Workforce Management Featured Article
'Quality' Should Be Defined by Customers, Not Contact Centers
In the contact center, a quality program is usually on most companies’ lists of long-term goals. Companies talk about quality, brainstorm about ways to improve it and put it into their corporate brochures. They may even meet to discuss the quality of service being offered on a monthly or bi-annual basis. The problem is that quality needs to be a daily process, not something management gathers in the board room to discuss once in a blue moon.
Not only does quality need to be a daily process, but it can’t be something that managers oversee without consulting front-line agents. These agents, after all, are the ones who speak with the customers all day long, and chances are good they have a better idea of what customers want in terms of a quality experience. After all, “quality” is defined by the customer’s perspective, not the call center’s, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo.
“You may have a definition for what constitutes a quality customer interaction, but is that description shared by your customers?” asked Ciarlo in the blog. “There’s only one way to find out – ask them. You may be surprised by some of the responses, and you may wish to incorporate their answers into your agent training.”
That leads to the second principle: improved training to align employees to quality programs. This can be accomplished by having agents regularly listen to calls that meet the highest standards of quality (and those that don’t, with direction from managers as to why they don’t), posting calls online so agents can listen to examples, and rewarding outstanding performance from agents who meet quality standards.
“If your contact center provides quality evaluation scores for each agent, turn that practice into a contest,” wrote Ciarlo. “High scores would receive drawing tickets, and once a month or once every quarter, a winning ticket can be drawn, and the winner would receive a cash prize, a dinner for two, or some other reward.”
This principle, in turn, can boost critical employee engagement, which will lead directly to improvement of the customer experience. Whichever path you choose, according to Ciarlo (and he recommends using a straightforward way to score calls to determine quality), it’s important to not settle for the lowest possible level of quality that allows you to stay in operation.
“Your contact center probably has an average performance level, which is adequate to get the job done. But too many companies settle for this, and only become concerned when the numbers drop,” he wrote. “Make ‘average’ your baseline, and strive for something better. Before long, your new ‘average’ will be much higher than the previous standard.”