Monitoring

[Call Quality]

How many monitors per month does your center complete for each agent. What type of grading system do you use? How are these reports used in repect to performance appraisals? Who monitors? Are supervisors soley responsible? Do you have a serparate quality group? Please share any information you can that relates to your quality program Our center is in the process of redeveloping ours. Just looking for some other perspectives/ideas.

[learner2002]

How frequently an agent needs to be monitored would depend on his performance. You can get a good guideline from a thread posted on 21/01/02 titled "Monitoring by performance". Generally, those agents who are new, under-performing will be monitored more closely and frequently.

Besides the supervisor, you can also designate the team leaders to do the job. And then on top of those done by the operational people, you may also want to ask someone else in the organization (perhaps from the Service Quality team) to do independent monitoring. This will help to even out and moderate the scores in the event that the supervisors gave scores which are extreme or biased.

[JoelDup]

First, you will need a Quality vision and strategy that everyone accepts and ACTUALLY contributes to service improvement. Determine, in writing what the goals are for the company, department, callcenter and the individuals who will be a part of the process. Proper planning is essential or your efforts will be wasted - $$$$. Many of these goals should be shared at some level so everyone is an actual stakeholder in the Quality process.

Determine what is budget for quality. Is it fixed or is it flexible enough to accomodate your goals? If its fixed you may be forced into accepting goals that may not give you an accurate picture of quality at any level.

Weight objective and subjective measurements appropriately.
Measuring efficiency quality and effectivness (or satisfaction) together is very difficult. I am a supporter of leaving many efficiency type measurements off but many others include them. Determine what is best for your organization.

Do your call-takers work from a script? If they do its easier to do a 'check list' type of assessment. Instead of a script perhaps your call-takers must include core components in the conversation and you can grade from that. Importantly, those that are doing the scoring must be consistent. Training and 'certification' processes should be completed for all scorers. Peer monitoring is a good idea but it often fails in practice. Many supervisors & teamleads have stories of call-takers challenging a peers score. If your 'teams' are small enough I recommend that the supervisor/manager/teamleader perform the scoring and discussion. Call-takers will have strong feelings about monitoring especially if an incentive is applied to their quality assessment. This will also give the superior a better sense of not only how her/his subordinates are performing but also the 'feel' of the calls that are arriving.

So many organizations use performance measurment as a policing tool instead of building quality. Unfortunately most quality programs fail. Keep it positive.

Sorry for the novel. Please contact me if you want anymore info.
Joel
joeldup@hotmail.com

[katalina67]

I have worked with a few call centers. Each one had differences dealing with quality.
1, large call center with 800+ agents, 5 different center sites/states, formal quality team based in one location and not of the location either site where calls were taken, 3 monitors per month per agent. Supervisor would then monitor those same calls, compare notes with QA's notes-no personal comparison between QA and supervisor. Then coach agent accordingly. Average amount of time between the actual call and the coaching was usually 2-3 weeks. horrible process if you want agents to improve their call quality. in house call center.
2, one site call center with 350 agents, had formal quality team, 2-3 monitors per week and coached within 2 calls of the monitor. supervisor would have to do 2 monitors per week per agent, also coached within minutes of the call. outsourced call center.

[Jimmy Childs]

We have a Quality Assurance Coordinator who monitors and an assistant that monitors during our busier season. Scoring is recorded on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet rows are each an important aspect of the call. Each aspect is assigned a few points. The points total 100. There is an averaging column for each aspect recorded and columns are dated for each monitoring. There is a total score and average for totals in the averaging column. The averaging column is linked to a "Totals" spreadsheet. Each agent has a column on this sheet. There is also a averaging column for each aspect and for totals averaging. It is all on an Excel program. The totals page tells us how each agent compares to the rest of the call center and we compare totals averaging from year to year. Our weakest areas are where we focus training and retraining. Evaluation is an evaluation of scores, attendance etc. We monitor each agent at least once weekly and report to them.

[rdmaher]

We have recently re- launched our monitoring of Team Members. Initially this was done by listening in on calls and evaluating the team against our standards. At that point in time we were filing the information to use to further develop the team member. With the rapid growth within our business this development was put on the back burner and it wasn't until Dec last year that we re- launched the standards with a new format as well as a clear understanding that this was new and that we were trying to ascertain a bench mark for development.

We currently have 120 team members and are able to cover 3 team members per day with a two hour session. Basically we have our form on line for viewing for the Team Member. We ask they they log in to take calls and we observe the standards that are and aren't covered.

The feedback from the team has been exceptional with an outstanding response in relation to feedback being given on the spot as well as addtional skills trained at the time of the evaluation.

Happy to have further conversations if you would like any further information.

Thanks
Roberta