For those of you who are new to the concept of customer service quality assurance, it's a formalized process of reviewing customer support representatives' phone calls, email threads, and chat conversations according to a scorecard. A scorecard consists of criteria like tone of voice, grammar, or accuracy of response, that a manager can use to quantify the agent's performance.
For those of you who already know about QA programs, here are five ways to think about how to leverage your QA program to drive larger, more strategic initiatives:
Use QA Scores to Identify Areas That Need Improvement
QA Scores can identify where individual agents, regions, and or types of tickets could use better training and then build more personalized coaching and training programs.You can break QA scores down by channel (phone, email, chat) or by ticket type or tag.
Identify Agents Who Need Additional Help
QA Scores serve as a great performance management tool to identify low performers, who despite targeted training, don't improve over time.
Find Correlations Between Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality
QA Scores can help you determine if negative CSAT scores are a result of service quality or a reason outside of service quality such as policies or other departmental issues.We advise Directors to build a "BAD CSAT SCORECARD" to QA bad CSAT tickets.
Let QA Data Inform Resourcing
QA Scores can help you determine the number of people to staff. Look at how QA Scores change with customer request volume. If you see QA scores drop at certain volumes based on the number of people staffed, it can help you determine how many people you need to staff to maintain a certain service quality level.
Rethink Optimal Levels of Efficiency
QA Scores help you understand the right level of efficiency to expect from a customer service rep. When we talk to leaders in customer service, there is a constant struggle to balance agent productivity and efficiency with quality. If you look at QA scores with other metrics, you can use data to find that balance while satisfying your customer's needs.
In conclusion, QA is an unbiased metric to measure your service quality – leverage it in every part of your customer service operations if quality is a top priority for your department.
If you're curious to learn more about the relationship between QA scores and CSAT - check out this article: