Push Your QA Programme Beyond “Just Looking Good”

If your QA scores are high (but your customer experience doesn’t seem to match!) and your agents are left feeling like they’re getting a speeding ticket after every coaching session, it’s high time to take your QA programme beyond “just looking good”.

Want to get started? See what Adam Boelke has to say about what it really takes to overhaul your current programme and deliver a whole new approach to Quality Assurance – that looks great inside and out!

“I Can’t Think of a Better Thing to Prioritize Than Our Customer’s Satisfaction and Loyalty, Can You?”

“Considering that without customers, we don’t make money, and without money, we don’t have a business, I can’t think of a better thing to prioritize than our customer’s satisfaction and loyalty, can you?”

That was how I answered the pushback I got from the department managers when I introduced the new requirement for daily QA (Quality Assurance) calibration sessions.

Sometimes as the leader, you need to set the ‘tone from the top’ and make unpopular decisions, and as their new leader, I could tell this wasn’t going to help me win any popularity contests.

To make sure your calibration sessions are as effective as they can be, read our article: Maximize Your Next QA Calibration Session

“I Heard Everything From ‘They’re Too Busy’ to Our ‘QA Scores Are Fine’…”

I had been asked to lead this failing call centre and try to turn it around as a last-ditch effort before senior management made the decision to close the centre.

Why it was failing was a mystery to everyone because it was one of the original centres in our F500 company and had some of our most tenured employees.

It was interesting to hear the manager’s initial pushback of why they didn’t have time for a daily 1-hour session listening to our customer experiences. I heard everything from “they’re too busy” to “our QA scores are fine” to “that’s QA’s job”.  

I knew we needed a whole new approach to Quality Assurance. It was true that our QA scores were high, but our customer experience didn’t seem to match our scores.

Not only that, but our agents viewed their QA coaching sessions more like getting a speeding ticket than a helpful coaching session to improve their performance.

“The QA Score Didn’t Really Matter If It Wasn’t a True Reflection of Our Customer Experience!”  

In our initial daily QA calibration sessions, I kicked them off with the mantra that “I’d rather be good than look good.”

After all, the QA score didn’t really matter if it wasn’t a true reflection of our customer experience. And the QA coaching sessions didn’t really matter if the employee wasn’t engaged and willing to be developed.

I’ve seen many managers fall into the trap of ‘managing the metric’ and not the performance. The danger is that it can create a false sense of security if it’s not fully calibrated and accurately reflecting the customer experience.

A primary purpose of a QA score is to accurately reflect the development of your people and to identify the gaps in your performance that you need to action before your customer satisfaction and customer loyalty suffer.

Equally dangerous is strictly monitoring that the right number of QA calls are being monitored by your team for each individual agent and that they received a coaching session.

This is certainly a good place to start, but if that’s all you are tracking, you’re not monitoring the effectiveness of those sessions or that agent’s development. You miss measuring their progress in the areas that matter!

For advice on how to spot if your team leaders are chasing metrics, read our article: Are Your Team Leaders Too Busy Chasing Metrics?

“‘Checking the Box’ Is an Easy Trap to Fall Into…”

‘Checking the box’ is an easy trap to fall into. We monitor our QA score to measure performance, and if it’s good, we think we’re good.

We don’t realize that the form we’re using may not adequately reflect our customer experience, which is the reason for the QA score in the first place.

We may see that our QA team is regularly meeting with the agents to coach and review their performance, not realizing that the agents feel the QA process is unfair – and even view their coaching advice with the same disdain they feel when the police officer tells them to slow down after giving them a speeding ticket.

If you’re strictly managing to the numbers, you can be left wondering why your Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty numbers are low when it appears that your team is doing everything they can to create a great experience.  

The answer is always in the systemic solutions, not the transactions.

“Roll Your Sleeves Up and Get Actively Involved!”

‘Go and See’ is a crucial step in the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) method for a reason.

Inspecting what you expect provides a wealth of insight that you’ll never get by just monitoring the numbers. As the leader, rolling your sleeves up and becoming actively involved is key.

5 Steps to “Being Good” – Not Just “Looking Good”

Here are 5 action steps leaders can take, using the proven ‘7 Cs to Success’ framework, to create a QA programme that’s focused on being good, not just looking good:

1. Clarify

Set your tone from the top and align all stakeholders on the ‘Why’ behind the process. 

Set the primary driver to be around learning and development, not the QA score itself – with the main goal of developing skills and improving the customer experience.

2. Continuously Improve

Go and see. Listen to calls, sit with your agents, your QA team, and your supervisors and ask for their feedback.  

Simplify the QA form and coaching to highlight the meaningful actions that can be taken to improve the customer experience, not the score. The score will naturally follow.

3. Calibrate

Be relentless on listening to calls together and ensure that what you think is a good customer experience is the same as what everyone else thinks is a good customer experience.

Then design your QA form to calibrate with that experience! For example, in your calibration sessions, have everyone evaluate the effectiveness of the call on a 1–5 basis and discuss the differences in scores. Set a goal to be within 2% of each other.

4. Gain Their Commitment

If you want to create ownership, involve agents in design and implementation of the project. People take pride and ownership in the things they’ve built themselves. 

Have them select and listen to their own calls and get their feedback. Then calibrate your scores.  Certify early adopters and have them mentor others that need more help.

5. Celebrate

Recognize those that have been certified and keep it up until everyone in your centre has achieved certification. Then celebrate that!

Could Your New QA Programme Became the Gold Standard for Others?

So how did that centre’s story end? Through these steps, we designed and implemented a completely new collaborative approach to QA that was centred around learning, growth and development, and NOT about the score. 

Our QA scorecard form went from a checklist of over 50 items down to just 5 questions for targeted evaluation and meaningful coaching.

Our entire support team of supervisors, the QA analysts and the managers calibrated from a score variance of over 15% to within 2% of each other and consistently identified the same top areas of opportunities to be coached. And… All of the agents became fully certified within a few short months!

The new QA programme, and the centre’s customer satisfaction performance, became the gold standard for all the other centres in the division and the centre was able to remain open for many years afterwards.

Written by: Adam Boelke, Founder of the Alignment Advantage Group

For more information to improve Quality Assurance in your contact centre, read these articles next:

• How to Unite Your QA and Frontline Teams
• Stay Ahead in QA and Call Recording
• How to Maintain High Quality on Self-Service Channels

Author: Adam Boelke
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson