Single Blog

In this article, we’ll talk about call quality monitoring. What is it? How can it make your business better? What are the benefits of it and why it can be a useful tool for your business? Keep reading!

What Is Call Center Quality Monitoring?

The effectiveness of every call center is measured by the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metrics. It’s a set of measurable values chosen individually for each call center that shows how effectively a business is achieving key business objectives. They vary depending on the company’s goals. For example, it’s possible to measure how long it takes for a caller to reach the agent, how long a person waits on hold during a call, how fast the agent resolves their issue, etc. Since most modern call centers are cloud-based, call center KPIs are normally measured automatically using call center reporting features and monitored by real people with quality monitoring features.

Why Call Center Quality Monitoring Is Important?

Technology developed greatly, but it hasn’t reached the point when it would be possible to entrust call center quality monitoring to the software. Whether your team only handles inbound requests or makes outbound sales calls, your call center is a major contact point between the company and the customers. You might as well think of it as the face of your business. To make sure it’s represented in the best possible way, you must make quality monitoring a priority.

There are plenty of dedicated features in modern call center software which makes quality monitoring much simpler. All the information you’ll get with from call center monitoring will be super useful for ensuring the cost-effectiveness of the department and collecting customer feedback regarding their interactions with your company.

What Are The Benefits Of Call Center Monitoring?

You can’t improve what you can’t measure! Quality monitoring is critical for the success of your call center as it shows you how well you’re doing in the achievement of your business goals. The key benefits of this practice are the following:

Improved service quality

If you set the right KPIs and take time to ensure that the goals are met, your call center will demonstrate better performance. You’ll see both quantitative (the number of answered calls, the number of sales, etc.) and qualitative (first call resolution, abandoned calls rate, average wait time, etc.) improvements, which will lead to at least one major positive outcome – much higher service quality.

Better customer experience

The higher the service quality, the better the customer experience. As we’ve mentioned earlier, the call center is the face of your business. It’s the single biggest factor that will affect what people think about your company. By optimizing service quality and monitoring the work of your agents, you’ll make sure they adhere to all the standards and satisfy your clients’ needs.

Reduced employee turnover

Unfortunately, high employee turnover is a serious problem for a lot of call centers. If combined with other measures, quality monitoring can help you improve agent performance and give them a sense of empowerment and job satisfaction. Experts say that engaging training sessions help to boost employee morale.

Call Center Quality Monitoring Process – How Do You Start?

Implementing quality monitoring into your call center is not difficult. Below are some steps you can use as a guideline if you’re just starting out.

1. Create a scorecard. It’s a general report that tracks the performance of your selected call center KPIs and compares it with your goals. With the help of a scorecard, you’ll be able to monitor the success and failure of your team’s efforts.
2. Start listening to calls. You can join the live conversation in call whispering or call barging mode if you want to add the elements of coaching into the process. The calls are recorded anyway so it’s also possible to listen to them later.
3. Check-in with the goals. Use the scorecard developed earlier to see whether your team and each agent meet the company objectives. Once you determine the weak spots, you can take action to improve the situation.
4. Analyze the obtained data. The software will provide you with sufficient data to evaluate the work of the entire call center and see how well it’s doing. Based on that feedback, you might notice that some things need to be optimized or changed.

How to improve your call quality monitoring?

There’s always room for better call center improvement strategies. If you are not new to quality monitoring, check out some tips on how to narrow down your focus to the factors that really matter and get the most out of your call center.

Define success for your organization

You need to clearly understand what are the strengths, weaknesses, and goals of your business. Without it, it will be difficult to come up with an effective call center monitoring strategy. A good idea would be to analyze the work of your call center in terms of what brings results and what doesn’t. This way, you’ll be able to see what’s useful, what’s missing, and what’s useless. Some companies find it beneficial to compare their business to other similar companies or review benchmark studies to see how they measure up to their competitors. Overall, having a clear idea of what you want to achieve is essential; otherwise, it will be difficult for you to choose the right KPIs and make progress.

Pay attention to your KPIs

Clearly, you can’t measure everything. It would be too resource-heavy for your company and you don’t really need to do it. Choosing to monitor the metrics that make sense for your business and focusing on a few KPIs for a particular study period is enough. However, it’s important not to stop there. Even after you determine the KPIs in your initial scorecard, you still need to go back to these metrics from time to time and check whether they align with the goals of your business. You might notice that some KPIs are not relevant anymore whereas others are necessary. Finally, involve your entire team in this process. It will help you a lot in forming a positive company culture.

Use the right software

The right call center quality monitoring software can make a real difference and help your team achieve their goals much faster. Besides, many organizations move their call centers to the cloud because modern contact center solutions like Nexgies Cloud are packed with useful features for maximizing the performance of your agents. Some things to keep in mind while choosing the right cloud call center software are:

• Does it have all the features you need?
• Is it scalable? Can it handle your call volumes?
• Is it easy to use? Will it require additional training?
• Does it allow for software integration?
• Is it reliable and secure? Does the vendor provide enough support?
• And last but not least, is it affordable for your budget?

Compare several alternatives, schedule a couple of demos or sign up for free trials. Take time to make the right decision and it will pay off.

Analyze all types of calls

Just like it’s simply unnecessary to track every KPI, it’s not feasible to listen to every single call, especially if you have very high call volumes. It would be a total waste of energy and won’t bring any positive results. You might still want to record every call and keep it in an archive just in case any controversies arise. However, you don’t need to listen to them all. Rather than analyzing every single call, focus on different types of calls – the ones that might have a didactic value. Some examples are:

• very successful/unsuccessful call;
• very long/ short call;
• a call with several transfers, etc.

This practice is useful as it allows you to single out the best practices, detect common mistakes, and find areas of improvement in the work of your contact center.

Align business goals with customer’s needs

It might sound like business 101 advice but many companies forget about it. Call center quality monitoring is useless if you don’t have a clear picture of what’s important for your customers and what aspects are worth improving. The business may suffer if the performance goals aren’t synchronized with the customer’s needs. For example, choosing Average Handling Time as a crucial KPI metric doesn’t make sense for a company if its customers typically require a long detailed explanation.

Lather, rinse, repeat

Collect data, analyze it, make improvements, and do it again. Your product or service will evolve, the market will expand, customer behavior will inevitably change. Your organization will be testing and implementing new things all the time. These quality monitoring steps should form an endless loop to ensure the ongoing evolution of your business. It might sound simple but in reality, it takes a lot of hard work to keep the process going. The team should feel empowered and engaged; otherwise, you won’t be able to pull it off. Therefore, continuous development should become a part of company culture.

Involve agents in the monitoring process

Speaking about the company culture, there is no better way to increase employee engagement than actually inviting them to participate in the inner processes. Just like you can ask your agents to participate in choosing the KPIs, you can invite them to join the monitoring process. It will be easier for them to adapt and accept criticism and suggestions if they understand how they are being evaluated. Show them the examples of all types of calls and share your findings from the analysis of each. People learn from their experience but they also understand a lot from observing the success and failure of others.

Conclusion

If done right, call center quality monitoring can bring tremendous benefits to every organization dealing with customers day in, day out. Not only it increases service quality and customer satisfaction, but it also reduces turnover and helps to achieve a company’s objectives. Follow our steps to kick-off the call quality monitoring process or use our tips to get more valuable insights if you’re already into this.