Defining the “quality” of a telephone contact with a current or prospective customer can be quite a slippery slope. Like other subjective standards, most of us say: “I know it when I hear it – and when I don’t.”
While this may be true to some extent, it doesn’t help us establish objective criteria for quality calls or provide phone representatives with enough information to specifically change their behavior to meet the quality standard.
Establishing and reinforcing such standards is critical in maintaining a favorable customer experience – and in many cases creating and protecting your brand identity – across calls and over time. Since call center staffing is usually not a constant, this is fairly difficult to achieve, even within the most tightly controlled in-house call centers. The trend toward outsourcing at least some of the calls makes a tough task even more complex.
And, of course, companies that depend on third-party teleservices vendors to handle all of their telephone contacts often have the hardest time attaining call consistency – particularly when using multiple vendors who each may have multiple call centers spread across the country. (It’s not impossible, but it does require adequate resources and eternal vigilance.)
Whether the call is incoming or outgoing, sales or service – it can be evaluated against various criteria to identify a “quality” interaction. In the broadest categories, these may include listening and understanding, courtesy, communication, problem identification, sales techniques, call completion, compliance with federal and/or state regulations, etc.
These broad categories can be further broken down into observable behaviors that either meet or don’t meet your expectations on the call. For example, under “communication” you may identify a quality criteria about overall “confidence” on the call that outlines specific rep behaviors: “uses downward voice inflections,” “doesn’t stammer, hesitate or pause” and so on. The key to making your criteria objective is to focus on behavior (not attitude) that can be heard and that most people would agree defines the criteria. Once this is completed, each criterion can be weighted according to its importance within a typical call.
For example, “using the caller’s name correctly” is usually less vital to the call outcome then say “recognizing and responding to a buying signal.”
After establishing rock-solid “heard it or not” criteria, however, many organizations muddy the waters by introducing a different level of subjectivity within the scoring process – typically with a numbered 1-5 scoring range or judgmental evaluations like “poor, satisfactory, good, excellent.” The easiest (and most fair) way to “score” a call component is all or nothing: If the rep displayed the behavior (didn’t pause or stutter and used downward inflections in establishing credibility and authority on the call) all the points for that criteria are awarded. If not, none of the points are awarded. This prevents futile debates on whether the rep’s behaviors in this area constitute a “3” versus a “4.”
Hint: Don’t lose sight of the call objective when establishing your criteria – especially if your reps are compensated on sales or production criteria, like sales per hour. Results and quality criteria should complement – not contradict – each other!
Make sure that you can tell one criterion from another, especially with areas that naturally overlap like “listening,” which is important in all areas of a call. “Identifying a buying signal” requires the rep to listen but when deducting points for “listens and responds appropriately throughout” you may need to note specifics like “called John Jones `Mrs. Jones’ twice.” And, yes, understand that one action on the rep’s part may result in his or her losing points for more than one criteria.
Trending these metrics will help you document improvement or failure by particular reps over time, and set attainable benchmarks for the group as a whole. But never belabor quality scores when coaching or tie them directly to compensation. Remember that what your quality metrics really measure is how well your front-line supervisory coaches, trainers and team leaders are doing their jobs: negotiating and constantly reinforcing positive change.
How much detail is needed in spelling out your expectations will depend on the kind of call, the level of the rep and the call objective. There’s a fine line between too little detail (which simplifies the criteria but doesn’t provide enough “do this next time” direction) and too much detail (which complicates the evaluation process and can overwhelm the representative).
Walking that fine line involves actually using the criteria in a start-up phase and then fine-tuning the process as you go along. Since most things in the call center environment change fairly frequently, expect your quality criteria to constantly evolve as conditions warrant and your expectations mature.
Remember also that although overall consistency is one goal of the quality evaluation, the criteria must be flexible enough to apply to different call center environments, supervisory structures and cultures. “All politics is local” definitely applies to call centers – which tend to have their own unique personalities and structures. The exact same criteria cannot be used to evaluate your internal call center (which may employ full-time highly paid career employees who have learned your products and services over many years) and your external outsourcer (which may hire part-timers on short-term projects). The criteria must set reasonable expectations for that particular work force and calling assignment.
The process goes hand-in-hand with training, retraining and ongoing skill development. And that does not mean telling the rep to “use more downward voice inflections and don’t pause before the sales close” once or twice and expecting it to magically happen. Training isn’t something that’s said or shown. A rep is trained when that person can demonstrate consistent competence with a certain skill or in a certain area, and not before. That may mean repeated one-on-one drills and role-plays (with lots of encouragement!) before a particular skill is fully burned in and developed.
This also means that reps must be re-certified from time to time on the skills to support your calling program. If possible, this may include simulated – but real-sounding – test calls before the rep returns to the live environment to represent your company with actual customers.
Naturally, the only way to determine how well a rep’s telephone skills meet your quality expectations means listening to many live or taped calls on a fairly frequent basis. How many and how often will depend on the situation and the internal and external resources devoted to achieving your quality goals. In general, listen frequently enough to observe and document trends with an individual rep that cannot be excused as a bad morning, day, week, list, etc. You must also listen frequently enough to spot, correct and reinforce desirable behavior over time.
Within this process, the representatives on the phone are not the only ones who must be held accountable. Since front line supervisory management has the greatest overall impact on the quality and results of your program, they must be held to the same high standards for listening to calls, identifying problems and working with reps to improve their skills continuously. Which, in turn, means that call center management must work with these supervisors, team leaders, trainers and quality assurance staff to help them develop the skills they need in their respective roles.
Simply sampling call quality from time to time isn’t enough to achieve and maintain continuous improvement. All too often, companies seem to monitor calls for monitoring’s sake alone – without developing the parallel feedback and skill development processes at all levels that have the greatest impact short- and long-term.
Call monitoring alone does provide some benefits. You’ll keep in closer touch with the market and gain valuable information to build future marketing and sales campaigns. And overall training deficiencies can be spotted so phone reps can be provided with the most accurate, updated information to do their jobs. But skills enhancement can never be achieved in the aggregate. It takes one-on-one support and work.
Real progress comes from a comprehensive quality and skill development program that includes every level that impacts the phone contact. It’s an ongoing process that enhances customer satisfaction, repeat buying and retention over time.
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