Quality Monitoring

What is Quality Monitoring?

Callcenter Quality monitoring or quality management aims at measuring and steering quality as a component of the total

quality process in a call center. There are a lot of ways to measure the quality of a Callcenter. Thus it is not uncommon that a callcenter supervisor periodically listens to telephone conversations of employees by sitting besides him or her. There are telephony systems in which is possible to listen to with the employee on distance without disturbing these. This is better known as silent monitoring. It is also possible to hire external parties for quality measuring. By committing mystery calls they can get an impression of the quality of the conversation, such as the time on hold and the number of transfers. All these methods can give an impression of the level of quality. You can put however question signs at the effectiveness and the reliability of these ways of measuring. How objective and consistent is for example the supervisors measuring? Moreover quality management is an ongoing process. Will the result be measured after every correction? Quality Monitoring is more than making some snapshots. In our opinion Quality Monitoring must be able to measure and improve the quality of all employees of the contact centre, consistently and periodically, as a component of a ongoing quality process. With our solutions this is possible and objective evaluations of conversations can be carried out for example to stipulate the coaching need of the employees.

Our Quality Monitoring systems and software

INSPIRATIONpro
Storavox
QCoach

Levels of Callcenter Quality Monitoring

Walk around observation
Side by side
Silent Monitoring
Record and review
Evaluate Voice and Screen Recording

Levels of Quality Monitoring in a Contact Center or Callcenter

Quality Monitoring, for who and why?

Quality monitoring can be very effective at contact centres since the labour cost component amounts to on average 60% of the company costs. Investments in the human capital will earn to repay themselves undoubtedly. This does not mean that it is only profitable for extensive contact centres. Each contact centre where demands are made to the quality of the customer interactions has been availed at an in-depth Quality Monitoring solution.

Some examples where Quality Monitoring can be applied:

For facility Contact Centers it is important to work with well trained callcenter agents and employees. They achieve the most tangible results: make appointments for the sales representatives or disclose a sales deal.

Many companies will consider their in-house contact centre more and more as a profit centre. As soon as the customer gets in contact they will be faced with additional services and products in a subtle manner. Such a change will demand a lot of the employee, who must have other skills.

Financial Institutions has to do with law– and legislation on important operations. It is crucial to keep the employees informed and that one acts according to certain instructions.

Employees in the Public Safety and Security sector are dealing with a large diversity of calls. In a tense situation it is very important that the employee is able to value the seriousness of the situation rapidly, to exhort rest and placidity and briefly and concisely summarise the call.

In all these cases Quality Monitoring can make a valuable contribution to stipulate the areas of these employees. Because of this the Callcenter agents can be trained more effective. Moreover Quality Monitoring helps to determine the quality level of the employee, the team or the total contact centre. Beside all kind of tangible figures such as the number of calls, the average duration, and the time on hold, the quality of the customer contact is just as important. In other words: it is better to have a good five minutes conversation than a bad one of three minutes! The problem of determine the quality of a call is to make them measurable. A Quality Monitoring solution helps to mark quality with a figure. This way the call centre manager gets sufficient insight on the basis of figures to outline new policy.

How do you make Quality measurable?

To measure quality you must start by defining quality objectives. These will be mostly defined from the Make quality measurable with Quality Monitoring

Make quality measurable with Quality Monitoring

perception of the customer. Criteria must be determined on which a call can be assessed. Examples of such conversation criteria are: correct intonation, targeting, use of voice, volume, ability of imagine oneself in another situation, correct opening and closing of a call, correct summary of appointments and picking up buy indicators. Preferably these call handling standards must be formulated in a way that an objective appraisal can be made possible. For example: a question can be answered easy with a YES or NO. The criteria must be carried out company-broad, this way the customer sees no difference in the quality between the service- and the sales department. It is important to advise employees from all sections of the call centre when developing the list with conversation criteria. This is the way the organisation gets a univocal picture of the quality they proclaim. Besides that a larger foundation for the improvement of quality arises. Employees must not have the feeling that Callcenter Quality Monitoring software is just another stick to beat them with. And that is not what is indeed! On the contrary, it is a tool to gather more information of the improvement areas of the employee, so that they can be coached more targeted. It ensures that one handles quality more consciously which leads to a higher level of performance. Besides that Quality Monitoring will contribute to an honest and consistent measuring of quality and performance, certainly when the callcenter employees are evaluated by different supervisors. However it is important that the supervisors are able to asses the calls in a uniform way, they have to sing from the same song sheet. To realize this a Quality Monitoring system can help by calibrating. What implies that the same calls are evaluated by different supervisors with the aim to get minimum difference in rating. During the implementation of the call handling standards one can provide subjects with a weight factor. For example: for opening the call according to the criteria you can get two points and for showing emphatic skills 5. The call centre manager can follow the quality level of certain criteria for the total call centre. Should prove that 70% of the employees do not pick up buy indicators according to protocol, he can anticipate by giving a sales course for example.

What does the legislature say?

In the Netherlands recording of phone conversations is only permitted if it is necessary for your justified reasons. Above this you need to do a privacy test. This means that you must weight the interests and rights of the employees against your importance of recording calls. You must be able to justify this consideration of interests with the employees, the Works Council and possible the judge. If the recordings are exclusively used for Quality Monitoring purposes then a selection must be made of calls you want to record and evaluate. For more information you can go to the website of the College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens (Insitute of protection personal data).

Quality Monitoring system in practice?

Both recorded call as well as screen recordings, which are registered during a call, can be used in our Quality Monitoring system. These customer interactions (sessions) can qualify for evaluation purposes. The selection of these sessions can be done automatically based on: date, time, campaign, team, employee, call type etc.. After selecting a number of suitable sessions per employee, the supervisor/coach can execute the Quality Monitoring software from his own computer to evaluate these sessions. Whereas the supervisor listens to the conversation and sees the screen operations during the call, he fills in the evaluation form. This digital evaluation form exists from all the specified call handling standards. By evaluating and rating these criteria he gets insight in the quality level of the call. Depending on the number of evaluations, a very realistic picture of the quality arises for the employee, the department and the total call centre. The more so if you compare the quality level with the quality– or learning objectives. These new learning objectives can be fixed to create a certain commitment for both the employee as well as the callcenter supervisor.

Quality Monitoring proces

Quality Monitoring proces in a Contact Center as part of Quality Management

Who benefits of Quality Monitoring?

A well implemented Quality Monitoring software solution benefits all stakeholders. From customer point of view a Quality Monitoring system leads to improved quality, a personal relationship with your company, loyalty, reduced hold times and fewer transfers. In short: customer satisfaction. For callcenter agents Quality Monitoring offers an effective training opportunity, in the end leading to more skills. In addition this serves as a motivator for the agent and improves his or her efficiency. Quality Monitoring offers supervisors a tool to improve quality effectively. In addition more accurate and consistent measurements are done and measurements take less time to do. In the end callcenter Quality Monitoring has a positive effect on the complete organization. Loyal customers are created leading to customer retention. By higher productivity of your current staff the organization saves on labour costs. In addition the organization gets more insight in the quality of the whole contact center.

What is the best system for my organization?

Depending on your organization needs and environment, such as present and future telecommunication infrastructure, Bumicom can advise on the best solution for your situation. Navigate to our contact page or call us on: +31 70 350 4500. Or leave your name and number, we call you!

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About Quality Monitoring