How to measure call quality: practical tips
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Nowadays, managing contact centers involves a more data-driven approach to refining call strategies than relying solely on personal experience. Modern cloud-based contact center technologies simplify the process of gathering and analyzing data from customer-agent interactions. Managers can use recorded calls and performance metrics to consistently pinpoint and address issues in call quality. They can then tailor training and modify processes and scripts to improve performance. This article will cover the importance of monitoring call quality, its definition, and how technology enables managers to do this effectively and smartly.
What is call quality?
Call quality evaluates how well contact center agents communicate with customers over the phone. Different contact centers have specific criteria for what constitutes good call quality; typically, it involves agents being courteous and effective, ensuring customer satisfaction with clear resolutions to their issues.
Meanwhile, call quality monitoring is the continuous practice of collecting and analyzing data from customer service calls to enhance the performance of a contact center.
What's the importance of monitoring call quality?
Given the significant impact of customer service on customer experience, sales, and retention, it is crucial for contact center managers to optimize phone performance, and monitoring call quality is key to achieving this. This can be likened to a top sports coach who tailors training based on observed player weaknesses rather than wasting time on already mastered skills.
Similarly, a contact center manager must adopt this coaching approach to consistently enhance agent performance by pinpointing individual and team weaknesses through effective call quality monitoring. This allows them to provide tailored training or resources, like specific technical papers or scripts for handling objections.
Additionally, managers can modify contact center processes to address these weaknesses broadly. For instance, if analytics reveal frequent call failures when customers inquire about a specific technical issue, managers might update training on this topic and adjust call scripts to include helpful language agents can refer to during calls.
How can you monitor call quality?
The primary goal of call quality monitoring is to enhance agent performance by identifying and correcting deficiencies in how calls are handled. To achieve this, contact center managers implement systems to gather and analyze data from customer interactions, seeking insights to improve service. This data might include:
• Call recordings
• Customer surveys
• Mentions on social media
• Information from other communication channels like live chat and email
For a practical example, consider a scenario where all agent phone calls are recorded and customer survey feedback is collected on a platform. When a customer leaves a negative review, the manager listens to the related call, identifies why it was unsuccessful, and coaches the agent on improvements for future interactions.
If a particular issue recurs frequently, managers might update the team’s standard operating procedures or scripts to prevent future occurrences. They could also disseminate the guidance provided to one agent across the entire team during meetings.
However, monitoring call quality can be challenging with a high volume of calls, as it’s not feasible to review each one and difficult to pinpoint the most common call handling errors. Here are some best practices for efficient call quality monitoring:
Automate the collection and analysis of call data
Call data includes elements like call recordings, live metrics, historical reports, and other metrics such as average handle time (AHT).
Many companies leverage AI-powered contact center analytics solutions to automatically capture this data during conversations. This software also aids in analyzing the data, facilitating the identification of unsuccessful calls and the reasons behind their failure. Ultimately, using the right software to automate data collection and analysis is crucial for establishing a systematic approach to monitoring call quality.
Listen to the recordings critically
Simply collecting metrics through automation doesn’t provide a complete understanding of where an agent or process might be underperforming. A deeper analysis is necessary to grasp the issues fully. This involves listening to call recordings and considering specific questions:
• Is the agent adhering to the script?
• What triggers customer friction? Are there specific talking points that precede it?
• What types of questions does the agent ask?
• At what point does the call start to deteriorate?
• Were there missed opportunities to clarify information?
• Does it appear that the agent lacks essential knowledge about the product?
A detailed and critical review of an agent’s conversations can reveal nuanced problems with their approach, enabling targeted coaching to enhance their performance significantly.
Track the impact of impact of any new processes
Whenever you implement a new call handling process or update your script, it’s essential to monitor the effects of these changes to determine their effectiveness. By tracking and comparing key team-wide metrics such as average handle time or customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) before and after these changes, you can assess whether there has been a notable improvement. If you see a positive shift in these metrics, your adjustments are working well. However, if there isn’t a significant improvement, it might indicate a misjudgment in identifying the initial problem, suggesting a need to revisit your strategy.
Conclusion
Monitoring call quality to enhance agent performance is a crucial task for leaders in contact centers. True progress in this area can only be achieved through continuous measurement and analysis of call quality.
If you are searching for a tool that supports call quality monitoring and improves agent performance through features such as agent dashboards and sentiment analysis, consider exploring what Born Digital offers.