Call centers

6 posts



How many times does someone use a piece of business terminology which you don’t really understand? Everyone else nods sagely, so you think the best thing to do is to nod along sagely as well, instead of asking, “Excuse me, what exactly is a KPI?”

I’m going to explain what KPIs really are and how they work so that you can discuss them intelligently and make sensible decisions.

Let's Start With The Acronym


KPI concept

KPI means “key performance indicator.” There are a number of origin stories. The most popular involves public sector management.

In 1980s Britain, where Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party were trying to find ways to run government more like businesses, they came up against the challenge of measuring the performance of organizations that don’t, and aren’t intended to, make money. So, they started using KPIs to do the job.

KPIs often focus on what happens within processes. Businesses realized that they could use them too. Information technology was becoming available to crunch the numbers. It was the perfect breeding ground for KPIs.

Basic Concepts


Woman uses KPI dashboard

KPIs (or “metrics”) measure something in numerical terms. Sometimes, organizations try to justify funding requests by “measuring” the unmeasurable. An organization may quantify “engagement” by counting how many meetings they have with their target audience, how many people were attending the meetings, etc. While this measures “activity,” does it necessarily measure “engagement”? How many people pay attention during the meetings? What happens because of these meetings?

When someone presents you with a KPI, ask how it’s calculated or what it is supposed to represent.

Lagging & Leading Indicators


Man looks at KPIs with his coworker

​Lagging indicators are used to measure what has happened while leading indicators are used to predict what is going to happen. Lagging indicators, which measure what has happened, are often used as leading indicators, to infer what is going to happen.

Average handling time (AHT) is a good example. It measures the average length of time a contact center agent spends working with each customer, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work. It is based on calls that have been finished, so it can rightly be considered a lagging indicator.

AHT is also used to infer how many calls agents will handle in the future. AHT is an integral part of forecasting and planning. In this way, AHT is also a leading indicator.

When someone quotes a KPI you are unfamiliar with, ask if it’s a lagging indicator or a leading indicator. And if they say it’s a leading indicator, ask why.

Aggregated Metrics


KPI, key performance indicator, graph, productivity, goal concept

Aggregated metrics or KPIs are those which don’t measure something directly, but instead combine a series of other metrics to come up with an overall score. Performance ratings are a typical example.

A contact center agent gets a quarterly performance rating. Her bonus depends on this. It is a combination of her AHT, how many calls she handled in the quarter (productivity), how many hours she worked in the quarter (attendance), and a quality rating based on one call evaluated per week by her supervisor.

Her performance rating doesn’t only depend on the four statistics shown above. It also depends on how important the person designing the metric thinks each statistic is. She might have perfect quality scores in all the calls evaluated, but if quality is given a 10% weighting and AHT has a 40% weighting, then her calls being longer than the average will work against her, regardless of her quality scores.

The choice of metrics is also important. Her “performance” depends on AHT, productivity, attendance, and quality. A contact center shift has a finite length, so if AHT goes up, productivity will inevitably go down, so the two metrics are more or less measuring the same thing.

The choice of metrics has an influence on behavior. I am an agent. If I know I am going to lose my bonus spending too long trying to help a customer, then I will rapidly escalate him to Tier 2 if I can’t solve his problem quickly.

"Every Metric Has Its Place."


KPI, key performance indicator concept

To understand a metric, you need to know where it sits in the process you are measuring. Traditionally, there are four places where they can sit.

Inputs: They measure what happens to contributing factors before the process starts. Contact center classics are “number of calls offered” or “right party connects.” On the HR side, they can include “agent churn.”

Process: They measure what actually happens during the process. Most contact center KPIs are "process” KPIs. Classics in the contact center world include service level (percentage of calls answered within a specified number of seconds) or AHT.

Outputs: This is what the process produces as complete units of finished work. The contact center “classic” is “productivity,” the number of calls handled. Output measures should be hard numbers. If an “output” measure is a fuzzy aggregate KPI like “engagement,” then it’s worth asking what exactly the process produces.

Outcomes: These are intended to measure the consequences of the process. They do not always correlate with outputs. NPS scores are a typical example. High-tech contact centers may use customer sentiment scores. Outcome KPIs are more likely to be aggregated, which means they may be more subject to manipulation or bias. If you’re not sure what an outcome KPI means, try asking what it measures or how it relates to the process it’s measuring.

Wrapping Up

Done right, KPIs are a valuable tool to understand how processes are performing. They do need to be well considered and applied intelligently. If you’re looking to overhaul your KPIs and would like to bounce a few ideas around, why don’t we get in touch?


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Everything You Wanted To Know About KPIs …

Why Contact Centers Are A Good Way To Start Your Career



“Do you really want to work in a contact center?”

Let’s be honest: five-year-olds don’t dream about working in a contact center when they grow up. Proud parents never boast about their children working in contact centers. Teachers at private schools never recommend students to work in contact centers.

People see contact centers as cubicle farms with hundreds of people on the phones selling non-existent products and services.

I’m going to tell you something different.

Contact centers are a great way for a person to start their career.

The Size Of The Industry


Call center employees help a customer

About 2.79 million Americans and U.S. residents, slightly more than 2% of the working population, work in contact centers.

The real figure may be higher. Many companies may call their contact centers “service centers,” “customer service centers," or “help desks.”

A contact center agent’s average tenure is three years. All 2.79 million agents change their jobs every three years. The industry will have 930,000 vacancies every year, which equates to approximately 77,000 vacancies a month.

If you’re leaving university with a student loan to pay off, there’s no shortage of vacancies.

Getting In On The Ground Floor


Portrait of a call center employee

​It’s tough for newcomers to the workforce. Everyone wants previous experience. Contact centers are less likely to demand that. Joining a contact center attached to a specific industry can get you a grounding in that industry.

The companies serving consumers run contact centers. They include banks, debt collection agencies, the government (both local and national), insurance, healthcare, information technology, telecommunications, travel and tourism, and utilities. If you want to get experience in one of these industries, there’s a contact center for you to get your foot in the door.

As well as industry experience, you will also develop your people skills. That’s more than you’ll get from an MBA course. As a contact center agent, you’ll deal with up to 100 people per day. You’ll learn how to build rapport with complete strangers, explain things to emotional people, and stay calm under pressure or in the face of insults. Some people call these “soft skills.” These “soft skills” make people want to do business with you, hire you, or maybe even marry you!

Contact centers are a tech-heavy environment. You will learn to work with various programs and applications from day one. This will improve your technical skills and, more importantly, develop your ability to learn how to use technology. Technology changes all the time, but it will always be with us.

Contact centers give you the opportunity to work on yourself. Contact center work can be monotonous and repetitive. So is unemployment. This is your opportunity to develop your resilience and determination. Most contact centers provide you with regular coaching to improve your performance. Responding positively to coaching is a key element of being employable in today’s workforce. Contact center agents learn how to work in teams where success is not one person getting good exam results, but a customer having their requests fulfilled as quickly and effectively as possible.

You can learn all this in your first job!

Going Up!


Man working at a call center

What can contact centers offer people who stay longer than three years?

In the U.S., the average contact center employs 54 agents. That means one manager for every 54 agents, and on average, there is one supervisor for every 8.6 agents.

The contact centers industry is unusually “democratic.” Over the past 12 years, I have worked with more than 200 contact centers on three continents. In most cases, the managers started their careers as agents.

The industry also needs data analysts, IT specialists, developers, trainers, and coaches. Many of them started their careers as agents.

A Growth Industry


Call center employees

​Two factors have had a major impact:

The pandemic forced many companies to abandon face-to-face operations, relying on their contact centers to communicate with customers. Customers got used to doing business online. Now, many customers don’t want to go back to physically visiting a branch. Companies also welcome the change. Offices and shops are expensive to run in relation to the number of customers they serve. Companies are looking to expand their contact center operations as part of their strategy to go digital.

Legislation in many Western countries makes changing bank accounts, insurance, telecommunications, or utilities providers easier. Customer service is now the competitive battleground of the 21st century. Contact centers are expected to hold that ground and win.

A Changing World


Call center employees help customers over the phone

The shift to cloud technology is revolutionizing the industry, making access to transformational technologies less expensive and more available.

Companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots to handle simple interactions. This increases capacity without increasing headcount and frees up humans to handle more challenging interactions.

As automated systems handle simple tasks, human agents will handle more complex requests or help out customers who having trouble dealing with the bots. Human agents will need to be better trained both in terms of product and service knowledge and also in terms of emotional intelligence and communication skills.

Supervisors are likely to become more human-centered as automation will handle the numerical tasks. Supervisors will concentrate on coaching and motivating human agents or assisting in solving the most complicated customer issues and requests.

The wrap-up

The contact center industry has much to offer anyone looking for a job, regardless of experience. If you’d like to talk to an industry veteran, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Further reading...

Here are some more articles about the contact center industry:

Creating Quality Standards For Contact Centers

Using Quality Management To Improve KPIs

How To Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) In Contact Centers

Acquiring Job Advance Your Career Career Changing Careers and Employment Education Internship

Why Contact Centers Are A Good Way …

CSAT vs. Sentiment Analysis: Which Is Better?



During the pandemic, organizations had to interact with their customers digitally. Contact centers provided the company’s “human face.”

Without face-to-face interactions, it is a lot harder to understand how your customers feel, since you cannot experience customer behavior directly.

Running a contact center is like steering a submarine: you need a periscope to see what is going on.

What Does A Contact Center Manager Use For A Periscope?


Salesperson listens to a call to help a customer

Contact center managers have two tools—post-call customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys and sentiment analysis.

CSAT surveys ask customers to react after their encounters with the company, prompting them to give a numerical score.

Sentiment analysis uses speech analytics to take customers’ “emotional temperature” during the conversation.

I believe that sentiment analysis is a better “periscope” than post-call surveys.

Post-Call CSAT Measurement


Call / contact center employees

How It Works

When the interaction ends, the automated survey asks the customer to give a numerical score. This measures how they feel about the interaction. Customers may also be asked to say why they gave this score.

Survey Wording Issues

One popular CSAT measurement is the net promoter score (NPS). Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend the company to their friends and relatives.

NPS’s strongest advocates believe asking how likely customers are to recommend the company is better than asking how happy they feel. It’s not clear how carefully respondents think about the question. They are asked to respond unexpectedly. They rarely have the time or the interest to consider the question carefully. Their response will most likely reflect their emotional state.

NPS’s scoring system may not match up with how customers think. NPS classifies anyone giving a score of 6 out of 10 or below as “detractors,” or people who will complain about the company. Customers giving 9 or 10 out of 10 are classified as promoters, or people who will tell everyone how good the company is. Those giving 7 or 8 are classified as “passive.” Respondents are unlikely to think in such depth. If their problem has been solved, they will give a high score, if it hasn’t, they will give a low score. Some respondents have even given a 7 or 8, because “they never give 10 on principle.”

Penetration Rate

About 3% of customers respond to post-call surveys. This is too small to be considered a representative sample. Where results show poor CSAT, this may reflect angry customers’ motivation to show their feelings or get “revenge” on the agent. It does not necessarily indicate how all customers feel.

Data Aggregation

Inconsistent customer reactions and low sample sizes make aggregating CSAT data a frustrating task. Inaccuracies potentially baked into each result are then compounded by the volume of results.

At a high level, ranking agents’ average CSAT or NPS scores can raise some red flags if an agent has a lower score than the team average. The same can apply to team or queue averages.

Sentiment Analysis


A customer service representative works remotely.

How It Works

This is a much newer technology than post-call surveys. Speech analytics software can be programmed to identify and indicate whether customers are expressing positive, neutral, or negative feelings.

It is trained to recognize such feelings based on samples where the speaker’s feelings are known. The system uses artificial intelligence (AI) to construct a picture of which combinations of phrases, pitch, pace, and volume match feelings that have been identified in a recording by the AI’s trainer. Where mismatches are discovered, the system can be further trained.

For sampling purposes, the sounds on a voice call can be split into each party on the call and analyzed separately. Sentiments can be identified even when both parties are speaking at once.

Sample Size

This is the major differentiator between sentiment analysis and post-call surveys. Sentiment analysis is usually applied to all calls. It can be applied to all parts of a call, showing users how customers’ feelings change throughout the call. The sample size is likely to equal the population being studied, so the statistical significance of the data cannot be denied.

Sentiment analysis reflects how the customer feels without having to process and respond to a question.

One limitation is that because there is no question, you cannot tell why the customer is angry. The root cause might be the agents’ behavior, the issue with the product, or be unrelated to the call at all.

Data Aggregation

Since the sample size is so much larger, there is more scope for aggregation and analysis. You need to build a set of benchmarks to establish what is “normal” for your population. If a water-utilities contact center handles issues relating to wastewater disposal, customer sentiment will be fairly negative as a matter of course.

League tables showing average sentiment by agent, team, or queue can quickly identify where improvements can be made. Comparing or correlating this with other data such as call length or first contact resolution, you can see how contact center operations affect customer perception. You can see what makes customers angry or happy, and then tune your offerings as a company accordingly.

Wrap-Up


Call center graphic

Sentiment analysis clearly produces more data than a post-call survey, but it's usually more expensive to collect. Cloud computing is making speech analytics and sentiment analysis more affordable for smaller contact centers.

What do you use as a “periscope” on your contact center? How useful are the results? Do they match your expectations or are they surprising? I’d love to hear more!

Further reading...

Here are links to some other articles on NPS, customer feedback, and customer sentiment:

How to Calculate… Net Promoter Score

The Ultimate Guide to Sentiment and Emotion Analysis

Sentiment’s Role in Contact Centre Management

Acquiring Job Advance Your Career Career Changing Careers and Employment Education Internship

CSAT vs. Sentiment Analysis: Which Is Better?

How To Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) In Contact Centers



It’s common knowledge that approximately 65% of contact center costs are staffing costs. Inbound staff get paid by the hour. If your cost per call is USD 3.82, then USD 2.90 of that cost is for staffing costs.

If you can reduce AHT by 10%, staffing costs reduce to USD 2.06, and the overall cost per call reduces to USD 3.59—a USD 0.23 cost reduction per call.

Let’s scale these numbers up for a 100-seat contact center. Assuming that each agent handles 50 calls a day, and there are 90 agents working at any one time, then the contact center handles 4,500 calls a day, so it will save approximately USD 1,033 per day, USD 23,000 per month, and USD 276,000 per year.

Common Root Causes And Solutions


Call center employee talks to a customer on the phone

​To reduce AHT, the best way to do it is to listen to a selection of calls that are longer than AHT, and a selection that are shorter. You can then see how many of the common root causes listed below you find in the longer calls as opposed to the shorter calls.

If you have speech analytics software available, you can make this task a lot easier.

Transfers And Routing Strategy


Person dials a phone number

​How many calls are agents transferring to Tier 2?

Let’s say your AHT is 4 minutes (240 seconds) and 10% of calls are routed to a Tier 2 agent.

Customers spend 2 minutes with a Tier 1 agent, 1 minute on hold while the Tier 1 agent explains the problem to a Tier 2 agent, and 3 minutes with a Tier 2 agent. Total time = 6 minutes.

If that call was routed directly to a Tier 2 agent, he could handle it in 4 minutes. This is a net saving of 2 minutes or 33% on the longest calls in the contact center.

Why not redesign the IVR to route customers with common Tier 2 problems directly to Tier 2?

“Dead Air”


Call center employee talks to her manager

This is when neither side is talking. Customers do not like it because they don’t know what is happening and they are paying for the call.

It’s often caused by slow computer systems or poorly trained agents who are not familiar with the tools or workflows.

It’s worth finding calls with “dead air” and investigating why this is happening. If computer systems are the problem, do they affect all categories of cases or specific cases where specific tools are used?

Can the tools be sped up in some way? Can the process be adjusted so that agents are running the tools while doing something else? Could this category of issues be handled by chat instead of a call, so that agents can handle multiple chats at the same time?

Call Handling Skills


Call center employees answer phone calls

Most contact center agents are nice people. They are trained to be polite to customers. They are not always so good at taking control of a conversation when a customer is upset or simply wants to talk about something else.

Agents need to be assertive to keep the conversation on track. They need to be trained to control the conversation by asking the right questions and not getting drawn into other directions.

Workflow: How Much Can You Reduce Call Length By?


Empty call center

Listen to a selection of your calls. If you reduce the call to the bare minimum of greeting, verification, needs analysis, response, and goodbye, how many seconds will it shave off of the call length?

How will this affect customer satisfaction (CSAT)? How will they react to a shorter, brisker call?

Can Some Calls Be Automated, And What Will That Do To Your AHT/CSAT?


Woman in call center talks to a customer on the phone

Some simple requests can be handled by automated “bots.” Contact center costs are a function of cost per call and call volumes.

If we reduce AHT, we reduce the cost per call.

Automating simple processes will reduce call volumes but may lead to an increase in AHT.

Let’s say we can automate 10% of calls, but this will lead to an increase in AHT by 5%. What is the net effect? Let’s do a “before” and “after” comparison.

“Before”

Assume the cost per call is USD 3.82. (See above)

90 agents normally work at any one time, and each agent handles 50 calls per day.

Total costs per day = USD 17,190 per day.

“After”

Assume the cost per call is USD 4.00 because AHT on human-handled calls has been increased by 5%.

90 agents normally work at any one time, and each agent now handles 45 calls per day.

Total costs per day = USD 16,200 per day.

This is because call volumes have been reduced from 4,500 to 4,050 per day.

This saving of USD 990.00 per day represents 69 employee hours that can be realized by redeploying them to other tasks.

Multiplying this up, savings of USD 990 per day is USD 22,770 per month or USD 273,240 per year.

Over to you!

Are you trying to reduce your AHT? How much can you cut your call length by? Which root cause looks most likely?

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How To Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) …

How To Prepare An ROI Calculation



A very experienced technical sales professional told me something very interesting. Nearly all business-to-business sales attempt to replace an existing solution. He said: “Companies buy solutions that produce the same outputs for a lower price or produce more outputs for the same price."

What Is A Return On Investment (ROI) Calculation?


Return on investment (ROI) concept

ROI calculations are thought experiments to show your audience what will happen if they switch from their existing solution to the proposed new solution. It’s used in the sales process to stimulate discussion.

As a conversation starter, the calculation doesn’t have to be totally accurate. Where you don’t have the full figures, you can make assumptions. They must be based on some sort of reality such as industry benchmarks, for example.

Be conservative in your estimates. If a customer says you have underestimated the savings they will make, then they are selling themselves the product.

Here is a step-by-step guide to how to prepare an ROI calculation, using savings made with a voice biometric authentication system as an example.

Step 1: Define The Experiment


Man on laptop working customer service

Decide what effect switching to the new solution will have. Consider the financial value of the cost reduction or increase in productivity. The voice biometric system won’t make any money itself. It will eliminate the need for agents to ask the customer security questions, so reducing call lengths by approximately 1 minute.

Step 2: Define The Current (Control) State


Time, percentage, money, return on investment, ROI concept

Scientific experiments often have a control. In drug trials, two rats are injected with the target pathogen. One is injected with the drug, while the other isn’t. This second rat is the “control.” It demonstrates what happens if the drug isn’t used.

The basic scenario of the ROI calculation does the same thing.

Assume our contact center has 100 agents on the phones. Each agent handles 100 calls a day and each call is approximately 3 minutes long. Agents are paid USD 10.00 per hour. The agents work 7 hours a day (Breaks are unpaid), 47 weeks per year not including holidays and sickness. Cost per call = USD 70.00 / 100 calls = USD 0.70 per call.

Step 3: Define The Effect Of The Experiment


Salesperson listens to help a customer

Now we define what happens, from the financial perspective, when we use the new solution. In our example, removing the security questions will reduce the call length by 1 minute. Calls are now 2 minutes long instead of 3, so agents can make 150 calls in the time they handled 100 calls. The new cost per call will be USD 70.00 / 150 calls = USD 0.46 per call.

Step 4: Define The Savings


ROI, return on investment concept

We have defined the financial situation before adopting the product and after adopting the product. Now we calculate the savings by deducting one from the other. Before product adoption, the cost per call is USD 0.70 per call. After product adoption, the cost per call is USD 0.46 per call. The savings will therefore be USD 0.24 per call.

Step 5: Introduce The Solution Cost To Calculate The True Savings


Woman salesperson talks to a customer on the phone

​The solution itself has a cost. We must factor this into the savings calculation to see if it’s worth buying.

Traditionally, on-premises software was sold with a single license fee and a small annual maintenance fee as a follow-up. Nowadays, software is more likely to be sold under a monthly or quarterly subscription fee or, if it is cloud-based, as a consumption charge. It’s important to express savings in the same time frame as the solution costs.

To keep things simple, let’s assume that our product is priced as a monthly subscription based on the number of named users. The subscription fee is USD 150.00 per agent per month.

An agent handles 150 calls per day for 21 days per month (assuming we lose 2 working days per month to holidays and sickness) which comes to 3, 150 calls per month. Monthly savings will therefore be USD 0.24 per call x 3,150 calls = USD 756.00 per agent per month.

Net savings is the monthly savings minus the subscription fee. USD 756.00 – USD 150 = USD 606 per month. Multiply that by the 100 agents working in the contact center, and you have a total monthly saving of USD 60,600 per month. Multiply that by 12, and you have a savings of USD 727,000 per year.

Skull Busters


Return on investment (ROI) concept

Sometimes customers will tell you they want to do something like “improve CSAT.” The financial benefits are not always obvious. In my experience, the best way to address this is to ask the customers themselves what such improvements will mean financially.

If they can’t tell you this, then they may not really know why they are buying the product.

If they tell you every 1% improvement in NPS scores will lead to a USD half million increase in revenues, build that into your numbers.

If you think the savings look too optimistic, present your more “realistic” figure. Explain that you want to err on the side of caution. Your customer will be reassured by your transparency and prudence.

Presentation


Businesswoman looks at charts and graphs

Your “ally” in the customer’s company may ask you for the ROI calculation to help her persuade the board that buying your solution is a good idea. Provide her with an easy-to-understand presentation with explanatory notes explaining what the facts are and where they come from, what the assumptions are and what they are based on, and what the calculations are and how they were calculated.

She may need to present the calculation without your help.

Wrap-Up

Are you trying to prepare an ROI calculation? Let me know if you need any help!

Further reading...

Try reading this article about building your business case. It might help you flesh out your calculations with some narrative.

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How To Prepare An ROI Calculation

Creating Quality Standards For Contact Centers



COVID-19 had a negative effect on bricks-and-mortar businesses. However, the contact center industry is growing apace.

Where companies adopted a fully online model, contact centers are often the only way that they interact with customers.

For banking, telecommunications, travel, and other services, the “product” they offer varies little from one vendor to another.

Competition happens at the service level. Companies must define interaction standards to satisfy regulators and customers and define their brands.

This is usually done using an evaluation form. Team leaders or quality specialists use it to evaluate recorded calls.

Where Do Standards Come From?


Call center graphic

Quality standards should reflect what matters to the regulators, who can shut the business down, and what matters to the customers, who can vote with their wallets or credit cards.

How Do We Create These Standards?


Call / contact center employees

I use the following 6-stage method:

1. What happens during the call?

To answer this question, I talk to agents. They tell me what really happens on the call in 10 to 15 bullet points.

Flow diagrams showing how the workflow is structured in the CRM system are a poor substitute.

Agents frequently develop their own “workarounds” to address poorly designed workflows rather than submit enhancement requests and wait for a response that never comes.

The list doesn’t have to be meticulously detailed. If the data produced on the back of this call is important, then this also needs to be included as an event in the process.

2. What is “good enough”?

You can’t raise standards until you have defined them. Look at each stage and write down what makes that stage “good enough” for regulators and customers.

Many contact centers do this internally. The drawback here is that your standards reflect the opinions of contact center managers, not the general public.

A customer is standing on the street on a dark, cold, winter evening calling his bank to find out why the ATM won’t accept his card. He doesn’t care how many times the agent used his name in the conversation.

One way to get the customer’s view is to arrange a focus group and ask them. Another way is to look at what customers complain about. A third way is to ask agents what part of the call is most likely to upset customers.

3. Questions

Once you’ve defined what makes each part of the call good enough, then you need to reformulate that as a question.

The question needs to be as specific and as unambiguous as you can make it. Your answers also need to be specific and understood consistently.

If your question is “How well did the agent explain the function of the product?” and the answers are “Excellently,” “Quite well,” “Poorly,” or “Very poorly," it’s unlikely that any two evaluators will agree on the answer in relation to the same call.

Evaluators find “Yes/No” answers to questions defining a specific standard a lot easier to use.

4. What about behavior?

Most forms have at least one evaluation criterion related to how polite/respectful the agent was on the call.

There may be others related to how clearly or quickly the agent spoke.

There may also be a “bucket” question on how well the agent adhered to compliance rules.

Put these at the end. An evaluator can answer them easily after listening to the whole call without having to scroll back up the form.

5. How much detail do you need?

Contact centers evaluating calls manually will evaluate no more than 1% of calls handled.

It takes longer for a person to evaluate a call than the length of the call itself.

To evaluate all calls manually, the contact center would need more evaluators than agents handling the calls. That is not going to happen.

The faster you can evaluate a call, the more calls you can evaluate, so a shorter form will lead to a better sample size.

It’s a good idea to look at your questions and decide which ones are “necessary” and which ones are “nice to have,” then cut out the “nice to haves.”

Catching enough detail is a delicate balance. Normally, less than 5% of randomly selected calls will have any significant problem at all.

Once you know what a “problematic call” is like in terms of length, which queue it serves, which agent handled it etc., you can focus part of your selection there to catch more of them.

Always select some calls randomly to validate your assumptions, however.

One idea is a 2-stage form. Start with some global questions on script/process adherence, correct information given, and politeness. Only move on to the second stage of the form if there is a problem to be solved in the first stage.

6. Testing

This form may lose people their quality bonuses or even their jobs, so we need to test it to be sure the results are accurate.

The read through

Get someone not involved in the form creation process to read it through. Authors tend to fall in love with their work. An external critical eye may see things that otherwise won’t be seen.

The test-drive

Get evaluators to use it to evaluate some real calls. They will point out how questions need to be changed to be useful

Calibration

Calibration is when multiple evaluators evaluate the same call with the same form. In theory, they should all produce the same results.

Where a question leads to disagreement, you will need to agree on the “correct” answer, then adjust the wording of the question and pre-set answers to lead to this result.

Wrap up

If you’re struggling to create or improve a form. Try following this process. Tell me how you get on! I’d love to hear about it.

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Creating Quality Standards For Contact Centers