Staff reviews and assessments - methods?

Hi everyone

I've just joined the forum this morning, and am discovering lots of helpful information :)

I am a Team Leader at a Technical Contact Centre with a staff of 10 in my own team (there are three other 10 man teams as well) We are currently investigating potential new methods of carrying out staff reviews and assessments, involving listening to 6 calls, and of course also covering targets met/soft skills/timekeeping/dicipline etc as well.

At present, we review 8 weekly. The Team Leaders are responsible for carrying out all reviews for our own teams, and we listen to recorded calls. We review according to our agreed criteria, and then feed back to the staff afterwards.

The whole thing is really time consuming, and as this is just one of the many daily tasks we have, I feel that sometimes the reviews become rushed and less effective than they should be.

We have previously used a system whereby we had a designated Quality Assessor who sat with the staff and listened to/reviewed live calls with the agents, thus also allowing them to assess every aspect of their call handling - however this obviously required a specific member of staff to carry out this assessing - and we're struggling to spare anyone at the moment. We also found that this live reviewing didn't give true results, as the agents were aware they were being reviewed, and thus 'upped their game' during live reviews!

So, after that long introduction (apologies!) the simple questions is - 'Reviews - how do you do them? What works best for you? Is there another method that I am not aware of?'

thanks in advance

Lou

""call listening and feedback far too often becomes a paper exercise for managers and loses it's value as both a coaching & quality monitoring tool. ""

Oh, I can't agree enough with this comment Rob! I sometimes feel that we're only doing this time consuming task just to 'get it done' - and that it isn't really achieving anything for the staff. It is so frustrating!

We are a little stuck as we do have to adhere to a number of pretty strict data protection compliances - so we do need to listen to certain parts of the call - but I definitely agree with the customer feedback aspect. We are all about Customer Service - we are, after all a 'Service' Desk - and although we welcome positive comments from customers when they offer it, I think we could push more for this - and actively ask them for their comments.

Certainly something for me to investigate further - thanks for your comments!

Thanks for the above - I really like the idea of the agents scoring in their own reviews alongside their managers - very positive - and I would imagine quite motivating for the staff as they will be far more involved in their own assessments using this method.

We are just in the process of installing new telephony at the moment (if all goes well, it should be up and running by the time I get in tomorrow morning!) and part of the system is a new call recording setup - so this could be a good opportunity to put it to the test!!

thanks for your help!

Hi everyone

Just resurrecting this - we are still looking to improve our current process for reviews and coaching - the new telephony is established and we have got to grips with the call recording facility, so we're ready to bring in a new reviewing process - we were wondering whether there exists any consultancy company who assess Contact Centre requirements as far as reviewing and assessment, and whether any of you have ever used or can recommend anoyone in particular?

I've been looking on Google but so far the majority seem to advise primarily on software, rather than processes.

Any help greatly appreciated

thanks

Lou