As a call center manager, it’s important to track and monitor your agents’ performance in a standardized way, which is where a quality assurance (QA) scorecard comes into play.
Although conventional metrics may indicate that agents are performing well, team leaders and managers need to monitor calls to ensure that these employees are adhering to all the requirements during every interaction. If not, you run the risk of having a team that’s not following the right steps when interacting with customers.
Through QA scorecards, you can help your agents understand expectations and give them the knowledge they need to become better employees. This, in turn, can significantly improve employee engagement and enhance the quality of the customer experience that your employees provide.
At Autopilot Reviews, we partner with call centers to help them collect feedback from customers and share these comments with agents in real-time, so we know the importance of having a comprehensive quality assurance scorecard.
Below, we’ll go over the main goal of the quality assurance department and the definition of a scorecard. We’ll also go over the elements that are usually included in these resources and 5 tips to help you build a great call center scorecard.
The Main Goal of the Quality Assurance (QA) Department
Before going any further it’s important to understand why the quality assurance department exists.
It doesn’t matter if you’re running a sales, customer services, tech support, or collections operation, you need to ensure that your agents are following the right steps when doing their jobs. After all, your agents don’t only represent your company, but they are also the face and voice of your client. Whatever your agents say or do can be interpreted as coming directly from the companies you work with, so your team members need to behave appropriately at all times.
The quality assurance department is in charge of monitoring, evaluating, and delivering feedback to your team. QA team members also need to maintain open communication lines with clients to stay updated with any changes and updates to the requirements that these companies have.
The QA team should also work as a bridge between what the client needs and how agents behave on the phone. With the right QA program, call centers can empower agents to deliver a great experience and give them the confidence to handle difficult tasks on their own.
Not only this, but this department is partially responsible for helping you develop and adjust your call center scorecard.
What is a QA Scorecard?
A call center scorecard is a practical tool that helps you measure your agents’ performance in a standardized way. In practice, it looks and feels like a checklist that the QA employees and other leadership agents use to assess an agent’s performance and identify this employee’s strengths as well as areas of improvement.
Keep in mind that QA scorecards vary from one call center to the next, but they should all provide a comprehensive view of the calls being monitored. For instance, if you’re evaluating a call from a sales agent, you need to verify that this representative completes the pitch and rebuttal processes in every call.
Each call center needs to develop its own scorecard, but remember that the client also needs to be an active part of this process. Therefore, you should work with your clients’ QA department and perform calibrations to ensure that both quality assurance teams are in sync.
How Is a QA Scorecard Used?
Once you take the time to define the metrics you need to monitor and create a QA scorecard, using it is actually pretty easy.
The QA or leadership team member should start off by filling in the agent’s ID, call ID, and all other pieces of information needed to identify the interaction. Once the call begins, evaluators need to go down the checklist and answer the questions based on the customer’s behavior during the interaction.
Note that call center scorecard performance grades are often expressed in a percentage. Most call centers set a minimum percentage that’s required to pass the QA evaluation, so you need to decide how high you want to set the bar. Additionally, you should also figure out what actions can result in an automatic QA fail and ensure that agents avoid these at all costs.
The Advantages of Implementing a QA Scorecard
Customers prefer companies that ensure a great experience through all channels. This means that the performance of your agents directly impacts the results that your clients get. If your agents deliver bad service, customers can take to social media and other channels to share their negative experiences.
By having a comprehensive scorecard, you can minimize instances where customers receive bad service and help agents build deeper bonds with callers. Not only this, if your agents are familiar with your scorecard and how it works, it can also help guide them whenever they encounter unusual experiences.
Not only this, but some of the advantages of implementing QA scorecards include:
Highlight Areas of Improvement in Your QA Scorecard
The most obvious advantage of having a scorecard is that it highlights your agent’s areas of improvement. This is essential for call centers that want to focus on growth and improving their operations.
Instead of letting agents continue making mistakes, your scorecard can help you by pinpointing which areas your employees need to work on and helping you decide exactly what to do to improve these. As a team leader, you should see these mistakes and coaching opportunities, so take the time to go over areas of improvement and deliver positive feedback in every agent review session.
Collect Information Effectively
The methods that are conventionally used to collect information in a call center are not always objective, which means that the data gathered doesn’t always paint a full picture.
By monitoring agents at random, QA specialists can collect feedback in an extremely effective way. Besides evaluating the agent’s knowledge, a scorecard can also help you understand how customers react to the representative’s tone or approach in order to get a clear idea of how the interaction unfolded.
Allow for an Easier Delivery of Feedback to Improve Your QA Scorecard
The feedback delivery process can be challenging for both managers and agents if it’s not performed properly. Managers need to take certain steps to make agents understand that the feedback is provided for a positive reason, and not like a form of punishment.
Having a scorecard can make this process easier and help managers guide agents without any negative connotation. Managers should show the scorecard to the agents being evaluated and conduct the evaluation by centering around this checklist-like resource.
Encourage Teamwork Between Agents and Supporting Departments
Call center scorecards can and should be used by any manager or QA team member that’s evaluating an agent.
Because it’s a growth-driven resource, your scorecard can increase the number of interactions between agents and supporting departments, ultimately improving communication between the two. For example, agents get an understanding of the type of work that QA has to handle, while quality assurance employees learn more about the challenges that agents have to face.
Monitor Your Progress With the QA Scorecard
Your scorecard is an extremely effective way to track and monitor the progress you’ve made in terms of agent growth as well as the way you measure QA.
For instance, if you deliver training to change the way your agents do something, you can adjust your scorecard to include this as part of the checklist. If your agents are not implementing the change you want to see, it will be reflected directly on the scorecard.
What Elements Are Monitored on QA Scorecards?
Every QA scorecard is adapted to the call center it’s used in, so you should evaluate your specific circumstances and determine what your checklist needs to include. With that in mind, there are some elements that are present in almost all scorecards, regardless of whether they are for sale, tech support, or another line of business.
Here are six elements that are usually present in call center scorecards.
Agent Responsiveness
It’s a good idea to arrange the points of your scorecard in chronological order. In other words, you should think about the interactions that occur first in most calls and evaluate these in the order they appear. So, the first variable you should evaluate is the responsiveness of your agents.
Agent responsiveness refers to the amount of time it takes for your representatives to interact with a customer after the call starts. The longer it takes for the agent to respond, the higher the chances of creating a negative experience for customers. So, you should make sure that your agents are responding to customers as soon as they are connected.
Knowledge
Call center agents need to learn and remember a lot of information about the products, plans, and companies they work for. While it’s common for agents to track down data using internal tools, QA evaluators need to ensure that these employees have a basic level of knowledge and understanding.
Note that all agents are different, so you need to adapt this expectation to every employee your grade. As a general rule of thumb, agents with the most seniority should have the most knowledge.
Attitude
If an agent has the wrong type of attitude, it doesn’t matter how much knowledge this employee has. Therefore, you also need to monitor your agent’s attitude and ensure that they are bringing the right type of personality traits to your call center.
Your agents should always have a polite attitude, be friendly, and express sympathy. So, when you’re grading attitude, you should keep a close eye on how the agent treats the client in the early part of the call to understand the representative’s attitude.
The Ability to Solve Issues
Solving issues for customers is so important that one of the main metrics that call centers monitor today, which is first-call resolution, actually revolves around this element.
The main idea of evaluating an agent’s ability to solve issues is to figure out if this representative has the skills to find solutions on impulse. This is an extremely valuable skill, especially for sales and technical support agents.
Follow-Up Services
Follow-up services consist of additional interactions that agents had to initiate or complete after the call. A good example would be a customer service agent calling back a customer who was accidentally disconnected.
Your scorecard should include a section about follow-up services, but remember that this will only be used on certain occasions. Moreover, some call centers don’t allow outbound calls at all, and if this is the case for your facility, then you don’t have to worry about including this section since your agents lack the ability to initiate an interaction.
Agent Mentality in Comparison with the Company Culture
Having a good call center culture is important because it can motivate your agents and ensure that every team member is on the right page. Agents who don’t align with the company culture will have a harder time understanding why certain steps are taken, which makes them harder to collaborate with.
Like attitude, evaluating agent mentality is a subjective task. Instead of jumping to conclusions and taking extreme steps right away, you should take the time to explain the company culture to the agent in question and ensure that this representative understands why he or she needs to align with the business.
5 Tips to Improve Your Call Center Scorecard
Whenever they strike a deal with a call center, clients will set a minimum QA score that these facilities need to meet as a site.
Let’s take a look at five tips to improve your current call center scorecard.
1. Train Leaders to Give Feedback
Your scorecard is only effective if your leaders know how to use them. Instead of simply implementing these resources, you should take the time to train leaders on how to communicate effectively and provide feedback to their team members.
2. Create a New Script Based on Your QA Scorecard
Your scorecard should be adapted according to how consumers behave and what the client wants. But, most call centers fail to revisit their script or pitch after the introduction of a new scorecard, which means that agents continue to make the same mistake. To avoid this, you need to create a new version of your script based on the scorecard you’re using to evaluate customers.
3. Schedule at Least One Calibration Session Per Quarter
As we mentioned earlier, calibration sessions are meetings between the call center and the client’s QA teams. During these meetings, the client’s QA team explains its expectations and conducts evaluations as a group to ensure that the call center QA agents fully understand their expectations.
Note that this process should not occur once, but you should actually organize one of these at least once per quarter or every 3 months.
4. Keep It Short and Simple (Without Sacrificing Quality)
Call center managers can choose to evaluate countless variables. But, the longer the process, the more tedious the feedback delivering sessions, which lowers engagement for both the agents as well as their supervisors.
Instead, you should narrow down the most important variables and make sure that your scorecard is no longer than a single page printed on both sides.
5. Update Your Scorecard on a Regular Basis
Finally, you should create a schedule, evaluate the performance of your scorecard, and update it on a regular basis. Some call centers adjust their scorecards once every couple of years while others prefer a quarterly review, but there is no silver-bullet solution that works for all instances. You just need to determine what your needs are and adjust your scorecard optimization schedule accordingly.
How to Build the Best QA Scorecard for Your Call Center
Now that we have an in-depth understanding of the definition of a scorecard and what it needs to include, let’s take a look at the steps you need to take to create your own version.
First, Consider All Channels
The very first thing you need to do is look at all of the channels that your contact center offers to clients. People behave differently depending on what channel they are using. So, you need to create a unique scorecard for each channel you have available.
When creating a different scorecard, you’ll need to consider how each channel works. For example, the response time for a customer service chat agent should be different from that of a phone representative, so avoid copying scorecards for other channels.
Identify All Variables that Impact Performance
The waiting time, agent’s tone, and issue at hand are some of the elements that impact the customer’s experience. This, in turn, influences your agent’s as well as your overall site’s performance.
You need to identify all of the variables that have the potential to influence the behavior of your customers as these will be some of the points that your scorecard will touch. For example, if you notice that agent attitude is one of the main success drivers in your call center, you should create a section in your scorecard that evaluates this type of queue.
Define Which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) You Need to Monitor
This step is closely linked to the variables that influence behavior. Once you understand these influential elements, you can select the KPIs you need to observe to monitor your performance.
Remember, not all KPIs are directly linked to an influential variable. So, you may need to keep an eye on an obscure KPI or two depending on your industry.
Set Your Objectives
After figuring out what channels you have and the variables that impact the performance of each, you can start setting your objectives. To be effective, your objectives should include very specific goals that can realistically be achieved by improving your site QA. Be as detailed as possible to make sure that you also write down the steps you’ll take to achieve each goal.
Ask Stakeholders for Their Input
Your call center has a number of valuable assets in the form of people, including your QA analysts, managers, agents, and supporting employees. When building your scorecard, you should leverage these assets and ask stakeholders for input.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you absolutely have to use the information you collect, but it’s worth exploring ideas for inspiration and understanding what types of preconceptions your team has.
Gather as Much Information as Possible for Feedback
Call centers have been collecting feedback from customers for decades, especially since internet-capable devices have been widely adopted. So, you need to make use of these resources and gather as much information as possible in order to deliver feedback to your agents and help them build a great qa scorecard.
The best part is that you don’t have to limit yourself to traditional ways of collecting feedback. For instance, Autopilot Review is a platform that collects feedback from your customers right after they finish speaking with your agents. We then send this feedback directly to agents in real-time, which improves the quality and effect that the comments have.
Ready to Help Your Employees With Their QA Scorecard? Autopilot Reviews Dashboard Can Help!
Building your QA scorecard can become an overwhelming task, but it doesn’t have to be. As long as you plan ahead and stay organized, you should be able to create a checklist that helps your QA and management teams evaluate the performance of your agents.
If you want to learn more about collecting feedback through Autopilot Reviews, contact us today and we’ll be glad to help.
