The Transformation of QA: Driving Business Results - Key Takeaways from MaestroQA’s CX Summit

In this blog post, we'll delve into the key takeaways from the QA Program workshops at MaestroQA's “Art of Conversation'' CX Summit, which brought together industry experts in customer experience and quality assurance from some of the world’s most loved brands to share insights, best practices, and success stories. Read on to learn why QA and CX insights are playing a more pivotal role in driving agent performance, customer satisfaction and business results.

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Insights on the Future of QA

The CX Summit opened with a presentation by Vasu Prathipati, the CEO and Co-Founder of MaestroQA. He provided insights on the future of QA and how it’s evolving in response to today’s competitive business climate and rapidly changing technology landscape. 

One insight he shared was how QA teams are now under more pressure to demonstrate value in their organizations. As a result, they are looking for better analytics and more precise and actionable insights to make a higher impact on their company’s top priorities – whether it’s operational efficiency, agent performance or customer satisfaction. 

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Vasu also pointed to a challenge that QA and CX teams are confronting that’s limiting their potential, “we’ve started to investigate the current state of business intelligence in CX and we’ve found that quality data often lives in its own silo and its disconnected from other metrics that businesses cares about, making it difficult to measure and act on the insights surfaced by quality initiatives.” 

Siloed data can hinder the ability to derive comprehensive insights and take decisive action. To address this, Vasu emphasized the importance of integrating quality data, “organizations need to close the gap and move towards data integration to achieve a successful QA strategy.”

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Ultimately, Vasu’s presentation pointed to an important trend we are seeing among our customers: the strength of your QA program depends on measuring its impact accurately and integrating this data with other key metrics. Overcoming this disconnect and moving towards data integration is not just beneficial—it's imperative for a successful QA strategy.

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QA Program Highlights

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The CX Summit featured several noteworthy trends and insights that underscore the growing influence of QA metrics on agent performance management and customer satisfaction.

Let's explore some of the most relevant takeaways:

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Incorporating QA in Agent KPIs

The integration of QA metrics into agent key performance indicators (KPIs) has become a critical strategy for enhancing performance. This approach not only ensures that products and services consistently exceed customer expectations but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement in agent performance. 

During the CX Summit group presentations, one of our customers,  the world's largest and most trusted resource for authenticated luxury resale, shared a "win" story that showcased this strategy. Recognizing QA's pivotal role in driving customer satisfaction (CSAT) and overall business success, they made QA part of their core 5 agent KPIs, giving it a substantial weight of 20%. 

This approach not only helped them improve agent performance but it also highlighted the importance of considering non-support-related CSAT metrics, in fact QA was considered the “white knight” of CSAT because of its proven ability to drive meaningful insights and improvement. They shared how MaestroQA’s integrated quality and agent development platform was integral to helping them achieve this by empowering them to effectively evaluate agents and quickly close the loop with agent feedback to solve problems and enhance performance. 

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The Importance of BPO Management and Trust-Building

Another critical aspect that emerged from the QA Program group presentations at the CX Summit was the role of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) management and trust-building in ensuring optimal customer service of call center performance. While leveraging BPO partners for customer support, scaling can be a strategic decision to manage costs and mitigate risk, but optimizing the quality of BPO performance requires a reliable quality assurance framework. It is essential to establish a comprehensive and dependable Quality Assurance (QA) program to ensure performance expectations are met consistently.

One of our customers, a premier luxury fashion retailer, shared their experience in building a foundational in-house QA program over the past year. Previously, they relied solely on their BPO for QA. However, they acknowledged that misalignment with their BPO's QA results hampered their ability to achieve optimal performance. Recognizing the criticality of trust in driving successful partnerships, the company partnered with MaestroQA to take back control of their QA program management and insights, enabling them to align performance expectations, establish accurate metrics, and nurture a collaborative environment for continuous improvement. This proactive approach to BPO management and trust-building empowered them with greater influence on the customer experiences being delivered through BPO agents. This ultimately gave them better tools to impact brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Learn more about how MaestroQA can help build stronger BPO partnerships.

Leveraging Targeted QA for Root-Cause Analysis & Performance Improvement

Targeted Quality Assurance (QA) for root-cause analysis also emerged as a key strategy to drive agent performance and enhance customer satisfaction. By using QA insights to uncover the underlying causes of customer dissatisfaction (DSAT), companies can pinpoint specific areas for improvement, deliver personalized feedback and coach agents on specific areas to improve customer satisfaction or drive more efficiency. 

During the QA Program group presentations, two standout examples demonstrated the effectiveness of targeted QA in driving meaningful performance improvements. One company, a pioneer in providing TV streaming technology, aimed to reduce the cost per contact by addressing the biggest contributors to Average Handle Time (AHT). Through targeted QA, they identified a lengthy verification process as a primary driver of increased AHT. With this insight, the company simplified the verification process, resulting in a significant reduction in AHT and improved overall efficiency.

Another one of our customers, a leading financial services company dedicated to building a more human financial world, selected customer satisfaction (CSAT) as a critical metric. Their targeted QA approach involved reviewing dissatisfied customer interactions (DSAT) to gain deeper insights into customer pain points and identify areas for improvement. Armed with these insights, Wealthsimple was able to make strategic enhancements to their processes, products, and services, leading to a notable increase in CSAT scores and a more loyal customer base.

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