Quality monitoring plays an important role in customer retention and business growth. Without this, companies lack the information they need to evaluate the customer experience. A business cannot improve if it does not know where it currently stands in relation to customer needs and company goals.
We, at Etech, believe that when it comes to contact centers, they must gain insights into operational effectiveness to improve the customer experience and the overall performance of the organization both. Our automated and advanced call center quality monitoring software, QEval, enhances the value of Etech’s quality management program with its several benefits like providing immediate feedback, distinguishing and quantifying coaching needs, gathering actionable insights into business and customer experience opportunities, recognizing and measuring agent behaviors, identifying marketing insights, and much more.
Customer Think believes that the best starting point is by identifying what key performance indicators contribute most to the bottom line. Businesses can then develop quality assurance scoring criteria around this. Note that KPIs differ from company to company and even between services, as each one may attract different demographics with different pain points.
In the past, price, product offering and quality best determined customer loyalty. These days, 86% of customers would pay a higher price if it meant getting better service. Call quality monitoring and developing QA criteria help to maintain that high quality of service. Here are some additional reasons this is so important.
Provides Guidance to Agents
The goal of customer service agents seems easy enough. Deescalate situations where emotions run high and help customers to get what they need. The problem is that there are many ways to do this and some methods work better than others. This depends on the company and the demographic it serves. Quality monitoring helps managers develop QA-based criteria, which in turn, creates a formula for success. Team members perform better when they know exactly what’s expected of them.
Provides Quality Control
One of the main reasons that companies monitor performance is to ensure quality control. Having criteria in place that team members can follow introduces an element of predictability. This is not to say that agents should follow a strict script, but rather, a clear guideline. It allows customers to develop expectations when they call a company, regardless of time and location. Forbes notes that if a company has quality control issues, it may underachieve in relation to its product and service delivery.
Easier Performance Reviews
A follow-up benefit of quality monitoring is that it makes it easier to review performance. Rather than give an opinion of why a team member is falling behind on goals, managers can show exactly where the team member may have gone wrong or needs to improve. This helps to keep coaching and training sessions objective, minimizing the likelihood of hurt feelings and resistance. If agents consistently fall short of a specific criterion then it pinpoints what they need additional training on.
Attracts Customer Feedback
Other companies point out that they use scorecards to gather feedback directly from the customer. This method of quality monitoring provides additional information managers can use during performance evaluations. Forbes notes three additional reasons companies should welcome customer feedback, even when it’s negative:
Companies can pay attention to customers’ likes and dislikes to improve the customer experience.
It makes customers feel involved and tells them that their opinions matter.
It provides fuel that companies can use for their own overall improvement.
Improves Customer Retention
These three pointers all contribute to better retention rates for companies. Note that whatever it costs a company to retain current customers, it costs five times that to attract new ones. In fact, increasing your retention rates by just 5% could see your profits climb from a 25% margin to 95%. Start with identifying your VIP customers. Find out the reason behind their loyalty and offer them more of what they love. Try not to focus too much on automating this. AI is great for analytics, but the human element is more important. People do not bond with bots.
Keeps the Business Compliant
If your business operates in particular industries, then it may need to comply with certain regulations. Insurance companies, banks and law firms tend to fall into this category. Also, the use of data is about to become highly regulated. The EU passed the GDPR to protect consumer data. California, home to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, followed up with the CCPA. New York has also proposed its own New York Privacy Act. Call center quality monitoring helps you to identify lapses before they become a legal headache.
Etech remains committed to monitoring call center performance. We believe that by evaluating agent interactions with customers, we find the tools we need for improvement. This helps us to hold on to customers longer while improving company ratings. Reach out to us today to find out more about our quality monitoring procedures.