Workforce Management Featured Article
Quality Monitoring Becomes Complex for Multilingual Contact Centers
Most contact centers today have trouble finding the time to monitor agents in performance management programs as much as they would like. While many of today’s solutions use speech technology to look for problematic calls, keywords, competitors names and other triggers, in many companies, true quality management comes down to a manager listening to calls monthly, semi-annually or annually and ticking off quality elements on a standardized form. Evaluations like these are used to determine pay raises or promotions, or to determine areas where agents might need extra training. Whether it’s a formal or an informal process, it essentially comes down to managers listening.
So what happens if, like in many contact centers, some agents are bilingual or multilingual, and managers don’t have the knowledge they need to monitor those calls? In the U.S., this may mean agents speaking Spanish with Spanish customers. In Europe or Asia – places where a mix of people commonly speak more than two languages – it becomes even more challenging. There are even cultural considerations: courtesy in one language or cultural may demand completely different script elements than for another language or culture. (For some cultures, it’s rude to “get down to business” without a prerequisite amount of small talk.) According to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions company Monet Software, companies need to ask themselves some questions before choosing performance management solutions if they have a multilingual workforce, or plan to create one.
“Before factoring in the additional challenges of second and third languages, review that status of your quality management program: Have the goals for this program been clearly defined, based on how your customers would define excellent service?” Ciarlo asked. “Are agents, managers and coaches on the same page when it comes to interpreting data, and how calls should be scored? Do you have sufficient data to reach accurate conclusions?”
Performance goals might be slightly different for agents speaking different languages, so it would be a mistake to use a one-size-fits-all policy (or scorecard). Ciarlo says it comes down to having the right tools in place to handle multilingual quality monitoring.
“Make sure that you also have the right technology in place. Measuring quality manually is a long and arduous process that is made much more efficient when relevant data is accurately compiled and analyzed automatically,” he noted. “Monitoring of customer interactions should be simple for agents, and the intelligence gathered through the system should be easy to analyze for managers. Once the call center is effectively achieving quality-monitoring results in English, managers can focus on bringing that same level of insight to customer engagements in other languages.”
Agents offering customers multilingual services shouldn’t be penalized when it comes time for monitoring and coaching simply because the contact center’s technologies can’t handle the language the agents are speaking. Conversely, managers could be letting problems slide if they’re not properly equipped to monitor bilingual or multilingual agents.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi