A new tutorial from Prosci's Call Center Leadership Series

 

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Quality Monitoring Tutorial Series

Excerpts from the new Quality Monitoring Toolkit from Prosci

Welcome to the Quality Monitoring Series. Over the next six weeks we will be releasing four tutorials on quality monitoring beginning with this first tutorial on Quality Monitoring Benefits. This series is designed for anyone looking to implement a new quality monitoring program or improve their existing quality monitoring process. These tutorials are designed to be read in less than 10 minutes and provide key insights into different aspects of quality monitoring (also called call monitoring).

Part 2 of the series will focus on Quality Monitoring Methods, and Part 3 will share benchmarking results on the Perception Agents have about Quality Monitoring. Part 4 will cover Implementation and Improvement Recommendations. If you have any questions about the series, please contact us at callcenters@prosci.com

Quality Monitoring Benefits

Introduction

Quality monitoring or call monitoring refers to the process of listening to or observing an agent’s phone calls or other multi-media contacts with customers in order to assess and evaluate strengths and weaknesses in performance. There are six basic levels of quality monitoring:

1.  Walk-around observation
2.  Side-by-side
3.  Plug-in/doublejack monitoring
4.  Silent monitoring
5.  Record and review
6.  Voice and screen/multi-media monitoring

Companies cite many different benefits from quality monitoring programs. Research results from the 2001 benchmarking study shows that the majority of companies perform quality monitoring with one major goal in mind: to evaluate agent performance and improve service quality. Other reasons for quality monitoring include:

• Assessment and improvement of scripts and processes

• Greater customer satisfaction

• Increased efficiency

• Improved training programs

• Uncovering common customer complaints and concerns

• General troubleshooting
         
             

Major Benefits Of Quality Monitoring

As a supervisor or manager, there are several key benefits you are trying to address when implementing a quality monitoring program. The four major benefits of quality monitoring directly impact:

• Efficiency and cost

• Customer satisfaction

• Training improvements

• Quality

 

Customer satisfaction

Quality monitoring is one of the most effective methods for improving customer satisfaction levels.  Many supervisors and managers look for correlation between customer service levels and quality monitoring scores.  When performing quality monitoring, you will:

• Improve overall employee performance.

• Gain valuable customer feedback.

• Increase customer satisfaction by addressing common complaints and evaluating customer needs.

• Assess agents’ listening and comprehension skills.

• Evaluate agents’ problem-solving abilities.

• Gain insight as to how well agents are controlling the pace and flow of the conversation.

• Assess agents’ customer relationship management skills.

 

Efficiency and cost

Overall call center efficiency is improved with the implementation of a quality monitoring system. In the end, higher levels of efficiency result in lower costs. Quality monitoring allow managers and supervisors to:

• Reduce defective calls that result in callbacks.

• Reduce handle time by improving system navigation skills.

• Troubleshoot problem areas.

• Review scripting for improvement.

• Identify weaknesses in systems operation and navigation.

• Improve employee procedures.

 

Training improvements

The benefit of quality monitoring that is most often overlooked by supervisors is the improvement of training and new agent orientation programs. Quality monitoring sessions, when recorded and archived, can be especially beneficial during new agent orientation and training. The ability to illustrate with live examples is a major benefit that is often overlooked.

• Design improvement programs based on common deficiencies in agents, scripts or policies.

• Improve training programs by supplementing them with the “best of” and “worst of” quality monitoring examples.

• Implement mentoring, career pathing and in-house training programs using quality monitoring as an aid.

• Retain good agents and improve upon existing skills.

 

Quality

Overall call center quality performance is improved with the implementation of quality monitoring systems.

• Benchmarking studies indicate a correlation between quality monitoring implementation and overall call center performance improvement.

• Helps companies maintain quality standard.

• Increases cost effectiveness through improved efficiencies.

• Accelerates development of agent skills.

• Creates visible accountability for performance.

 

Next steps

Understanding the benefits of quality monitoring is the first step in creating a plan to implement or improve your quality monitoring program. The critical question is:

"Are you realizing these benefits for your call center?"

If not, then the first step is to evaluate the method being used for quality monitoring. Depending on the method being used, limitations exist for how effective the program can be. The second step will be to review the quality monitoring process for collecting performance data, analyzing the data and providing feedback to agents and other groups in your call center.

These topics will be covered in Part 2 of the Quality Monitoring Series.

 

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Other resources:

Quality Monitoring Toolkit

Call center bookstore and reference library

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