Call Center Quality Monitoring: 16 Best Practices for Results

Call center quality assurance is business jargon for analyzing the quality of a call through the lens of the customer’s expectations and needs. 

And that’s really what every company with a product or service to sell is looking for: a way to better serve their customers and make them happy.  

How Can I Improve My Call Center Quality Score?

The best way to improve your results is to implement a call center monitoring strategy. Data gathered from monitoring your call center can help identify existing problems, enabling you to come up with viable solutions. 

You’ll also be working to keep the quality of your calls at peak performance as you monitor them, and be providing an elevated level of customer service.

Call center monitoring should be viewed as a win-win: while you’re working to improve your internal functions, your external output and interactions with customers will also benefit. 

But what specifically can you do to see a good return on call center quality monitoring? A lot. We’ve compiled a list of 16 suggested call center quality assurance guidelines and tips you can incorporate in your call center quality assurance metrics.

1. Set Clear Goals for Call Quality Monitoring Best Practices

Know what your goals are before you jump into this process. With clear goals in mind, you’ll be able to focus on the more relevant data and avoid getting caught up in unimportant information. 

Like…

• How many calls are you going to monitor? 
• How often? 
• How do you plan to monitor them? Etc.

2. Pick Your Metrics

How well you serve your customers can be determined by dozens of key performance indicators. 

Similar to knowing your plan before jumping in, picking which specific metrics you’ll focus on analyzing will allow you to move forward through the whole analyzing process. 

Consider selecting different KPIs for different quarters. Here are some examples you may want to consider:

• Length of wait times
• Tone of voice used by representatives
• Appropriate speaking speeds
• Using correct language
• Effective questions like open-ended and closed-ended
• Frequently utilizing probing skills

3. Invest in Call Center Quality Monitoring Software

The call center software you already use could provide you with analytical features. 

If not…

You’ll need to be aware of a few things when looking at call center monitoring software options:

• Interfacing/Ease of Use: Will the software interface well with your system? Will your agents be able to figure it out easily?
• Scalability: Choose a software that will grow easily as your company expands. 
• Costs: Consider what your budget is.
• Customization: Will the system allow you to make your greetings personal? Is that something you want from a call center software system? 
• Security: The safety of your data and any customer information you have is important. Select a system that provides everyone involved with security. 

4. Develop a Script

A solid script will keep your calls operating on the same level and make it easier to detect problems. It will also give your agents a framework to start from and build on.

After implementing a script for your agents, make sure to monitor and analyze customer service interactions. After monitoring and analyzing these interactions, you will be better prepared to implement changes that will increase customer satisfaction.

If this is implemented correctly, your quality assurance forms will become an important resource to your team filled with data analytics and insights that will be used to improve future interactions. Fixing processes, questionnaires, and revealing important issues will ultimately increase the ROI of all efforts produced by the call center.

5. Create Call Center Quality Assurance Forms

Work with everyone from the higher-ups to the calling agents themselves to create call center quality assurance forms. 

Call center quality assurance form examples could include measurements that stack up your agent’s calling to a predetermined uniform standard. 

You can make them available for customers, supervisors, or even the agents themselves to fill out. 

6. Train Your People

Work with your agents regularly to make it clear how important call quality monitoring best practices are. Invest in your employees with consistent, comprehensive trainings—show them you care about their success with the company.

Utilizing the KPIs previously established by the call center will be great to measure the success of your agents against where they could be. However, without making these goals previously, it may become nearly impossible to know if agents are successful. Understanding where the call center currently is and where it should be will ultimately drive the success of all agents through frequent training, review sessions, and measuring of performance.

7. Search for Customer Feedback

To measure the satisfaction of customers, call centers must implement a call center quality assurance form that can be made available to all customers. This can be implemented on the website, provided after a customer service call, or emailed to each customer. Searching for customer feedback will provide valuable insights on what are the expectations of each customer

Find a way that works for your company and incorporate it quickly; what the customers are saying can make all the difference in what you train your agents on.

8. Filter Your Calls

Going through hundreds of calls is a little extreme. But you can filter through a random sampling consistently to get a feel for how your system and script and agents are working. 

9. Focus on Problem Resolution

One of the best suggestions for best call center quality monitoring is to make your customers a priority. Put them and their problems first. Make sure that customers have their problem resolved on the first call. Customers appreciate when their questions are answered the first time they ask them and thus will skyrocket customer satisfaction when their problems are resolved. Take the time to solve their issues, no matter what. And as you do, you’ll streamline the process.

10. Implement Self-Assessment for Agents

It’s not going to do you or your agents any good if you come at them with all the things they need to improve on over and over again. Setting up a self-assessment system for them will allow them to see their own mistakes and allow them to take steps to fix them. Creating self-assessments for agents will help create a roadmap for improvement and along the way, higher success rates when fielding customer service calls. 

11. Monitor All Channels

Communicating with customers happens through more than just phone calls in today’s world. For maximum call center quality monitoring, take time to analyze all the avenues your agents are using to work with your customers.

12. Be Thorough

Monitor calls from the beginning to the end. This will provide an avenue to catch simple mistakes so that they don’t turn into big mistakes. Being thorough in your call center monitoring will also provide learning opportunities for agents for the self-assessment roadmaps previously established. Listen to the whole conversation of each agent. Don’t half-listen to half of the conversation: be thorough and listen to it all. Pay close attention to every detail.  

13. Hire the Right People

Some people are cut out for working as a call center agent. Others aren’t. Do all you can to be sure the people you’re hiring are dedicated to the company or, at the least, the concept of helping customers.

14. Communicate Regularly

Talk with your call agents about their progress, discuss issues with them, and be open to their suggestions. Show them their opinions matter, and they’ll be more inspired and dedicated to their work. 

15. Provide Incentive

Don’t let good work go unnoticed or unrewarded. Spotlight and praise your employees that go above and beyond. This can inspire other employees to do and be better.

16. Keep Things Consistent

Above all…

Stay consistent throughout the process of call center quality monitoring. 

Create a plan, stick to it, communicate regularly to your employees; make it easy for them to know what you expect of them, what the company expects of them, and what they should expect of themselves.

Call Center Quality Is Our Priority

Here at ROI Solutions, our call center teams aren’t just committed to taking your customer’s calls. We understand that our performance also reflects on your brand. This is why our call center services also include a call center quality monitoring service to help us further improve how we assist your customers now and in future calls. The more satisfied your customers are after their call, the better your company’s reputation will be.

Interested in outsourcing to a call center team that monitors your calls’ quality? Contact us today and let’s discuss how we can best serve your business.