Call Abandonment Rate & Importance – How to reduce it

Introduction

We all have sometimes connected with the customer support line and must wait a long before interacting with the agent. It becomes quite frustrating, and if the waiting period is long, we all hang up the call before even talking to the call center agent. Such calls are categorized as “abandoned calls”.

Call abandonment is considered evil for the call center business. This occurs more than one can imagine. Those who manage the customer support services could blame the customers; however, sometimes, it may be an agent’s fault. One cannot assume whom to blame as various factors are at play. It is difficult to eradicate such calls. However, the management team can strive to reduce the abandonment rate and move toward customer satisfaction.

Abandoned Call

Before learning about the call abandonment rate, we must learn about abandoned calls and what it is.

Abandoned calls can be defined as the calls that the customers disconnect before being connected with the call center agents. The reasons behind such calls are mostly the unclear interactive voice response systems and the irritation of long waiting times. Such calls look bad and have a negative impact on the call center business.

Call Abandonment Rate

Call abandonment rate means the percentage of customers disconnect calls before being connected. This rate is an important metric to evaluate the call center’s performance and to measure the customer satisfaction rate and the customer experience.

Importance of Reducing Abandoned Calls

By reducing the call abandonment rate, the call center business will be able to manage more calls and give excellent customer service. Customer retention may eventually suffer due to long waiting times, which harms customer satisfaction.

How to Reduce Call Abandonment Rate?

1. Virtual Queue

During the busiest times for the call centers, virtual queuing technology enables customers to hang up and get a callback when the next agent becomes available. If virtual queuing is chosen, customers can maintain their position in the line (or queue) without continuing to speak on the phone. Virtual queuing increases customer happiness and reduces costs because callbacks are made using less expensive outbound calls as opposed to incoming toll-free calls.

2. Callbacks

Customers should not initially be made to wait on hold for an agent, as this can help prevent abandoned calls. Customers’ time is saved and has a far better service experience when given the option of a callback rather than holding on to the phone for the agent. Customers also prefer a callback option vital as they don’t have to wait in long waiting lines.

3. Staff Management

The workforce is essential in providing amazing customer services and accomplishing organizational goals. Managing the workforce is also crucial for performing operational and functional tasks. As the agents are responsible for attending to the customers’ calls and offering resolutions, effectively scheduling the work shifts and the call loads help minimize the call abandonment rate. The leadership team must have enough staff to manage the call load. If not, the waiting period may increase, increasing the call abandoned rate and reducing the satisfaction rate. Staff and call scheduling can be done by monitoring past call trends and ensuring that the agents handle customers effectively.

4. Automation of the Repetitive Tasks

Repetitive tasks make the call center agents feel bored, making the work monotonous. Significantly, the repetitive tasks are automated to free up the agents to focus on customer interactions and solving their problems. This also improves the agents’ performance and boosts their morale, ultimately leading to effective customer-agent interactions and reducing the call abandonment rate.

5. Digitalization

In these digital times, organizations are using advanced call center tools and technology to ease the workload of their agents. Moreover, using the right tool and technology helps the agents to perform their duties or tasks effectively and efficiently. This improves their productivity and allows them to achieve their tasks quickly.

Using advanced call center technologies also includes the organizational presence on the internet through their well-versed websites. Such websites have FAQ pages allowing customers to find the right solutions to their problems.

6. Occupy Customer’s Time

Call centers can reduce the perceived waiting period by keeping the customer busy with a job or request. Callers are more likely to be productive if they are busy compiling all necessary data beforehand or looking up account numbers for identification. For example, rather than waiting, getting bored, wondering when they will speak to someone, or worse, getting irritated. Being ready for the call also helps reduce the time spent on the call itself. Customers may rapidly offer helpful information to the agents, cutting down on the time spent obtaining data.

Filling out a form with customers’ inquiries and any other relevant information before the interaction is allowed can be one way to fill out customers’ time.

Two Cents

Long waiting or hold period reduces the customers’ satisfaction and overall experience, ultimately impacting the customer retention rate. By reducing abandoned calls, businesses can handle more calls to resolve the customer’s issue, improving customer services quickly. Various tools like NEQQO allow the managing team to perform multiple tasks, including scheduling, monitoring agents’ performance, etc.

Quality Assurance Calibration, its importance, and the factors affecting its frequency

Quality Assurance Calibration

Quality assurance (QA) calibration is an essential component of the call center business as it helps to ensure that customers are receiving consistent and high-quality service from the agents. By regularly conducting this process, call centers can improve their overall performance and provide better experiences for their customers.

QA calibration is all about the process and the end result. With the help of calibration, the call center expects that all the touch points for customer and agent interactions are made clear and enforceable. The procedure consists mostly of the QA team having concentrated discussions and reviewing interactions & their results.

The end result is a robust and reliable QA program that supports call center agents in doing their best work in providing top-notch customer service.

Why Quality Assurance Calibration Sessions are required?

In the call center industry, customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance, and QA calibration helps to ensure that the company’s standards for customer service are being met.

There are various reasons why QA calibration should be conducted frequently and these reasons are:

1. QA Process Integrity

Holding regular QA calibration sessions help maintain the integrity of the QA process. Without regular calibration, the evaluations performed by different members of the QA team may vary, leading to inconsistency and potential errors. By holding regular calibration sessions, the QA team can ensure that everyone is using the same criteria and standards when evaluating the quality of a product or service.

2. Open Discussions

Another benefit of regular QA calibration sessions is that they provide an opportunity for the QA team to discuss any challenges or issues they are facing. This can be particularly useful if the team is evaluating a new or complex product, or if there have been any changes to the quality standards being used. During the calibration session, the team can share their experiences and ideas, and work together to find solutions to any problems that may have arisen.

3. The quality of products and services

Regular QA calibration sessions can also help improve the overall quality of the products or services being evaluated. By ensuring that the QA team is consistently using the same criteria and standards, the evaluations performed during these sessions can help identify potential issues or areas for improvement. This information can then be used to make changes to the product or service, ultimately resulting in a higher-quality end product.

Additionally, QA calibration can help to identify any potential issues or concerns that may be impacting the customer experience.

Quality Assurance Calibration Sessions

QA calibration sessions are an important part of any quality assurance program. These sessions help ensure that all members of the QA team are on the same page when it comes to evaluating the quality of a product or service.

But how often should these calibration sessions be held?

The frequency of QA calibration sessions depends on a number of factors, including the size of the QA team, the complexity of the products or services being evaluated, and the rate at which the products or services are changing. In general, it is a good idea to hold calibration sessions at least once every quarter, or four times per year; however, it has been noticed that most call center businesses conduct QA calibration on a monthly basis. This ensures that the QA team stays up-to-date and consistent in their evaluations.

At the same time, there are multiple factors at play that influences the frequency of calibration sessions. These factors are:

1. Company’s Growth Rate

As time passes, the customer support segment of successful companies and call centers expands eventually. The growth of consumer awareness about your brand results in more inquiries for your agents. Having more customers generally results in increased revenue, so that’s a good thing. No customer support team or call center can afford to let their QA program lapse, especially as they grow. The growing company continuously attracts modifications in QA strategies and calibration processes, making it difficult to implement frequent calibration sessions.

2. Rising workload

As your customer base expands, the management team needs to hire more agents to handle the influx of inquiries the call center will undoubtedly receive. Additionally, more agents mean more work for your QA analysts. Your agents’ productivity may be impacted if they are simply unable to keep up with demand because they are in charge of monitoring and evaluating your agents’ performance.

Everyone stays focused and is reading from the same page when adjustments are made based on team size. Calibration sessions are crucial when adding new analysts to your QA team to ensure that everyone is aware of what to look for during assessments. Being well-informed may enable them to almost start from scratch, which is something they must be able to do.

3. Informing the agents about the calibration & its fairness

Everyone, including the call center agents, needs to be aware of the objectives, strategies, and procedures used in the QA calibrations. Agents are likely to be more responsive when they understand that they have access to the data obtained from monitoring their roles. This includes involving the call center agents at all levels in QA calibration sessions. Make sure that everyone is aware of what calibration is, how it affects the QA program, and the various responsibilities involved in the calibration process. Additionally, set up a regular standard calibration in keeping with the organizational plans for growth and employment.

Apart from this, the leadership team must make sure that all the call center agents are assured about the fairness of QA calibration and how calibrations are conducted i.e., without biasness.

4. QA Calibration Results

After the QA calibration is finished, analysts can readily incorporate the results into their regular responsibilities and duties. Scorecards are a quick and easy way for analysts to gauge performance because they are based on issues discovered during calibrations. Customers will get an amazing experience as the call center agents themselves will know what counts the most in their conversations. Analysts can properly assess the agents’ performance which includes the handling times, reaction times, and failure rates.

It is important to note that QA calibration sessions should not be used as a replacement for regular training and development for the QA team. While calibration sessions are focused on ensuring consistency in evaluations, training, and development, it also focuses on helping the QA team improve their skills and knowledge.

Conclusion

Regular QA calibration sessions are an important part of any quality assurance program. These sessions help maintain the integrity of the quality assurance process, provide an opportunity for the QA team to discuss challenges and issues, and can ultimately improve the overall quality of the products or services being evaluated. It is recommended to hold these sessions at least once every quarter to make sure that the workforce is at par with the customer service standards.

Improvement of Quality Assurance Practices in the Call Center

Introduction

In today’s competitive world, it is difficult to stay in business; therefore, making it essential to continuously improve operations and functions. This is also applicable to the call center business. To stay in the picture, the call centers implement effective measures to improve customer interactions and their overall experience.

Effective Quality Assurance (QA) practices in call centers are crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as improving overall efficiency and productivity. By continuously evaluating and improving the quality of customer interactions, call centers can identify areas for improvement and take action to address them.

Let us learn more about QA and ways to improve it…

Quality Assurance

QA refers to the process of ensuring that a product or service meets the established standards of quality. In call center businesses, QA practices involve improving the quality of agent-customer interactions and support provided by agents. This can include evaluating calls, emails, or other communication channels to ensure that agents are providing accurate and helpful information to customers, as well as handling customer inquiries and concerns in a timely and professional manner.

Ways to Improve Quality Assurance Practices

QA practices in call centers play a crucial role in ensuring customer satisfaction and improving overall efficiency. In recent years, there has been a push to improve QA practices in call centers, and there are several ways in which this can be achieved. These ways are:

Advanced Call Center Technology

One way to improve QA practices in call centers is through the use of technology. Today, advanced technology is capable of handling monotonous tasks which becomes boring for a human. For example, call centers can implement automated call-scoring systems that use algorithms to analyze calls and provide real-time feedback to agents. These systems can help identify areas where agents may need additional training or coaching, and can also provide a record of calls for future reference.

Customer Feedback

Another way to improve QA practices in a call center is through the use of customer feedback. It is based on the method of asking directly from the service or product recipient. By soliciting feedback from customers, call centers can identify areas where they are excelling and areas where they need to improve. This can be done through surveys, social media, or other channels. By actively seeking out and addressing customer feedback, call centers can ensure that they are meeting the needs and expectations of their customers.

Training and Development

Another important aspect of improving QA practices is training and development. Sometimes, call centers push newly hired agents to deal with customers with just initial general training. It is crucial to provide specific and detailed training to uplift the agents’ confidence and skills. By providing continuous training and development opportunities for agents, call centers can make sure that they are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to handle customer inquiries and concerns effectively. This can include training on customer service best practices, product knowledge, and communication skills.

Policies and Procedures

In addition to training and development, it is important for call centers to have clear policies and procedures in place. This includes guidelines for handling difficult customers, escalation procedures, and protocols for handling sensitive information. By having effective policies and procedures, call centers can ensure that agents are able to handle a variety of situations well and efficiently.

Implementation of Performance Metrics

Another way to improve QA practices in call centers is through the use of performance metrics. By setting clear performance goals and tracking progress towards those goals, call centers can identify areas where improvements are needed and take action to address them. This can include metrics such as average call length, first call resolution rate, and customer satisfaction scores. By tracking and analyzing these metrics, call centers can identify patterns and trends and take action to address any issue that may arise.

Experienced Management Team

The management team is the one that handles the days to day operations with long-term goals in sight. Call centers must have experienced and skilled managers who can deal with a variety of issues or situations and improve operations. An effective manager also provides feedback to the agents by monitoring their performance to make sure that the skills of the agents are improving, ultimately uplifting the customer experience.

Continuous Improvement Culture

Finally, it is important for call centers to foster a culture of continuous improvement. This means encouraging an open and honest dialogue about challenges and opportunities for improvement and being proactive in seeking out and implementing solutions. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, call centers can ensure that they are always striving to be better and meeting the needs of their customers.

Conclusion

We have learned that there are several ways in which QA practices in call centers can be improved. Through the use of technology, customer feedback, training and development, clear policies and procedures, performance metrics, and a culture of continuous improvement, call centers can ensure that they are providing the highest level of service possible to their customers. By investing in these practices, call centers can not only improve customer satisfaction but also increase efficiency and productivity, leading to long-term success and growth.

Call Center Training- New Strategies

Introduction

Leading companies in the call center sector have an ongoing struggle with training programs. Agents must be trained to use new tools and technologies effectively and not only to meet but exceed high customer expectations.

The significance of effective training stands strong despite the fact that call center training comes in a variety of forms and that new coaching techniques are constantly being created. Agent performance is key to a call center’s success, and for that, the agents require proper training.

Call Center Training Overview

In these evolving times, call center training has been modified tremendously. Just hiring the agents, giving them a quick overview, and pushing them into production are not enough. The leadership team has to be clever in the creation of approaches related to training programs. This means considering training programs as a continuous process and not considering it to be a one-time occurrence at the start of an agent’s job. The management of a call center can adopt a data-driven method to identify the gaps and improvement areas and use such information to create a modified training program and improve the skillsets of each individual agent.

Call Center Training Importance

The question that arises here is why call center training is important? As it is well-known that call center agents are the key component of a successful call center business, it is also necessary that the agents have all the required tools and technologies to showcase their skills and abilities. With the rise of online customer service channels after the COVID pandemic, the call center business is more significant than ever. With the continuous rise of customer expectations, agents must be prepared to meet such expectations. The right training approach plays an essential role in the career development and retention of call center agents. Training boosts the professional as well as personal growth of the agents to reach their overall potential. An effective training program creates interest in new agents or talent.

As a whole, the right training approach leads to a successful call center business and happy call center agents.

Call Center Training Strategies

To create an operational training strategy, the leaders must ensure that the right balance is maintained to meet the requirements of the business as well as that of the agents. This means that training must improve the productivity and efficiency of the call center agents along with reinforcing the significance of emotions and empathy for customer interactions. Training could be based on any topic but the essential thing is that it must be relevant, appropriately guided, and must be measurable.

Some of the best training approaches for call center businesses are:

Effective Customer Dealing

Dealing with challenging clients is standard practice at a call center. Customers typically contact businesses with complaints or problems they want to solve, so they could be agitated when they first speak with the agents. Because of this, it’s crucial that call center agents are prepared to handle such clients. The foundation of any agent-customer relationship is based on empathy and emotions, and this is especially true for those consumers who might be a little trickier to interact with. Agents must actively listen to the customer to guarantee that they understand the issue and are able to explain the solution to a consumer. Agents should continue to work on their soft skills and must have proper knowledge of the offered products or services in order to manage these interactions successfully. This will ensure that the agents have interpersonal skills to deal with a challenging client and the technical expertise to address any product or services related problems.

Modified Training Programs

At the beginning of the employment, general training is provided to the call center agents to complete the onboarding process. However, it is necessary that specialized training is provided to the agents to ensure that they perform best to their ability. By monitoring the interaction of agents-consumers and analyzing the scorecards, the leadership team can identify shortfalls or gaps and improvement areas for every individual agent. Such findings can be used to develop a modified training program to improve the agents’ skills and reduce their weaknesses. With the continuous use of such evaluation, leaders can also keep a check on the improvements after training and if any, changes are required in the training programs.

Agents’ Involvement in the Training Program

Collaboration is the main ingredient of an effective training program. The involvement of agents in the training program makes them feel important. This allows the leadership team to include the points regarding the issues being faced by the feet on the ground. Offering a training program to the agents without their involvement sometimes fails to engage them. Nowadays, call center businesses have a single platform for leaders and agents to encourage transparency and a specialized training program can be developed based on the performance findings on the dashboard. This leads to the engagement of the agents and also boosts their morale throughout the company.

Continuous Training Programs

As stated before, training is not a one-time event during the onboarding process of the employee. It is a continuous process with in-depth training sessions on a specialized topic. In today’s evolving business culture, it is significant that the skills and practices of call center agents are evolved and improved from time to time. New tools and technologies are being introduced on a regular basis; therefore, effective training programs allow call center agents to learn about such tools and technologies.

Conversation Scripts

In this digital world, businesses are using artificial intelligence for task automation and efficient working. At the same time, AI is also considered an important training tool. AI can keep a track of customer interactions, streamlining such interactions, offering real-time responses, and making sure that the call center agents stick to the best practices and rules and regulations of the call center. By going through the agent-customer interactions, leaders and agents can create the best scripts to provide quick solutions to the issues and train the agents on the best solutions during the interactions.

Conclusion

With the rise in advanced call center technologies and the expectations of consumers, it is crucial that the leadership team creates effective and futuristic training strategies to be at par with the upcoming demands or expectations. Well-performing agents lead the call center business to new heights and achieve the set targets. Through a quality management tool like NEQQO, calls’ data can be used to create effective training approaches which are specialized to the skillsets of every agent. Such platforms support the operations to improve productivity, maintain compliance, and track call records to create effective training pathways.

Ways to Improve Customer Experience

Introduction

In a perfect business world, everything goes as per our plans and the desired objectives are achieved. However, businesses always have space to improve their processes or services. This also applies to the customer service business. In such businesses, the entities are focused on adopting the best practices to deliver the highest possible customer experience.

With technological advancement, it becomes easier to connect with customers and each of these modes or channels has further opportunities to improve for seamless and continuous interactions.

We must recognize the need to learn “why customer experience should be improved?”. A positive experience helps make the customer loyal. Such loyal customers become your promoters, and regular customers, and like to spread the entity’s products and values.

It is essential to provide an amazing customer experience. In call centers, call center agents are the face of your organization, and the responsibility of delivering quality customer services lies on them. This means that the supervisor must ensure that improving skillsets are also included in development/improvement plans.

There are various ways to improve the experience provided to the customers and some of these best practices are:

1. Know Your Customers

One of the most important tactics and the foundation of improving the CX is “to know what your customer wants”. This includes the skills and knowledge of your call center agents and how much they know about the type of customers they are dealing with and providing their services to.

Apart from customer expectations and demographics, the call center agents must know the customers personally i.e., their personal information, habits, working hours, and so on. As the call center agents are the face of the call center business, putting a face on your customers according to their behavior and expectations might also help your team to picture the customers they are interacting with.

For example, Information to put a face on your customer may include knowing about their:

This will help improve the customer experience and the quality of services provided by the call center agents.

2. Customer Journey Roadmap

Before implementing any customer experience improvement plan, the creation of a customer roadmap is a great way, to begin with. A customer journey roadmap means tracking every customer’s interactions with your organization. It also includes interactions or engagement with your organization beyond getting any services or buying any product, such as advertising, social media interactions, and so on.

It is also essential that while creating the roadmap, a wide range of metrics must be considered by your call center agents, including your teams’ opinions about the customers. This also includes the pre- & post-sale experience of the customers.

While creating a roadmap, all the touch points with the customers and their experience must be recorded. This helps your call center team to improve the understanding of the customers’ requirements and wants by focusing on their journey. This allows your team to identify the shortfalls and focus on improving the customer experience.

3. Equip and Motivate your Call Center Team

Customer experience is mostly dependent on the interaction with the call center agents. Therefore, it is significant that all the required tools are provided to the agents. If the agents are unequipped with the desired tools, it can have an impact on their performance. Latest and digital tools must be provided to the team and the supervisor must make sure that old and depleted tools are replaced timely.

It must also be made sure that your team is motivated to perform well and deliver quality services. If the agents are not motivated, this can have an impact on the customer experience. From including them in important decisions to involvement in fun activities, boosting your team’s morale is a crucial task with an ultimate impact on customer and employee retention.

To make sure that quality services are provided to the customers, your call center team must be properly equipped and motivated. For this:

4. Customer Interaction Personalization

Delivering quality services for a positive customer experience is dependent on interaction with the call center agents. Personalization is a great way to have an amazing interaction between two persons. This also applies to call center services. Creating a connection with the customer helps improve the interaction and helps offer a positive experience.

This can be done by empowering your call center team to create a connection by:

5. Reduce Customer Efforts

The simple process is the best process. Customers love quick & immediate services, fast communications, and one-check solutions. And they expect the same from call center businesses.

This means that with fewer customer efforts, satisfactory and quick solutions must be provided by the team. It can be done by:

6. Customer Feedback & Implementation

As the call center business revolves around the customers and their experience, making customers a part of the improvement plan is important. Taking feedback from customers is significant to improve the quality of your services. It also helps identify the gaps in providing quality services and delivering a positive customer experience. This also allows you to create loyal customers; however, it is crucial that the organization implement the changes as per customer reviews.

In this digitally-advanced world, there are multiple ways to connect with customers and such channels can be used to get feedback as well. Surveys are considered to be one of the quickest and simplest forms to ask for customer feedback.

Conclusion

Going through the above-mentioned description, it is understood that there is a continuous need to improve the customer experience. From gaining a customer’s loyalty to earning profits or goodwill, every metric of the call center business is surrounded by the customer experience.

It is also vital that improvement plans are implemented proactively to make sure that quality services are delivered and a positive customer experience is created. Identifying and overcoming the issues with proactive solutions allow the business to go a long way.

Call Center Agents, Their Importance, & Ways to Improve their Performance

Call Center Agents

From being the call centers’ face to handling customer issues, call center agents hold a significant place in customer services.

These are those individuals who are the contact point of an organization and its customers as agents are the ones who converse with the customers and handle their issues. Based on the nature of the call center, agents handle the calls accordingly. Mostly, these are those people who have people skills, have creative thinking to resolve problems, and have adequate knowledge about the call center business.

Importance of Call Center Agents

Call center agents hold an essential place in offering solutions to the customers’ issues, easing the customers’ anxiety levels, and supporting the call centers they represent. There are various customers who feel unsettled and want to interact with the service providers on live calls, adding call center agents to the equation.

From the customers’ perspective, call center agents are solution providers of the customers’ queries and are those individuals who provide positive experiences to the customers, resulting in their retention.

From the organization’s perspective, the agents represent the call center and are the middle point of every process. Their performance leads to higher customer retention, repetitive business, higher profits, and goodwill.

Therefore, it is understood that call center agents play an essential role in customer handling as well as accomplishing business objectives.

How to Improve Call Center Agents’ Performance

Being an integral part of both world (customers & business), it is crucial that the performance of the agents are on-point every time. Non-performance of the agents impacts the business, customer retention, and brand value. Therefore, it is vital that the performance of the agents must be improved with the passing of time.

Here are the few points that an organization must follow to improve the performance of its call center team:

1. Ongoing Training at every level

This is the most common and most important practice followed by call center businesses. We all know that general training is provided to the new agents to make them aware of their roles and responsibilities.

However, to improve the skillsets and understanding of the agents, from time to time, continuous training must be organized for the call center agents. If such training is not organized, the call center agents would feel stuck in a dead-end job and it can affect their performance, ultimately impacting the customer experience. By establishing a continuous training schedule, the agents stay motivated and it becomes easier to retain them.

2. Best Practices for Most-frequent Problems

Knowledge, understanding, and skills of call center agents are the true power of customer service businesses. The supervisors can provide a list of best practices for the most common issues faced by the customers. This can help increase productivity with quick and immediate solutions.

For this, experienced agents and supervisors can get together to create an effective guide to provide solutions for the common issues faced by consumers. With such a guide, the call center agents can have the best practices to be followed in different scenarios. It also leads to improvement in the call center agent’s performance.

3. Single Entry Point for the team

Complex structures of today’s call centers create various entry points that develop a huge pile of data daily. This makes it difficult to track every interaction of any particular customer. For this, businesses use digital tools.

With the use of specialized digital tools, call center agents can access customers’ data easily without any hassle. It also allows the agents to create an image of the customers and use their skills to interact accordingly. Through this, the agents’ performance is improved and customer issue resolution is decreased.

4. Let Them Speak & Be a Good Listener

Listening to the views and opinions of the call center agents is one of the most common, yet effective modes to make sure that the agents are happy. This makes them feel important and can improve their understanding of the process and their mindset on how they are supposed to work.

The individuals who feel respected and valued at the workplace turn out to have more admiration for their managers or employers, ultimately improving the organization’s retention rate.

Listening to the agents will give a reality check of the ground-level workings. This also gives the management an overview of where the agents stand and where improvement is required.

5. Intelligent Call Routing

Call center agents feel stressed when they are unable to resolve the customer’s issues independently. It also becomes frustrating for them when they have to deal with low-end issues repeatedly.

For this, nowadays, call centers are investing in advanced technology which automatically leads the customers to specialized call center agents for dealing with the issues. This saves money, effort, and time of the call center, customers, and agents by reducing churn and dealing with the specified problems. It helps make the agents happy, ultimately leading to an improvement in their performance.

Tools of Quality Assurance

Introduction

Businesses are established to offer products & services as per market or customers’ needs and to earn goodwill and profits. Such businesses require effective quality assurance to make them thrive. The implementation of quality assurance tools assists businesses in constantly monitoring the overall performance and making plans to overcome the issues.

In this digital world, there are various quality assurance tools that are implemented to uplift businesses’ performance to the next level. However, not all the tools are beneficial for businesses but the following are some of the tools that are valuable for businesses:

1. Learning Management System (LMS)

The benefit of monitoring the position of your call center is that all the lessons learned can be implemented. LMS is a system that assists a call center business to simplify customer service training by bridging the information gaps with improvement plans and learning. In simple words, it can be said that LMS allows you to apply your learning and skills to customer service training. This tool is an all-in-one training solution that focuses on offering training to call center agents anytime & anywhere. This includes:

In the quality assurance process, LMS focuses on developing and improving the skills of the call center agents for ensuring the call quality to provide quick and helpful solutions to the customers’ needs.

2. Scorecards

From schools to multi-million businesses, scorecards are used everywhere for monitoring performance. It is essential that one must know where he/she stands to further grow and develop the skill sets. Scorecards lay the foundation for the implementation of an effective quality assurance process. When a manager evaluates phone calls, emails, chats, etc., scorecards let the manager consider each & every communication.

There are various ways to keep a tap on your agents’ performance, including numeric & non-numeric, and holistic scorecards. It allows the managers to reach the root cause of the problem and develop & implement strategies to improve the call center agent’s performance.

A scorecard is considered an influential quality assurance tool that is designed to:

3. Voice Logger

This recording tool is considered one of the most supportive and learning tools. While using this tool, the interactions between the customers and the call center agents are recorded and are considered a subject of training and quality. This means it displays real-life examples of letting the call center agents know what and what not to do under different circumstances. When the calls are recorded and archived, managers/leaders and call center agents can learn, monitor, and implement the best practices. This allows the call center businesses to monitor and identify the issues from the perspective of the customers and even the call center agents. Issues can be resolved by listening to the call logs and highlighting what went wrong, and implementing the changes immediately.

4. Call Snooping

Sometimes, your call center agents get nervous or overwhelmed when the supervisor is listening to the live call. This is where call snooping comes in. Call snooping means monitoring and reviewing the interaction between the agent and customers without causing any disturbance. This tool simply lets the supervisor listen to the interaction. This tool also lets the supervisor randomly listen to the calls and see how they perform and monitor whether the customers’ queries are resolved or not.

5. Analysis Surveys

While keeping a check on the performance and professional behavior of the call center agents, it is also necessary to take feedback from the call center customers. Sending a survey is the most common way of taking feedback and interacting with customers to analyze their sentiments. Such surveys are directly linked with the customer satisfaction level and the call center agents’ performance. These surveys are combined with other tools like scorecards to compare the call center agents’ performance aligned with the comments of customers. This offers an overall view of the operations and lets you spot its positive and negative aspects. By collecting and displaying the customers’ feedback, managers or supervisors must make sure that such feedback is forwarded to the call center agents to improve their performance.

6. Text and Speech Analytics

As the name suggests, text analytics is a tool that focuses on text interactions between customers and call center agents. Text analytics reviews customers’ issues and gathers data found in chats, posts, emails, and so on. This tool provides you with a complete view of the customer’s issues, the reason for those issues, and how the call center agents are responding to those issues. This tool allows the call center businesses to uncover:

Speech Analytics (SA) is one of the great quality assurance tools that focus on speech recognition and text analytics to review and study communication with customers. This tool gathers and evaluates each interaction with customers automatically. SA allows a business to conduct deep searches to spot:

Conclusion

The quality assurance tools help the call center businesses identify the customers’ issues to improve the call center agent’s performance. This advanced call center technology allows supervisors to create suitable strategies to provide quick and helpful resolutions to customers’ queries. These tools help retain the agents, improve the customer satisfaction rate, and meet the customers’ needs with the call center agent’s performance.

Customer Experience, its importance, and Customer Experience Management

Introduction

In a customer service business, there are high chances of engaging in unpleasant and unexpected communication with customers. However, the call center agents have to make sure that a positive experience is provided to the customers along with quick resolutions of their queries. A happy customer is the foundation of a successful business and such satisfied customers become loyal customers, resulting in the promotion of your business to boost profits. The best way to promote your business is through a positive customer experience as a loyal customer promotes & advocates your services.

Customer experience plays a significant role in paving the way to a successful business. Thus, offering an amazing experience to the customers becomes important to retain customers and earn big profits. Even after best practices, sometimes, customers are left with a negative experience that may blow up in your face (in terms of customer retention & profits).

To understand the importance, it is necessary to learn what customer experience actually is.

Customer Experience (CX)

CX can be defined as an impression that customers have of your products & services throughout their journey as a buyer. In simple words, CX means the image that a customer creates of your brand or services after the customer deals with your brand. It is considered an essential factor that may have an impact on your revenue. The primary factors that generate the CX are products and individuals.

There are numerous factors that are at play while developing or creating a wonderful CX. Some of these factors involve questions like, “Are you impressed by the product or services of the company?” or “Do you feel pleased by the support offered by the call center agents to resolve your issues?”

Importance of CX

In this competitive world, CX is considered one of the most crucial factors for a successful business. A positive CX is most likely to be converted into customer loyalty which leads to customer retention, promotes loyalty, and boosts the brand promotion.

Nowadays, power lies in the hands of the customers and not the sellers. This is due to a worldwide digital network called “the Internet”. Customers have huge options to choose from at the click of their fingertips and learn themselves about the products & services they require.

This makes it essential for businesses to focus on the customers and their experiences, leading the customers to continue coming back to them. If such customers become permanent, they help skyrocket your business with constant interaction and word-of-mouth promotions for your products or services.

There are multiple metrics that can be used to measure CX including, Customer Effort Score (CES), Average Response Time (APS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS), and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Such metrics can be implemented by the supervisor to measure CE and create strategies to further improve the CX.

Customer Experience Management (CXM)

CXM is a process in which customer interactions with your call center agents are monitored, analyzed, and improved. CXM focuses on customer needs, their interactions with the call center agents, and the development of strategies to enrich their experience. CXM is an essential element of a customer-first plan as it shows your investment in the customer’s wants. By reviewing the metrics related to the customer journey, businesses constantly move toward creating more value for the customers.

It is necessary for all businesses to add value for the old as well as the new customers. As we know, new customers require quick results and quality services to further continue to deal with your business. This means that if businesses don’t add any value with the passing time, customers lose interest and leave them for the benefits provided by their competitors. It can be said that CXM focuses on the customers & their needs and offers them benefits to prevent them to go elsewhere.

Conclusion

To create a pleasing customer experience, businesses create a customer journey pathway, note customer characters, develop positive interactions with the customers, act on customers’ opinions, and offer quality services. Being a customer-centric business, customer support services focuses on providing quality services which ultimately results in customer retention. In this technologically advanced world, digital call center tools are used by the call centers to keep a track of operations and customer experience. Customer experience management also monitors the interactions between the customers and the call center agents and focuses on the customer experience. Effective implementation of CXM and related strategies results in an improvement in customer services, leading to an increased retention rate.

Quality Monitoring & its Best Practices

Introduction

Building a reputation takes a lifetime and only takes a second to destroy. This applies to customer service businesses as well. Every call center goes all-out to provide the best customer experience; however, a single bad experience may lead the customers to bid adieu.

Call center quality monitoring makes sure that as a service provider, you’re responsive to the customer’s needs. To make customer interaction better, the management adopts several practices which we will discuss here.

Quality Monitoring (QM)

QM is a process that focuses on customer interaction alignment with the set business goals. QM identifies the customers’ issues, improves customers’ experience, and establishes a set communication process with loyal and new customers.

QM in call centers helps improve the agents’ performance and enhances the customers’ satisfaction level. If the interactions are of utmost quality, the volume (handling time) decreases, and the key indicators like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and NPS (Net Promoter Score) increase.

Best QM Practices

Since all the call centers run on their unique business model and approach, it is essential that specified practices are followed to align with your business requirements and goals.

Following are a few best practices that provide assistance in creating the QM process, improving the quality, and fulfilling the QM tasks effectively and efficiently:

1. Self-Assessing your current position

To enhance QM, the company should understand the customer’s interest in using their services and how the company may move forward with the competition by their side. Market research and customer feedback can bridge the call centers’ shortfalls and satisfies them. Assistance from third-party consultants can be acquired to get an unbiased and neutral view. Assessing the current business position allows you to create a plan to attain the set goals and meet customer needs.

2. Developing a Strategy

One of the best practices in CCQM is developing a strategy and sticking to it without any failure. After getting a clear picture from the self-assessments, an assessment of required changes could be made. This may require a lot of data points; however, classifying the adversely affecting metrics and planning to fix them is the key to meeting the goals. Moreover, the call centers must establish dynamic goals and move towards achieving them to ensure that the overall quality is improved.

3. Calls Recording and Monitoring

The most significant and essential call center practice is to listen to customer & agent interactions. To train the agents better and improve the quality, it is essential that customer calls are monitored effectively. This practice helps identify the average handling time, occupancy rate, satisfaction rate, net-promoter scale, and first-call resolution. This gives a clearer picture of the best, worst, or most extended customer calls.

In such scenarios, the implementation of advanced call center technology like speech analytics can help accomplish quality monitoring goals. As different customers have different needs, it is significant that call center agent interacts with the customers accordingly. Recording the customer interaction calls and real-time call monitoring can offer a broader view and help the call center managers/leaders to develop a better call script for customer interaction.

4. Make one person/team accountable to manage the QM process

Having a manager or evaluator lookout for the whole team of agents may be difficult; if possible, hiring someone with experience in QM practices can give the best outcome. Since a single person or a team is handling the QM process, this allows the person/team to take effective measures like coaching sessions or call monitoring to improve the quality. Moreover, if any call center agent requires assistance, such a person knows whom to reach out to. In simple words, the person handling the QM will offer support to the call center agents to improve their skill sets and uplift the customer satisfaction level.

5. Stick to the best call scripts

For increasing the customer satisfaction level, it is significant that the call center agent understands the customer’s needs clearly. Sticking up with a good call script may help the call center agents understand the customer’s needs by engaging them for a long time. Utilizing the most worked scripts can create a good impression on customers, help in receiving feedback, and improve the call quality. Involving the employees in developing the scripts may help move the mountain.

6. Offer Room for dispute

The call center must offer little room for agents to dispute the feedback received from the customers. This will be considered just and wise to develop the QM practices. It makes the agents feel that they have a voice and skin in the process, which can enhance productivity. Such disputes allow the call center agents to improve their skills, leading them to handle such situations like a pro. This also means that the call center agents must be provided timely feedback and its evaluation must be tracked constantly. This allows the call center agents to monitor their performance from time to time.

Now let’s conclude…

QM is a rich source of data and observation that allows the call center business to accomplish the set objectives and serve the customers as per their needs. To implement the QM effectively, advanced call center technology such as analytics, recording, and monitoring software can also be used. Through QM, a business can identify the issues, create an appropriate strategy, & implement it to improve the shortfalls and uplift the customer experience.

Checklist of Customer Service Quality Monitoring

With increasing competition and diversifying markets, the manner in which the companies offer their services has become the main differentiating factor in any industry. And thus, customer service is at the heart of any business activity. Good customer service ensures customer retention and brand loyalty. This is where “Customer Service Quality Monitoring” comes into the picture. Establishing a well-structured and efficient Quality Monitoring (QM) Program is a must for any customer service operation. However, developing and maintaining an efficient QM program can be a confusing and hectic task. This can be made a bit easier, by using a Customer Service QM Checklist. Let us learn, what is it, why is it important, what needs to be included in a checklist, and more.

BASICS OF A CUSTOMER SERVICE QM CHECKLIST : What? A Customer Service QM Checklist is an essential tool and the first step towards establishing a strong Customer Service Quality Monitoring Program. One can design a checklist, in line with one’s goal of a QM program. The content of the checklist will also differ depending on the business activity, the strength of the customer service team, the demographic of customers, and other factors. Whom? The QM checklist will be essential at all levels of a QM program and for all stakeholders involved.

Why? Customer Service in itself is a diverse area with lots of factors and metrics to cover. Therefore, it is important to design a QM program that covers all the basic items and also meets the organization’s goals. It will also help you identify gaps that need working, manage teams’ as well as customers’ expectations, and ensure best practices are followed, among others.

ITEMS IN A CUSTOMER SERVICE QM CHECKLIST : To prepare a holistic QM checklist, let us divide our requirements into broad categories. These categories are as follows: Productivity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Tone. Let us understand these categories individually and learn what items of the QM checklist will fall under which category.

Productivity : This category simply means how much workload a customer service agent can handle in a given shift. An agent will be called more productive if she provides satisfactory service to more customers in a given period of time. This depends on an agent’s ability to manage her time and organize her tasks effectively. The items under the Productivity Checklist of a QM program are as follows:

Effectiveness : This parameter identifies how successful is the customer service operation running. The main goal of any customer service operation is to satisfy the customers with whatever request or query they come up with. The items under the Effectiveness category check how satisfied the customers are. These items are as follows:

Efficiency : This category stresses on striking balance between productivity and effectiveness. This will ensure how effectively and how quickly a solution is delivered to a customer. This category also reflects how easily an agent handles the entire workflow. The items under the Efficiency Checklist of a QM program are as follows:

Tone : This parameter checks the emotional intelligence of your agents. The items under the checklist of this category cover respect, empathy, and the positive attitude of your agents. A positive attitude and empathy provide a personal touch to customers that enhances their overall experience with the product and company. Although this category could include a large number of items, we would choose the most important ones. The items under the Tone Category Checklist of a QM program include:

Although the write-up included all the basic essentials of a QM program checklist, it cannot be exhaustive. As per one’s product and business requirements, there can be more items listed under each category. The whole idea behind forming a checklist is to formulate a QM program with awareness of what one actually wants.

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