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In today's competitive business landscape, it's more important than ever for companies to have a customer-centric strategy. By definition, a customer-centric approach is focused on creating a positive customer experience. This can be done in many ways, but some of the most common include offering excellent customer service, providing high-quality products and services, and constantly innovating to stay ahead of the competition.
A well-built call center quality monitoring scorecard is a crucial step in improving and keeping your customer service quality and overall customer experience at the proper level.
Businesses will prioritize customer experience over pricing and product development in the next five years. According to a recent study in 2022, 45.9% of businesses surveyed said they would focus on improving their customer experience in the next five years. 20.5% said they would focus on pricing, while 33.6% said they would prioritize product development.
Another report, 'The State of CX Trends Report 2021', states that 22% of customers said they value a good customer experience to be more crucial than the price of a service or product.
Making sure your customer care is qualified and takes good care of clients correlates with the level of CX, loyalty, retention, and as a result, your revenue. One of the ways to get a skillful high-quality call center team is to build a good scorecard.
Another report, 'The State of CX Trends Report 2021', states that 22% of customers said they value a good customer experience to be more crucial than the price of a service or product.
Making sure your customer care is qualified and takes good care of clients correlates with the level of CX, loyalty, retention, and as a result, your revenue. One of the ways to get a skillful high-quality call center team is to build a good scorecard.
So What is a Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard?
A call center quality monitoring scorecard is a document or a dashboard used by call center managers to track and assess the quality of customer service provided by call center agents. The scorecard typically includes a series of categories, such as call handling skills, issue resolution, objections handling, etc.
Call center quality monitoring scorecards can be used to identify areas where most agents need improvement and track call center progress over time. They can also be used to assess the effectiveness of call center quality assurance programs.
Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard Depending on the Process
The scripts and communication scenarios truly differ as well as the calls' aims and the KPIs and metrics for them. Crucial to know the distinctive features and goals behind every call to create a credible quality scorecard.
Sales calls
The sales calls can vary in terms of cold or warm calling, the scenarios for which would differ completely. The distinctive components for sales calls can be:
Product presentation/ pitch
Price indication
Negotiating a price
Debt collection
Since the regulations and compliances are very strict for collections, the agents must go through:
Client verification (it can consist of a few steps)
Debt indication
Repayment period
Customer Support
Customer call to fix an issue, since it's the main aim of the caller, it'd be one of the main components that differ from debt collection and sales calls:
Issue resolution
Provision of proper information
This article focuses more on a call center quality assurance scorecard for customer service teams.
Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard & Call Center Quality Assurance Scorecard
There is no actual difference between the two terms. Some might include the general amount of calls, the number of reviewed ones, and the number of calls per every agent or team during the specified period. In a perfect scenario, we advise applying automation tools to collect and analyze the call center data automatically. A great scorecard template that covers overall call center numbers can be found here.
QA automation tools ensure that the provided data is coherent and consistent. Additionally, it's always at your hand and is nicely arranged in the form of dashboards.
Others tend to design call center quality assurance scorecards to check the quality of one call per agent. There are no general numbers involved, and the fields are devoted to the call structure and its components, like the start of the conversation, which in turn can consist of a greeting, a client verification, the specific wording of the question, etc.
The evaluation can either be graded or require a yes/ no mark. A grading system would take more time, but this method provides more insights for the agents.
A supervisor can put a 'yes,' for example, next to a greeting field, but what if the greeting was present but was unfriendly and impolite. In such a case, the low mark would indicate an agent to work on their greeting. Basically, the scorecards with the grading evaluation system reveal more areas of improvement for the agents.
You can find various templates of scorecards online; we offer the one designed by Ender Turing. You can download it here.
The assessment through call scorecards can also be partially automated or performed manually.
Manual versus Semi-automated Quality Assurance Scorecards
Manual scorecards are used by supervisors to physically listen to the conversation between the customer and the agent, either through live call monitoring or call recording. Afterward, the team leaders evaluate the agents based on what they apprehended throughout the call and mark or tick the scorecard fields.
Manual scorecards are accurate but time-consuming to listen to and score and can sometimes be subjective. So if you have a middle or big team or want to be more objective in your evaluation, we recommend exploring sem-automation tools for QA processes.
Why Semi and Not Fully Automated?
Fully automated scorecards for call centers do not exist yet. Scorecards can consist of complex parts, such as:
Providing the client with accurate (correct) information and/ or executing the Algorithm
Dealing with objections / Expressing understanding and sympathy (if necessary)
The specified above scoring items are hard for systems to detect; how a "machine" can understand what sympathy or accurate information is? Software on the market can score this information but not entirely.
For instance, Ender Turing speech analytics, with the help of AI and ML, can detect if the required script or formal expressions (greeting, saying goodbye) were included. The system pre-scores each conversation, and then it takes a few minutes for a human to check it.
The pre-scoring is a massive time-saver for quality assurance managers; it can speed ou the evaluation process up to 20 times. If you have more than 20 people in your call center, such a tool would be a 'guardian angel' both for the supervisors and the call center agents.
Why is a Good Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard Important?
A call center scorecard can assist your team in many areas:
Performance & results check
A good scorecard lets a manager see the call center's performance and decide if the threshold, like an average number of calls, is realistic. The goals should be regularly reviewed and sometimes changed due to product seasonality or other external factors. The less overloaded and happier your customer support employees are, the higher the chance the customer will be satisfied.
Coaching opportunities
To design more effective coaching, start by reviewing your call monitoring scorecards to see where your agents can improve. Then, either create sessions focusing on those specific areas or use pre-selected playlists with the best examples for self-learning.
For example, if your scorecard shows that many employees need to work on their conflict resolution skills, create a training session that focuses on that. If your employees scored well in responsiveness, praise them for their good work in that area.
Various tools, like Ender Turing, simplify the coaching process for agents by automatically identifying areas of improvement and assigning listening to the best conversations or parts of the conversation to enhance the agents' skills.
Give feedback
Many employees appreciate hearing what they do well, but some also want to know how they can improve their skills to grow professionally. Your feedback can provide them with helpful insights for future progress. Of course, it's more difficult to provide individual feedback to everyone if you have a big team. Therefore, you might find it helpful to discover tools where it can be performed on a scale to gain immediate coaching results.
For instance, Ender Turing agent coaching enables managers to comment on any conversation or part of the conversation and instantly assign a conversation or part of the conversation for self-training.
Boost customer support
Customers who call your agents expect fast solutions to their problems. Call center scorecards can improve customer service by ensuring employees resolve concerns, like account issues. Customers may depend on your excellent customer service, creating long-term business relationships and ensuring they choose you over competitors.
Maintaining a good attitude
If you want your call center employees to provide excellent customer service, you should create scorecards to celebrate their achievements. When you see an employee doing a great job and exceeding the set KPIs, praise them. This will make your agents feel accomplished and may lead to even more productivity. You might even want to reward them with a bonus.
Considering the above-mentioned aspect, I think there is no hesitation left that a call center quality monitoring scorecard is an obligatory step towards establishing better relationships with customers and agents. Do you know that evaluation can be manual and automated?
How to Build a Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard?
1. Set the structure
Every scorecard is unique because it fully depends on your company's product, team, and services. First, decide what sections to put and then add the questions to each question.
For example, you can divide the call into three sections:
Greeting
Call handling
End of conversation
Then include the points you want to check:
Greeting
- Did the agent say thank you for calling?
- Did the agent introduce themselves?
- Was the overall agent's tone polite and friendly?
Start with the structure and then fill it in with the appropriate questions and points.
2. Collaborate with agents
Engage your coworkers in the scorecard creation. Since being at the front line with customers, they know exactly how to satisfy customers and what indicators can truly reflect customer satisfaction.
Additionally, it's a great excuse to collaborate with your agents and let them influence decision-making.
One of the reasons for the low quality of customer service is high levels of employee attrition. As per the research by QATC (Quality Assurance & Training Connection), the turnover of employees in the call centers is around 30-45%, one of the highest attrition rates on the market.
People leave fast before becoming proficient specialists, and new agents come, which seems like a never-ending circle. Make your agents feel good and necessary because they genuinely are. They are the face of your company.
3. Ask your customers
Yes, you heard me right. Every product is exclusive and has a unique client base, so inquire what the most valuable aspect of high-quality customer service is for your clients. Is it the agent's attitude or the result of the conversation? Or maybe all together?
And again, you can do it manually, or you can create a customer satisfaction survey on your own or use the templates from third parties. There are also diverse CSAT tools and software to automate this process, e.g., Zonka Feedback, Survey Monkey, and Qualtrics.
4. Build a knowledge base
You might wonder why since we gathered here to create a call center quality monitoring scorecard. The answer is on the surface: if you define what should be well-known for your customer service team, then you can measure it.
The better the learning materials you offer, the higher chance that your customer care team will study them well, and consequently, the agents know the product from A to Z and can handle any client inquiry.
5. Set regular knowledge reviews
Create regular surveys for your agents to see if they remember all the product details and if they keep up with the updates. You can put a separate score for product awareness, which can be added to your call center quality monitoring scorecard.
Product awareness also correlates with the KPIs you set. When a customer representative is not fully aware of some functions or services, it will take more time for them to handle a call, and that's how the AHT can go beyond the desired threshold.
6. Start the test trial
We recommend taking action slowly and evaluating how the call center scorecards display the agents' work. Start to test it on the part of your team, so in case the scorecards need additional refinement, you don't involve the whole team.
Be ready that an ideal scorecard is a long-term process, and it might take some time before you frame the one that corresponds to your goals, product, and customer support representatives.
7. Think of a simple UX design for the QA scorecard
Although it's only for internal use and often such docs and reports do not look in the best way. Still, we advise devoting extra time to making it neat and UX friendly. The scorecards will always be updated, but the template stays for months or even years.
The call center managers regularly have to deal with dozens or hundreds of reporting sheets, which can put them at risk of making a mistake or putting a wrong mark. Reduce stress and pressure by designing an easy-to-read and -use call center quality scorecard for your managers. With good UX, there's more security that the scorecards will be filled out correctly.
8. Apply the QA scorecards routinely
It'd probably take a few months for your team to see the results of regular check-ups based on the call center quality assurance scorecards. Let yourself and your team be patient before judging the results. Just keep using the scorecards and watch how your support team's quality levels up.
Bear in mind to seek feedback from your agents. They might have reasonable suggestions on the scorecard enhancements. Their happiness equals the happiness and satisfaction of your customers.
What about the KPIs in the call center quality monitoring scorecard?
Surely, KPIs must be measured, but one call cannot indicate the average efficiency of the team or an agent. To have full transparency of efficiency and quality, call centers have to deal with KPIs and call quality scorecards.
By means of standard call center KPIs, you can also realize how to advance the quality scorecards to reflect the quality call more insightfully.
Check at least 5 of standara KPIs, like:
Service level
Call abandon rate
Average handle time (AHT)
After call work (ACW)
Percent of blocked calls
Call arrival rate (CAR)
Average speed of answer (ASA)
CSAT (customer satisfaction score)
Customer effort score
Crucial to mention that although AHT is the most common indicator in a call center environment, many related experts disagree that this metric reflects the quality of a call or generally provided support. Olena Iosifova, the CEO of Ender Turing, mentioned in the recent webinar on CX that it's critical for customers and their satisfaction to solve the issue; it does not matter how long the call is.
If you are hesitant about what KPIs to choose, you can check a new comprehensive article on the top 5 KPIs to keep an eye on in your contact center.
Conclusion
A scorecard is a great way to track your call center's performance and identify areas that need improvement. By creating a scorecard, you can:
1. Monitor performance against specific goals and objectives.
2. Identify areas that need improvement.
3. Hold call center agents accountable for their performance.
4. Reward agents for meeting or exceeding performance goals.
5. Improve customer satisfaction by providing better service.
6. Increase efficiency and productivity in your call center.
But before getting all the juice out of call center monitoring scorecards, decide what type of scorecard you wish and have the budget for and what you chase to measure.
Subscribe here to find out more about various QA scorecards.