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DECONSTRUCTING BENCHMARKS (Quality Assurance Criteria (Appropriate…
DECONSTRUCTING BENCHMARKS
Quality Assurance
Quality - a degree of excellence as measured against other similar things
Assurance - confidence or certainty
Before measuring - consider:
What are your top goals for customer service?
What areas of call center operations are ripe for improvement?
Metrics
Make sure your metrics are actionable
No one likes being told what they are doing is wrong without having the power and direction to improve.
QA is not just about monitoring and measuring; it should be about coaching and improvement
"This call may be monitored for quality and training purposes". Recording calls and regularly reviewing them for predetermined qualities should be a major function of your call center quality assurance team. Make sure your QA team has a well developed scorecard to measure the features of these recordings, rather than just listening and judging aimlessly.
Discuss with Trainers about the standards and how to ensure implementation for correct and developed scoring system (to ensure the system is unbiased)
Make QA efforts ongoing rather than merely periodic
Quality assurance is only effective as it is consistent. Make sure your QA system operates on an ongoing basis.
Use the call volume data collected by your CRM system to determine reliable off-peak times in your centre, and use this time for full-group, small-group or one-on-one coaching sessions.
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Use a combination of in-house and third party QA
Having an internal QA team saves money and increases buy-in from your agents, especially if the team has established a prove track record of being fair and trustworthy.
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An in-house QA team can change or re-calibrate various metrics at no additional cost to the call centre.
Compare to other call centres
DE (All centres) / IT (TH and Malta) / ES, UK, TH, FR (TH)
Establish benchmarking partners
What metrics are other call centres measuring?
What do their QA processes look like?
What are their quality assurance guidelines for call centre managers?
Get agents involved in developing quality assurance guidelines for the call centre
Agents become more engaged in a QA system that they helped to develop. Involve agents in decisions such a goal setting or scorecard development
Consider allowing agents to choose their own calls to be reviewed by QA - this removed the uncomfortable "gotcha" factor and can even make call selection more efficient (
agents can choose their best and worst call from the month to be reviewed
).
Call Centre Reporting
It's vital for the staff to understand the metrics and their implications
Create a metrics board with targets and actuals - keep them realistic and achievable - *Celebrate successes
Track a range of weekly and monthly reports
Weekly reports
Dashboard
Allows management to see at a glance how the call centre has performed the previous week, month, quarter or year
Contains call centre metrics and includes averages, actuals, and targets
Shows graphic representation of trends
States highs and lows, as well as steps taken to correct the lows
Team leaders and operational manager must understand these reports and their implications
Attendance / Absenteeism Reports
Attrition Reports
Weekly Metrics Board
Schedule Adherence Reports
Monthly Reports
Schedule Adherence Report
Monthly Agent Ranking Report
Monthly & Quarterly Dashboard
Quality Assurance Criteria
Appropriate greetings and other call scripts
Following correct procedures regarding holds and transfers
Upholding the culture and values of the call centre
Accurately capturing key customer data
Understanding customer needs
Providing customers with correct and relevant information
First contact resolution
Compliance with privacy acts, customer verification and other measures
Correct call coding
Grammar and spelling in text communication, such as email and chat
Quality Assurance Process
A quality assurance specialist / team leader listens to the recorded or live call and rates it using a comprehensive evaluation form
Keep QA simple focusing on 3-4 criteria
Each criterion should be assigned a number value, and is weighted based on its impact on customer satisfaction as wella s the call centre's goals and requirements
The scores are then added to create a final quality score for the call
QA is not limited to calls - CCs should also score emails as well as customer interaction
The QA specialist can also review the call with the agent as a coaching session to make improvements.
At least 2 calls per agent should be assesed each week
QA results should form part of the agent's key job performance metrics
Calibration sessions should be help once a week to make sure QA assessors are scoring consistently
Measuring call centre performance
Key Metrics / Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Concentrate on four key areas to maximise customer satisfaction and maintain an efficient, high-performance call centre
Telephone benchmarks / Call Centre KPI Descriptions
Service Level
Most common benchmark -
The global metric is 80% of calls answered in 20 secs
% of calls answered within a predetermined number of seconds
Average speed to answer (time to answer)
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The global metric is 28 seconds
Abandoned rate (% of calls lost before they can be answered)
The global metric is 5% - 8%
number of calls that hang up before they are connected to an agent
Call Handling Time (how long it takes the agent to complete the call)
The average amount of time spent on each call
Administrative duties associated with the call
First call resolution (% of calls can be resolved in a single call)
The ability to resolve the query or concern on the customer's first call
Transfer Rate (% of calls that have to be transferred to someone else to complete the call)
Idle Time (how much time does an agent spend after completion of call to finish the business from the call)
Hold Time (the agent keeping the caller on hold during the call
Efficiency benchmarks
Accuracy of call forecasting
The global metric is 5% variance
Adherence to schedule
Agents being on time for shifts and taking breaks according to their schedule -
The global metric is 95%
Call duration
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The amount of time spent speaking to customers on the telephone. The cost of the call will help curb long conversations -
the global metric is 4 mins per call
Call wrap up time
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Time taken for an agent to complete the case - this metric is very industry specific -
the global metric is 6 minutes
Occupancy / Utilisation
Occupancy measures the average percent of time an individual agent or all agents are actively occupied on a call (includes talk time and wrap up time) -
the global metric is 60-80%
"Big-picture" metric providing a high-level snapshot of how resources are being used. e.g. an 85% occupancy rate means that 15% of the CSR time is available and waiting for a call.
Occupancy is a group, queue or centre measure
Forecasting
Staffing
Workload offered by the calls and handle times
Higher occupancy rates do not always correlate to increased productivity
CCAs can handle shot bursts of increased activity
sustained high occupancy can lead to burnout and turnover
Consider call centre occupancy along with other factors
Productivity
Error rates
Quality scores
Employee satisfaction
Human resource benchmarks
Absenteeism
Unauthorised absences -
the global metric is 5%
Attrition
Annual staff turn over -
the global metric is 15%
Service benchmarks
Customer satisfaction
Critical benchmark
Quarterly customer surveys
Conducted by team leaders
With independent third party analysis
Quality assurance measurements
The global metric for customer satisfaction is 90%
Customer's measure of a contact centre's performance
First call resolution rate
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First call resolution rate measures the percentage of all calls that are resolved on the first attempt
This measure should improve as agents become more confident with the product and systems
The global metric is 70-75%
Quality assurance - based on a set of criteria which the agent must cover during the call
How the agent answers the call
How they navigate the caller to a resolution
How they end the call
Call Centre Agent KPI
Phone etiquette (agents' behaviour during the call)
Knowledge and professionalism (did the caller or the observer rate the agent's knowledge of the product or service being offered)
Adherence to procedures (did the observer determine the agent did the following the script or other procedures specified by the company for handling calls and callers)
Chose metrics that reveal key insights into customer experience emphasising quality and quantity equally
Average Handle (Hold) Time (AHT)
Considered to be the average speed to answer for a call
Time in the queue before being answered
To reduce hold time
Staff up to meet demand
Offer more or better self service
Reduce Handle time through improved processes
Training
System enhancements
Industry standards for forecasted average handle time (AHT) vs. actual AHT
Accurately forecasting the length of calls (AHT) is another critical component for determining the appropriate amount of resources required
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To calculate forecasted AHT vs AHTs - take the anticipate handle time multiplied by the "amount of calls that need to handled" to determine the staff you will need to meet call volume
Some call centres need to adjust handle times based seasonality or even by day and time. The best way to assess this is to look at historical data and see how it changes.
Historical data
Patterns
First Call Resolution (FCR)
What is first call resolution?
In customer relationship management (CRM), first call resolution is properly addressing the customer's need the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call. Talk time (the average time an agent spends on each call) is a common call center performance metric.
Resources
Call Center KPI
Measuring Call Center Performance - Global Best Practices
Talkdesk Infographic - Call Center Benchmarks Industry
Tips for benchmarking call center metrics
Metrics for success: Building efficiency through contact center metrics
Quality Assurance Guidelines for Call Center Managers
Talkdesk - 4 Call Center KPI Insights from Support Operations Lead
