Summer Musings #4 – QA Improvement
And finally, my last summer musing this year, but one which I hope will be of enormous benefit.
In our contact centre consulting practice, the most frequent request we get, by far, is to audit an existing QA setup. And guess what, in every single call centre to date, there is not only room for improvement, but there is MASSIVE room for improvement. In other words it is highly likely that most regional call centres could improve their current call centre QA process.
The basic problem in many instances appears to be a not-fit-for-purpose QA form and supporting process. Leaving aside the mélange of arbitrary and inconsistent scoring schemes that we uncover, the forms themselves lack key elements and are usually severely under-weighted when it comes to soft skills. As a result, monitoring becomes a very low value exercise and follow-on coaching is not focused enough on the key aspects of the call that are the most important as far as the customer and the business are concerned. In effect, this supposedly vital development function becomes a waste of time (and money).
The above commentary highlights 3 key issues when it comes to your own QA scheme:-
a) knowing what soft skills you are missing and need to start measuring
b) knowing how to score them effectively
c) knowing how to coach these skills.
So, what is best for your situation? Well, if you are unfamiliar with the wide range of soft skills that could be monitored in a call, the linked INSIGHTS generic soft skills form is the perfect place to start. Your particular requirements will of course be different and unique for your call types, so you can delete some of the soft skills listed accordingly, but in every case that we have worked with, each call centre has needed to assess at least 80% of this list.
Continuing from here, if you want to take things further as far as a) understanding what the numbers on the INSIGHTS QA form mean and how they can be best customised for your particular purposes, and/or b) training and certification of your team members to do monitoring and coaching activities more effectively, then feel free to drop me an email at djkeenaghan@insights-me.com and I will revert with what your best options going forward are.
Enjoy
Dominick
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