7 Great Tips for Introducing Agent Self-Scoring to Your Team

Jaime Scott of EvaluAgent  shares his advice for making self-scoring a central part of your quality assurance (QA) strategy.

It’s fair to say that agent self-scoring isn’t for everyone. I wouldn’t recommend rolling it out to all as it suits an active learning style, where the student actively seeks out ways to improve.

It could easily be met with a negative response if pushed out, so I really believe it should be treated as a performance opportunity for those that are genuinely interested – not a mandatory requirement and certainly not a way to skimp on your QA budget.

7 Things to Be Aware of When Introducing Agent Self-Scoring

Involving agents in quality isn’t easy. In fact – rolling out any change isn’t easy. As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t something that you should just roll out and get agents to adopt.

I’ve pulled together a list of things to be aware of and consider when looking to introduce this type of agent engagement tool within a team.

1. Ensure your quality guidelines are extremely clear and well-written. Before rolling out any agent self-scoring, have a chat with your quality team and agents to see if the guidelines need a refresh.
2. Make sure any agent self-scoring results are kept completely separate from any quality scoring results. They need to be using the same scorecards and guidelines, but results should not be used for team metrics. Be fair and consistent with reporting and use agent self-scoring for agent performance and development conversations only.
3. We are our own worst critic. Be wary of agents scoring themselves too harshly, perhaps getting into too much detail and it having a detrimental impact on morale and performance. Perhaps look at calibrating agent self-scoring with peers or team leaders, to give them the confidence and reassurance they’re on the right track.
4. Don’t underestimate the resource required for introducing agent self-scoring. This goes for both the agent and the team leader. Agents who want to self-score can always find a few spare minutes here and there to conduct their own evaluation, but the team leader will also need to find the time to train agents on how to evaluate using a scorecard against a set of guidelines and then the time to have any follow -up conversations that result from the scoring.
5. If you’re going to empower agents – be ready for challenges and open conversations. An agent might initially disagree with an official quality score, but given the chance to evaluate themselves against the same scorecard and guidelines, you might find them having a better understanding of the outcome. Rather than seeing it as a challenge to a quality score, use it as an engagement tool to give the agent a better understanding of the accepted standards and guidelines.
6. Use all the data available to you through the agent scoring and guidelines to open up the conversations and drive better agent development paths. Dig into why certain standards are the level they are. What’s the bigger impact for the rest of the business?
7. Consider agents who may be looking for opportunities for career development. Self-scoring is a great chance to get involved in QA as well as management tasks and coaching sessions. This is great self-development for career progression and should have a positive impact on employee engagement.

What Are the Business Benefits of Agent Self-Scoring?

Ultimately, the main goal here is to empower agents with their own development, get them closer to quality management and understanding what ‘good’ looks like. These three elements will have a natural impact on agents having better conversations with customers.

As an employee engagement tool, agent self-scoring is a way to keep agents motivated, invested in their own career development and performance, and it should aid attrition rates, sick days and reduce costs.

It shows the business is capable of open and honest conversations with employees, shows there are opportunities for self-development and reflection, and for those that are interested, a potential insight into management, coaching or quality assurance roles.

Introducing agent self-scoring pretty much means you’re putting more resource into improvement. And that’s a good thing!

The group of people who invest the time in themselves are also investing time in the improvement of the business. Better conversations with engaged agents means more engaged customers and a better customer experience.