Remote Monitoring

[Tech Head]

Hi All,

We have a few call centers overseas and have been receiving quality complaints in regards to both technical competence and communication. They are fairly new centers, so it is expected.

To help isolate where the problems are and to help improve, we have increased our remote monitors, but dont' know how many we should be doing.

Does anyone know what the industry standard is for remote monitoring an outsourcer?

Also, we have been requiring them to do 3 monitors per agent per month. We'll be moving that up to 4 pretty soon.

Thanks!

[ctaylor]

Tech:

The more you monitor, the more you will discover and the faster the agents will progress up the learning curve.

The rule of thumb that I have used is that new agents should be monitored daily until their performance reaches the targeted quality level, thereafter they should be monitored once a week at minimum. Of course if their performance drops out of the acceptable range, you need to 'kick-up' the monitoring again.

The monitoring must go 'hand in hand' with effective cooaching which is completed in 'real-time' (rather than delayed to some point in time remote from the actual call in question.

I hope that this information is helpful. If I can be of any further assistance please contact me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin

[Tron Jordheim]

Who is doing your monitoring and how hve you developed standards to measure against?

[Patti Scott]

We try to do 10-12 monitors/month on all reps. When i started this job we were doing 3/month and QA scores were in the 80's, now they are in the 90's. The reps would know once they had 3 monitors, they were done for the month and QA and production would drop. Now they are more conscious that they could be monitored at any time.

[Tech Head]

Thanks for the information.

Just to clarify, we are outsourcing our tech support which consists of about 16K calls a day. We require that our outsourcers monitor their agents at least 3-4 times per month.

What I'm having trouble with is the amount of monitors we as the cusotmer should be doing on their techs. I've heard 1 per agent per month or 5% of the total monitors they do, but I'm not sure... I've also heard that we might want to use a statistical sample, but sample of what they monitor or of the 16K?

We also calibrate once per week with them. We'll listen and grade and compare notes.

Does anyone have any experience with monitoring what your outsourcers do?

We've been receiving a few compaints from customers which prompted the focus.

Thanks!

[Tech Head]

Tron,

We have a team of elite techs who are doing the monitoring. All have been calibrated with. The benchmark we are using is what our techs here do. General expectation is that our outsourcers should be equally as good as our techs here.

Number of techs we have working on our account at the outsourcers sites are aprox. 1100.

[ctaylor]

Tech:
Having built and operated a very sucessful outsourcing firm, I think I may be able to assist you.
First you are correct the outsourcer should be providing the same level of quality as your own techs provide. If they are not delivering this ( and your are through the 'learning curve' or ramp-up) then you should be addressing this issue with your outsourcer. I can tell you that I feel that 3-4 monitors per agent per month is low. For yourself your monitoring function should not be viewed as a replacement for the monitoring the Outsourcer is doing it should be an exercise to validate that the desired quality service is being provided to your customers.
If your calibration sessions are in-line, meaning you both agree on the scoring for the calls then I would suggest you monitor calls equal to 10% of what they monitor. With 1100 agents and 3-4 monitors per month the outsourcer is monitoring approximately 3,850 calls, so I would recommend 385-400 calls should be monitored by you. If however the calibrations results are at variance then you should increase the monitor percentage to say 25%. The aded volume of monitored calls should help you drive variance out of the calibration process.

The other exercise I would suggest if you are dealing with an increase in compaints is to retain a third party firm to assess the Customer satisfaction of your customers both serviced from India and from home. This is easily done by exporting .wav files to the third party who should contact your customers within 72 hours of their call to your company. By assessing the customer perspective on the service delivered, you will likley be able to more effectively pinpoint the root cause of the complaints. Sometimes internal and/or monitoring of your outsourcer will miss the mark as both your staff and the outsourcer will have a set of assumptions and pre-conceived notions as to what should be delivered (this is generally reflected in what you are listening for and scoring when you monitor). The customer is totally unemcumbered by any preconceived notions...Quality is what the customer says it is

I hope that you find this advice helpful. Please feel free to contact me directly if I can be of any further assistance at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin