Quality - Performance Management

[Gloria 64]

I am the Quality specialist for a small group of people. The way we messure quality is simple. Straight to the point.
Here are a couple of examples:

Standard Greeting: Was the entire greeting complete?

Hold Transfer: were the proper procedures used?

Accuracy of information: Was correct or up to date information given to best serve the caller?

Standard Closing: Was the entire closing used?

These are just some of the standards we use when measuring the quality of service. Hope that is helpful!

Gloria

[Quality Assurance Sp]

In our call center environment, we have 6 dedicated Quality Assurance Specialist to QA 600 people. We review the calls on the WITNESS system and then send them over to the supervisor to review with their respective agents.
Our QA includes 5 categories, depending on the nature of the call(sales or service)
1.) Greeting which includes the opening and closing.
2.) Building Rapport
3.) Call Control
4.) Accurate and Complete information
5.) Sales and or Service Skills

Each category has detailed items assigned specific point values. This QA seems to work well for us, although we find that the supervisors occasionally don't review the calls with the agents, which is a loophole in our set-up. We do have monthly calibration sessions with our supervisors and management. These seem to help tremendously. Any ideas about how we can get the supervisors to actually review the calls we score?

[Gloria 64]

Under the quality progam I am under, we require the mangagers to listen and score at least two calls per rep. I find that it is important to score the call that you have listened to. The information may loose it's value if the manager is just reporting the information with out having heard the entire situation. This also gives us a good sampling of the calls and the scores.
Let me know what you think!
Gloria

[cjw17]

Quality Assurance Spec asked for ideas on how to get the supervisors to review the calls QA scores. There are three ways we do that in my call center. 1)Our supervisors have their own performance standards. One of them is a roll-up of their team's qa scores. Supervisors with CSRs who don't meet expectations will be penalized at raise/bonus time...plus if it gets bad enough they could face disciplinary action. Those with the best performing CSR's are rated the highest (& compensated that way)
2) our QA department provides each CSR, Supervisor, & Dept manager with monthly reporting on how they did against all their performance standards (call quality, schedule adherence, error rate, talk time,etc) At the rep level, the CSR sees how many calls were evaluated & what the scores were. Since the rep's overall compensation is affected by these scores, the rep would approach any supervisor who didn't provide the feedback.
3) our department managers have instituted a policy where the rep has to sign the evaluation, & the supervisor has to provide a copy to the department manager.
Hope this helps

[RDuhon]

I will answer your question around what my company evaluates and then would like to ask you a question-although it sounds like your company really only measures quality and schedule adherance.

Our company evaluates our sales calls and other parts of the business around: greeting, sales recommenations, accuracy, professionalism mainly. We have approximately 250 agents that perform sales calls and we also have positions that perform customer satisfaction type of calls and data entry types. We have other measurements in place(not around call quality/but other performance measurements) that are in our agents control to a degree such as: productivity and execution of our sales campaigns.

Call Quality is the heaviest portion of our sales agent overall performance. My questions to you are: Does your company have any other perfomance measurements in place? If so, what are they and what are the percentages of each? Also, do all of your employees evaluations count in their appraisal or performance measurements?

thank you,
Rhonda

[janie]

Hi Joseph,
I was wondering if you could sent me the format you have for the Quality Performance. My e-mail address is kjblackett@msn.com
Thanks.

[dtucker]

In regards to quality do any of you have recognition programs that are geared toward different levels of workers? I am looking for examples of measurement you have used to reward Second Level people (not first line call-takers). Management would like to use a different measurement for second level.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
DT

[Alan Clayton]

Be very very very careful about incenting your supervisors on one set of criteria and your front line people on a separate set... as example, if your front line people are incented on the number of calls they take or make, and your supervisors are incented on quality measures, then your staff will be working towards different goals...

All levels, all the way up in fact, should be aiming at the same overall sets of goals...

Certainly, the supervisors will not be incented on how many calls they take, but the gist of the incentives need to be consistent all the way up...

[dtucker]

Alan, thank you for the quick response!

We have two layers of personnel before you get to the management team (Sup, Analyst, Mgr)

They intent to measure first level on productivity and availibility. However 2nd level only meets availbiity when we get an onslaught of calls....No onslaught means they are assisting less experiences workers, or resolving a more complex issue for a user (operational finance helpdesk)

Any ideas? Higher-ups want a "different" measurement. My suggestion was to change their "minimum" so it would be more reachable.

When the "measurement" (TBA) is met for a week then the reps name is put into a drawing for a qtrly nite on the town on the company ($100).

Any ideas?

[Alan Clayton]

The best way to increase performance overall is to set the bar for rewardable performance at a mark that is being achieved by a certain percentage of the staff. If you make that measurement the minimum for rewards, then all will be striving towards the new higher measure.

That is the generic answer. For a specific answer, I would prefer to talk to you

Regards

[bpastorini]

First you need define the qualitative objectives of your center, ie what is the business value you are striving to provide/produce, eg new revenue (order entry/upsell/cross-sell), retained revenue (customer satisfaction/retention, issue resolution, referrals), cost containtment (resolution/fulfillment/prevent call back) and what is the unit $$ value of each (probably involves several sub sets).

Next outline your family of measure with an approach that helps define and track the contact event from access (Hello) through departure (Good-bye). This tracking needs include processes, practices and performance and allow you to evaluate the appropriateness, effectiveness and lastly efficiency of each with special attention to noting when any serve as a barrier rather than an enabler. A parellel track is needed to measure the agents interpersonal skills/demeanor appropriateness and impact on the handling of the contact event.

Properly and objectively done, you will most always discover most issues and barriers arise from processes, policies, practices, measures (esp ATT goals), and technology shortcomings. Fact is in most call centers I've assessed, if all the agents were replaced the performance level of the new reps (once they become experienced) will rise no higher than that of the reps they replaced. The centers perform at their level of competence. To truly and sustainably change performance you need change processes, practices, objectives, measures, leaderhip focus/style, etc.

Measuring quality seems to be often by-passed in favor of measuring "efficiency" - how many, how fast. As a result we get more of the wrong performance/wrong outcomes faster/cheaper. Not a profitable strategy.

[jmward27]

There is one thing that I haven't noticed throughout the replies (if I missed it, I'm sorry).

Quantify your "line item" requirements, or the areas where you would mark reps off for doing something right or wrong. One of our biggest obstacles from an outsourcing perspective is my client is big on soft skills...pleases, thank yous, etc. While this is all well and good, trying to have a callibration session with them was obviously difficult to walk away feeling callibrated.

Depending on the mood of the group, how the call "sounded" as a whole - and for all we knew, which way the wind was blowing - we never were consistant. Until we brought definition to the courtesy word line item, our reps were always setup to fail.

That said, instead of saying "using courtesy words where appropriate", we said "asking questions with pleases and acknowledging them with thank you." In addition to ensuring the use of courtesy words, it gave reps a transitional phrase they couldn't go wrong with, opposed to dead-air or slang. Another client in our center requires a minimum of three "niceties" per call.

I realize this sounds relatively elementary, but I have been surprised how many people have said to me "OH YEAH!" after I offered this suggestion. Hope it helps.

Jeremy

[achamb]

We are searching for a new process for quality assurance in the call center. I just joined the company 4 months ago but I worked in another call center for 7 years similar to this one.

I am searching for call monitoring forms that we can use to develop our own internal form and any feedback on how the quality assurance department would interact with the call center.

I feel that the supervisor's are ultimately responsible for any disciplinary action that should be taken for low scores, rude calls, etc. I would like to use the quality assurance department for coaching, training and mentoring.

Currently our reps do not listen to their calls. Their monitoring forms are placed in an envelope at the end of each month and attached to their checks. We do not review the form or the calls with them. I feel that we need more interaction with our reps but I have to present a proposal to our Operations Manager before anything will be put in place.

Please feel free to email me with this information.

Thank you,


Angela Chamberlain
afc@call-kc.com