What this episode is about
This is an older episode, recorded in June 2021, about mastering call quality monitoring. Before the steps, the basics of a quality call: tone (it's not what you say, it's how you say it), active listening when reps hear the same five issues all day, speaking at the right speed for the customer, emotional intelligence, and not over-promising.
On the program itself, I liked a QA staffing ratio around 30 or 40 agents to one analyst, with a starting benchmark of about three scored calls per agent per week. That's low for some of you and high for others, but benchmark everyone the same way so you can see trends.
Set your standards and weight them. If you're a sales center, upsell and cross-sell should carry more weight. Break the form into sections, greeting, body, offers, disclosures. Scoring everything the same is where a huge mistake happens in QA. Use live monitoring like in-game coaching and recorded calls like practice. If I had to choose, I'd take live.
Make agents part of the evaluation. Pull a few calls and score them together so they can see where you're coming from. We also bring clients into weekly monitoring sessions. Document the results, use analytics to find trends faster, and rotate management trainees through QA for a few weeks so they learn how to evaluate.
Key takeaways
- Weight the most important parts of the call more heavily.
- Pick a consistent review benchmark per agent and stick to it.
- Use live monitoring for in-the-moment coaching and recorded calls for trends.
- Score calls together with agents, and with clients if you're a BPO.
- Rotate future supervisors through QA so they learn to evaluate.
In Tom's words
“not just scoring everything the same. I think that's where a huge mistake happens in QA.”Tom Laird · 11:59
“I think that you should make the agents part of the evaluation process”Tom Laird · 13:38
“I like to use QA as a, as a management teaching tool”Tom Laird · 15:58
Transcript excerpt
These excerpts come from an automatic transcript and are lightly edited for readability (filler and obvious transcription errors removed). For exact wording, listen at the timestamp.
[11:29]I like to break things up: an intro and greeting, the body of the call, maybe upsell and cross-sell, disclosures, whatever pieces are consistent across the majority of calls, because not every call is the same. Make sure you weight whatever you think is the most important piece heavier and don't just score everything the same. I think that's where a huge mistake happens in QA.
[13:30]I think you should make the agents part of the evaluation process. If you have a rep who's a little lower, pull some random calls and let's score them together. They'll start to see, wow, that's a good point, I see why they're doing that. They know you're not picking on them. You're actually trying to help them.
[15:20]Data really drives a lot of this QA process. Also, I like to use QA as a management teaching tool. We rotate our management trainees into the QA area for a two- or three-week stint, where they're listening, monitoring and going through the QA manager's process so they really get good at it.