Why Call Center QA Matters: Every Call is an Opportunity (Voice Recording)
“Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”
~ Vince Lombardi
Obvious statement #1; callers are grading their experience every time they make contact with your organization. Obvious, round 2; as long as call center agents are human, not every call will be perfect. Channeling your inner Lombardi however, shouldn’t you give your agents all the tools they need to chase perfection, and perhaps along the way, catch excellence? With the proper Quality Assurance program in place, your agents can reach their potential, your callers will be happy with their experience, and your business will pass each test with flying colors.
Generally serving as the vital first point of contact, call center agents have a unique opportunity to transform each caller into a promoter of your institution. With advanced voice recording technology, you can help your agents uncover and refine the skills they need to deliver on those opportunities.
Voice recording caller-agent interactions provides valuable insight into the caller experience and captures the most important part of a call, the agent's tone. Without having the luxury of body language, agents must rely on the words they choose and the inflection of their voice to convey the message and brand of the organization. It's important and enlightening for agents to hear how they sound outside of their own head. Playing back calls during a coaching session allows the agent to get a realistic impression of how they sounded from the caller’s perspective.
Going back after a call allows the agent to self-critique their performance in a manner that is unavailable in real time. It's sometimes difficult to pick up on verbal queues, particularly if the caller is upset and has adopted a confrontational manner. Taking time to step back and re-examine the interaction will help illustrate patterns within a call and provide guidelines on how to handle similar types of calls. You may choose to filter recordings by call type and set aside examples to share with the training department to enhance your new hire training. Whether it’s for new employees or experienced agents, voice recordings are an essential tool to ensure that each call center interaction is leaving your customers and prospects with a favorable impression of your institution.
An important feature to keep in mind is security and encryption of the recordings. Call agents handle a lot of sensitive information, whether personal in nature, like social security numbers, or account specific. Rigorous security certifications such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) are designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. Even if your institution isn't taking payments by phone using debit cards and credit cards, such a certification will ensure your recordings are encrypted and secure.
We’ll use this space in a future installment to look at the other half of the QA equation, screen recordings. Just as the voice recording described here, it will help paint a complete picture of your customer interactions and provide valuable insight into how your agents can continue to chase perfection and along the way, catch excellence.
About the Author
Ron Schinder is the ultimate inside man. For the better part of 15 years he learned and managed every facet of contact center environments, first with Capital One and then with USF Federal Credit Union. Now he is happy to share his unique perspectives as our financial markets guru, CARES Contact Center expert, and office music concierge.