores, feedback and customer service to give team leaders a comprehensive insight into agent performance.

Provide feedback and coaching

A quality assurance strategy is rendered useless if it’s not going to be utilised. Ensure feedback is part of your daily and weekly operations to ensure agents know exactly where they stand.

QA can be used to keep coaching positive, helping employees to engage with their role. By giving agents access to the QA platform, they’ll be able to see the areas which need more work. Agents can take ownership of their progress, with clear insights into their strengths and weaknesses.

Encourage collaboration

Building a positive and collaborative office environment will improve employee engagement. Encourage your agents to collaborate, allow weaker agents to listen in on the calls of more experienced agents, and give them the opportunity to practise calls with each other.

A far-reaching QA platform will allow agents to see who is performing well, while the automatic speech recognition transcribes speech into accurate text, so agents can look through phone call transcripts together.

Encourage agents to self-assess

One way to motivate and engage agents is to encourage them to review their own interactions with customers. This can improve an agent’s self-awareness and help them better understand the areas in which they can improve.

Call centre quality assurance methods

In many contact centres, quality assurance still involves analysing just a small percentage of calls with customers, ensuring each one meets the standard of the centre. This is an inefficient method to improve customer service, with the lack of data meaning there’s huge gaps when it comes to performance insight.

For maximum benefit of QA, the right blend of quality assurance methods need to be implemented. Remember, an effective QA process consists of:

● Measuring
● Scoring
● Analysing
● Providing feedback
● Improving

Additionally, using separate systems for quality control can lead to key insights being missed. The wrong calls are evaluated, or the evaluation forms measure the wrong things.

EvaluAgent’s quality control platform integrates all QA processes into one, easy-to-navigate system. It uses artificial intelligence to analyse every exchange across every channel to ensure agents in need of extra help are rapidly identified. In the event of a dispute with a customer, a transcript or recording of the conversation can be instantly accessed.

Looking for a comprehensive quality assurance system for your call centre? Arrange a free trial with EvaluAgent or get in touch for more information on our platforms.