5 Steps to Effective Call Quality Monitoring in a Call Center

The call center plays a fundamental role in the customer experience (CX). It is a direct connection with customers. And companies that offer exceptional user experiences use this trait to differentiate their brand from the competition.

How to Provide the Best Possible Customer Experience?

A quality assurance (QA) program forms the foundation of excellent CX by providing hard data to help you determine if you are meeting goals, following the right processes, meeting standards, and achieving results you need.

To do this, you have to focus on monitoring of QA. That is why all call centers have the same message for callers: “For quality reasons, this call may be recorded.”

So how exactly does call quality monitoring work, why is it important, and what steps should you take to develop effective call quality monitoring?

What is Call Quality Monitoring?

Call quality monitoring consists of randomly recording and monitoring calls. To measure them, strategic customer service calls must be analyzed, as well as their efficiency and effectiveness, with the constant objective of turning each caller into a satisfied customer.

And while customer satisfaction may look different in each contact center, there are a few critical points that make up the anatomy of a high-quality customer service call:

• Appropriate tone of voice.
• Active listening.
• Normal speech rate.
• Correct language.
• Emotional intelligence.
• Good closing of the call / chat.
• Management of customer expectations.
• Appropriate use of the script.

Additionally, according to a 2021 Customer Experience Trends Report:

• 73% of customers indicate that fast resolutions are the main factor for good customer service.
• 47% of customers believe that 24/7 support is essential.
• 75% of customers demand a personalized experience.
• 69% of customers want to solve as much as possible on their own.

That all of the above elements work together determines the quality of each call. The client should always hang up feeling positive about their experience. They must have a clear solution, know how to avoid the same problem in the future and not generate more doubts or questions.

5 Steps to Effective Call Quality Monitoring in a Call Center

Step 1: Develop a Quality Assurance (QA) Team

To begin monitoring call quality, a quality control team needs to be in place. This team, typically made up of call center managers, supervisors, and agents, must have a deep understanding of the customer service brand. They will use information about the company and the ideal CX to configure all aspects of their QA process, including setting call quality standards.

Step 2: Establish Call Quality standards and KPIs

Quality standards and KPIs are how the success or failure of each customer call will be measured. Without standards, it will not be known whether or not the objectives are being met. In this regard, factors such as customer sentiment after the call, employee engagement, and product / service effectiveness must be considered.

Likewise, the following KPIs must be measured:

• Average handling time agents spend resolving customer service calls. It includes waiting time, delays, transfers, and follow-up actions.
• Net Promoter Score: NPS should be at the heart of the contact center’s quality assurance strategy. It measures the probability that your customers will recommend a brand to their family and friends.
• First Call Resolution Rate (FCR): Customers love that their inquiries are resolved on the first contact with the call center.

Step 3: Implement Tools to Help Monitor, Analyze, and Improve

There are many quality monitoring solutions suitable for call center quality control, such as:

• Call recording software.
• Quality control self-report cards to rate calls, emails, chats, text messages, and social media.
• Text Analytics, which allows you to analyze text and extract information about feelings, emotions, customer problems, trends and key phrases.
• Speech Analytics software, which automatically reviews all customer conversations and translates them into machine-readable text. Speech analysis uses text analysis and pattern detection to categorize interactions according to a set of custom rules.
• Other quality control tools include: analysis and reporting software, call center script, self-help database, and predictive analytics.

Each of these tools is designed to improve customer experience, productivity, and increase profitability.

Step 4: Analyze Quality Monitoring

It’s about analyzing contact center phone call data by evaluating agent performance against established standards and KPIs, then making appropriate adjustments to behaviors as needed.

Step 5: Implement Agent Training to Improve CX

As agent calls are reviewed, agent performance trends and related patterns in customer satisfaction will become apparent. These insights can help identify the “gaps” within the call center to deliver high-quality agent training and development.

After all, quality monitoring and analysis without a plan to make changes that improve customer satisfaction are not helpful. The call quality-monitoring program should include tools to help manage, track, and achieve training goals, such as a call center learning management system (LMS).

An LMS is an all-in-one training solution that facilitates advanced learning and development based on specific training needs revealed in the quality assurance process.

When done correctly, call quality monitoring, along with a quality assurance program, provides the team with detailed information about agents and customers.