How to Create an Omnichannel Call Center Quality Assurance Scorecard

Creating a quality form (also known as a quality assurance scorecard) for your customer service team can be a scary task. Questions abound. How many items should it hold? What questions matter most? Which ones don’t? What type of scoring method should we use? 

What makes it even scarier is that the scorecard (and questions within, and how they’re scored) is the foundation of a great quality assurance program. A bad scorecard can lead to scores that don’t represent what a quality interaction actually means to your brand. Or it can lead to inflated scores that result in metrics that your team can’t really use to improve (GASP!). 

But, creating a quality management form doesn’t have to be scary. There are some tried and tested methods that companies can use to think through the process of creating a quality form that works really well for their unique business (and their unique customer base). 

The first step is to really think about your company’s brand, how you want to be perceived by your customers, and what good looks like for your specific company and customers. This includes: 

• What you call your customers 
• What the philosophy or mission of your company is and (equally importantly) what the mission of your support team is 
• What good looks like for your company, and support team (is there a list of things that make up a “good” customer interaction for your team, etc) 

Then, think about all this stuff in the context of four pillars: 

• Communication skills
• Customer connection
• Compliance and security
• Correct and complete content

We cover the four pillars in greater depth in the Ultimate Guide to CX QA Scorecards, but you can find a quick primer here:

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Communication Skills

How well did the agent communicate the message? In a phone conversation, verbal communication is center stage. You might want to evaluate tone of voice, pace of communication (e.g. talking too fast or slow), or the excessive use of filler words (e.g. um, ah, mmmmkay). We’re all guilty of most of these things from time to time, but it’s important that they don’t detract from the message or undermine the confidence with which we communicate.

With text-based channels, grammar and spelling are critical and the message should be communicated clearly, concisely and in a way that’s on brand. The messaging should also look good and professional. This means that the paragraphs should be broken up logically with proper line breaks between the greeting, paragraphs, and the signature. Clearly voice and text require different skill sets to communicate the same message.

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Customer Connection

Did the agent make a human connection with the customer? Did the agent have an authentic interaction with the customer that will differentiate your brand from the other companies that customer has talked with? 

There are many ways that people can be successful in connecting with one another, but my typical framework for connecting with a customer is as follows:

• Greet customers warmly and use their name wherever possible.
• Listen carefully to their issue, acknowledging that you’ve received and understood, and repeating what you’ve heard as needed to make sure you’re both on the same page.
• Respond empathetically to whatever the mood and tone of the customer and conversation is.
• Communicate that you’re willing to help and that you’re taking ownership of the customer’s issue until it’s resolved.

I like to refer to our ability to empathize with other people as a superpower and we’ll have to use it here as we aim to connect authentically with the human being on the other end of the line regardless of the communication channel we’re using.

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Compliance and Security

Did we follow all essential policies and procedures to keep the customer and the company safe? Did the agent handle PII in the right way? Did you protect the log-in information of your customer? 

Security is a critical component of quality review. At a minimum, security means properly authenticating customers before disclosing or changing information on their account. Depending on the industry, you’ll often hear acronyms like PII, PCI, and HIPAA, and failure to comply with these regulations, breaches security and trust with customers and results in significant legal problems for the company (good to make sure agents are regularly reminded of its importance).

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Correct and Complete Content

Did we give out correct AND complete answers and use our tools effectively to arrive at those answers? Were all internal processes followed?

Customers must receive accurate information. That’s why they contact support. If they don’t, they may call back or they may just cancel their service. Calling back means an unnecessary spike in call volume, and high first call resolution rates (FCR). Not calling back means we lose customers and revenue. Wrong or incomplete answers render customer service efforts entirely pointless. Accuracy also includes adhering to important policies and procedures. Think of procedures like taking good account notes so a customer doesn’t have to rehash their issue if they call back.

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, make a list of what matters to your company in each section. Some examples: 

Communication skills 

• Did the agent use proper grammar? 
• Did the agent use a friendly tone?
  

Customer connection/soft skills 

• Did the agent show empathy?
• Did the agent take time to fully understand the customer’s issue? 
• How well did this interaction represent our company brand?
• Was this an interaction that I would want to have? 
  

Compliance and security

• Did the agent verify customer information correctly? 
• Did the agent protect customer login credentials?
• Did the rep share PII or sensitive information?
  

Correct and complete content 

• Did the agent fully resolve the customer’s inquiry? 
• Did the agent demonstrate effective question asking to fully diagnose and understand the issue?
• Did the agent exhibit the proper knowledge to solve the customers inquiry?
• Did the rep provide information that is accurate and free from error?  

Correct and complete (process)

• Did the agent leave proper notes/ use proper conditional fields in our helpdesk?
• Did rep escalate the ticket according to the defined escalations processes?
• Was this ticket accurately tagged?
  

Non support (Bonus)‍

• Did anything outside the agent’s control impact the customer experience during the support interaction?
  

Once you’ve come up with this list, you can use it to configure your scorecard! The main topics can be your main sections, and the individual questions will be criteria within each section. 

The following example ties together many elements of soft skills that matter to our customers. It brings together brand voice, tone, and grammar as things that are all contributing to the agent representing the brand – things that also fall into the category of communication skills. 

This will, of course, look very different for different companies. 

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Customer connection/soft skills/communication skills:

Compliance and security 

This example shows what an auto-fail section looks like as well. Something like sharing PII or other sensitive information is risky, which needs to be reflected in the severity of the scoring. 

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Correct and complete content 

In this case, Zendesk processes is the section, and protocol is the question. You could have multiple questions within a section like this if there are different things that reps need to be doing within the bucket of “Zendesk processes.”

Notice that this is a multiple choice question with checkboxes that highlight different ways in with “Zendesk protocol” could be followed. 

Some teams use the QA process as an opportunity to collect data on how the business as a whole can improve the customer experience.

It could be an opportunity to track how often shipping issues impact customer happiness, or if there are confusing areas of the website that could be changed to give customers a better experience. 

Using checkboxes here can be especially helpful, as these sections are often not scored, but rather viewed as an opportunity to collect data. 

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Non-support related: 

Conclusion

Start by identifying a few key pieces of information that matter to your business, and then work through the four pillars – communication skills, connecting with customers, complying with the regulatory stuff, and giving correct, complete answers with your company’s context in mind.

This will result in a quality form focused on what matters to your company, and that will lead to productive coaching conversations with agents.