Quality Assurance Module

Contact center operations involve dozens (or even thousands) of agents interacting with customers. How do you ensure that your call center agents are handling these interactions properly? One common way to oversee these interactions is to perform quality assurance reviews of agent interactions. Many call center platforms include a feature commonly referred to as a “Quality Assurance Module” (or a “QA Module” that provides tools to allow your call center managers and supervisors to perform QA reviews of agent interactions.

Call center quality assurance (QA) is the backbone of excellent customer service. It ensures adherence to best practices, maintains regulatory compliance, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.

What is Call Center Quality Assurance?

Call center quality assurance (QA) is a systematic process implemented in call centers to evaluate and enhance the quality of interactions between agents and customers. It involves setting quality standards, monitoring and measuring performance against these standards, and implementing improvements to enhance the quality of service provided.

The goal of call center quality assurance is to make sure your agents are handling customers properly. Are the agents polite and helpful? Are they able to deescalate issues? Do the agents present offers or sales pitches accurately? Do the agents read the appropriate disclaimers or other required language?

Here's a more detailed breakdown of what call center quality assurance entails:

1. Setting Quality Standards: The first step in QA is defining what ‘quality' means for your call center. These standards are typically based on organizational objectives, customer expectations, and industry best practices. They could include metrics such as average handle time, first call resolution, customer satisfaction scores, and adherence to scripts or procedures, among others.
2. Monitoring Interactions: Once standards are set, the next step is to monitor interactions between agents and customers to evaluate how well those standards are being met. This is typically done through methods such as call recording and monitoring, email and chat reviews, and customer feedback surveys.
3. Performance Evaluation: After interactions are monitored, they are evaluated based on the set standards. QA specialists or managers use scorecards or rating systems to measure how well each interaction met the quality standards.
4. Feedback and Training: Feedback is provided to agents based on the results of the evaluations. If areas for improvement are identified, targeted training or coaching sessions can be provided to help agents improve their performance. Regular feedback is crucial for continuous improvement.
5. Continuous Improvement: The goal of QA is not just to identify and fix problems, but to continuously improve the quality of service. This means regularly reviewing and updating quality standards, monitoring and evaluation methods, and training programs to adapt to changing customer expectations and business needs.
6. Compliance: In regulated industries, QA also involves ensuring that all interactions comply with relevant laws and regulations. This can include things like privacy protections, disclosure requirements, and data security standards.

In summary, call center quality assurance is a comprehensive approach to ensuring excellence in customer service. It involves setting clear standards, regularly monitoring and evaluating performance, and continually making improvements to meet and exceed customer expectations.

What is a Quality Assurance Module?

A Quality Assurance module is a dedicated component of call center software designed to monitor, measure, and enhance the quality of customer interactions. Some call center platforms have a QA module built into the software. The module typically allows you to build QA scorecards and provides supervisors or team leads an interface through which they can listen to a call, fill out a scorecard for the call, and provide feedback to the agent about the call.

Some contact center platforms do not have native QA modules. However, there are a number of third party services that can be integrated into most call center platforms to provide this feature. Often, the integration simply requires providing the QA module with access to call logs and call recordings.

We will provide examples of call center platforms with built-in QA modules as well as examples of third party services that provide such modules later in this feature review.

Key Features of Quality Assurance Modules

Quality Assurance modules in call center software (or in third party add-ons) can have a number of different features.

1. Call recording and playback: Many QA modules have an interface that allows a person doing a QA review of a call to both listen to the call (using an audio player typically built into a webpage) and fill out a scorecard. Having the audio player as well as a scorecard in a single interface makes the QA reviewer's work much easier.
2. QA Queues. Call centers can have a lot of calls. Unless you are using automated quality assurance, its not possible to manually QA every call or interaction. QA Queues are a feature of many QA modules. These queues provide a “to-do list” for QA reviewers. Queues may be generated based on rules an administrator configures. For example, some rules might be: review 100% of calls of new agents; review 50% of calls for experienced agents; review 100% of calls of agents with performance issues, etc. These queues may be configured such that they are automatically assigned to certain reviewers. Queues can make your call QA processes much more efficient!
3. Call Scorecard Builders. Some QA modules allow supervisors or administrators to build call scorecards. Look for modules that allow these scorecards to easily be built and associated with different campaigns (for example, a customer service campaign should have a different scorecard than a sales campaign). These scorecard builders are sometimes implemented in simple drag and drop interfaces making scorecards easy to build and deploy.
4. Call Scorecards. Call scorecards are used by most QA modules and provide a simple user interface for a QA reviewer (such as a supervisor) to quickly score or rate how well an agent did on a call. Ideally, the scorecard should be viewable while the QA reviewer is listening to a call recording (typically in a single interface). A good scorecard is one that allows a reviewer to enter information about a call in a standardized format (e.g., using checkboxes, dropdowns, or other standardized approaches). Since you will want to report on this data, the more standardized you can make the responses the better.
5. Agent Feedback. What's the point of scoring calls if you can't give feedback to the agent? A good Call QA Module will allow you to easily pass feedback from a review to the agent so the agent can learn and improve.
6. Real-time monitoring: Some QA modules allow supervisors to silently monitor live calls. Some modules allow supervisors to both silently monitor live calls as well as an ability to “barge-in” on a call (to speak to the agent and/or the customer).
7. Speech analytics: (see our separate post on Automated QA or “AQA” for more details) AI tools can be used in quality assurance modules to automatically analyze voice data to detect sentiment, flag compliance issues, and identify areas for agent improvement.
8. Performance reporting and analytics: Some QA modules include reporting features that allow supervisors or managers to easily view agent quality- related statistics. For example, a QA module may include dashboard reports that show which agents have been QA-reviewed, which agents need reviews, and how each agent has been scored. These tools aggregate data and provide insights into individual and team performance, helping managers make informed decisions.
9. Compliance management: This feature ensures all calls adhere to regulatory requirements, significantly reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties. Some QA modules include special reporting or other features to focus in on compliance management issues (e.g., by flagging compliance issues for further review).

Benefits of Using Quality Assurance Modules

Utilizing Quality Assurance modules can result in a number of benefits for call centers:

• Better customer experience: By continuously monitoring and improving interaction quality, customers receive better service, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty.
• Improved agent performance and coaching: Real-time feedback and targeted coaching based on call reviews help agents refine their skills and improve their performance.
• Better compliance adherence: Automated compliance features minimize the risk of non-compliance, protecting your organization from potential penalties.
• Data-driven decision making: Detailed analytics and reports provide valuable insights for strategic planning and decision-making.

Considerations When Choosing a Quality Assurance Module

Choosing the right QA module involves several considerations:

• Integration: The module should seamlessly integrate with your existing call center software and other business systems.
• Scalability: As your business grows, your software should be able to scale up to accommodate more users and increased data volume.
• User-friendliness: A module with an intuitive user interface increases adoption rates and reduces the learning curve for agents.
• Customizability: The ability to customize features, reports, and KPIs ensures that the module can adapt to your specific business needs.

Example Call Center Providers with QA Modules

Several call center software providers offer robust QA modules that are built in to their platforms. These include:

1. Genesys: Genesys' contact center platform includes a Quality Management (“QM”) module which includes scorecards, feedback forms, and reports.
2. Nice CX One: Offers a QA form builder for use in evaluating calls and providing feedback to agents.
3. TalkDesk: TalkDesk has a Quality Management Module built into the platform.

Even if your call center platform does not have a built-in QA module, there are a number of providers that have add-on QA modules that can work in conjunction with most call center software providers. Examples include:

1. ScoreBuddy: ScoreBuddy provides call QA modules which integrate with many call center platforms. Their tools allow the easy creation and management of call scorecards.
2. Observe.ai: Observe.ai provides a number of call QA features that can integrate with your existing contact center.

Wrap-Up

Quality Assurance modules are an important feature of many call centers. By considering your unique business needs and exploring various providers, you can find the ideal QA module to drive your call center's success.

Interested in enhancing your call center's quality assurance practices by picking a call center provider with a quality assurance module? Contact us for help in choosing the best provider for your needs.