Monitoring calls
This tutorial will help you answer key questions about call monitoring
including:
-
Who should perform quality
monitoring?
-
Peers
-
Mentors
-
Team leaders
-
Supervisors
-
Quality monitoring team
-
Outside quality assurance
team
-
How frequently should quality
monitoring be performed?
-
When (what days and time of
day) should quality monitoring be performed?
-
How should different agents be
monitored?
Who Performs Quality
Monitoring?
The person or team you select to perform quality monitoring play a key
role in the entire process. There are several different "levels" of
monitors, each with unique pros and cons. Your choices for "who" monitors
include:
-
Peer
-
Mentor
-
Team leader
-
Supervisor or manager
-
Quality monitoring team
-
External quality assurance
company
You may use more than one monitor. For example, a new agent may be
monitored regularly by a supervisor, but may also participate in peer or
mentor monitoring.
Ensuring objectivity
Should you elect to use in-house monitors (peers, mentors,
team leaders, supervisors or managers, or an internal quality
monitoring team), maintaining objectivity will quickly become an
important issue.
Calibration is a commonly used term in call centers. When
evaluations are calibrated, they are "checked, adjusted, or
determined by comparison with a standard." This practice
prevents a monitor from evaluating an agent too harshly or too
leniently as compared to other agents with similar performance
levels.
How frequently is
quality monitoring performed?
Generally speaking, agents should be monitored an average of once or
twice per week. This may vary depending on factors unique to your call
center, but it represents a frequency level that is currently working for
many call centers and that others are migrating toward.
Before you decide how often you will monitor agents, consider several
things that relate to your call center in general.
-
Will the frequency with which
you monitor be affected by budgetary considerations?
-
How will the frequency of
monitoring change for new hires vs. experienced agents vs. agents having
difficulties?
-
Is your call center outbound,
inbound or both?
-
Are there specific issues you
are attempting to address through monitoring?
-
Are there characteristics
unique to your company that affect how frequently you will monitor?
-
Have you received feedback
from agents (if a monitoring system is in place) regarding the frequency
of monitoring or feedback?
-
How will contact volume and
peak periods affect the monitoring schedule?
When should you
monitor?
When you actually perform monitoring will depend on a number of
variables. Variables that will affect the monitoring schedule include:
-
Peak hours of the day
-
Peak days of the week
-
Peak week of the month
-
Agent group being monitored
(new hires vs. veteran agents)
-
Monitor's schedule
It is in your best interest to carefully consider how these variables can
affect the outcome of the monitoring program.
Agent classification
Agent classification plays an important role in when agents
should be monitored. Struggling and new agents should be
monitored at different times than veteran and successful agents.
It is not in the best interest of agents, the monitor, or the
monitoring program to lump new and struggling agents in the same
group as veteran and successful agents.
Summary
This tutorial provided guidelines for determining the who, what
and how often of call monitoring. In addition to answering the
above questions when developing your monitoring program, it can be
beneficial to look at benchmarking standards of others in your
industry. Our 2007 Call Center Best Practices Benchmarking
Reports provide data to help you make the most of your monitoring
program.
Specifically, the Improving Call Center Business Processes Report
includes a section focusing on quality monitoring programs.
Topics addressed include:
