Newsroom

07 Feb 2005

Discovering the Missing Link Between Quality Monitoring and Customer Satisfaction

As contact center management becomes increasingly focused on gaining the benefits of process efficiency while improving customer satisfaction levels, a majority of these organizations recognize the importance of the ROI of their Quality Assurance (QA) functions. Contact center managers focused only on soft skills while ignoring process performance may find their organizations losing market share as customer satisfaction levels fall.

What transforms a contact center geared toward managing ACD oriented metrics into a contact center with a commitment to delivering high quality and customer driven service? Research indicates that customers expect agents to exhibit active listening, empathy, professionalism, and other basic customer service skills. Each of these attributes is important. Organizations that are effective at understanding the current performance of their agents, and when necessary, modifying these behaviors, will be able to drive Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). An essential component of this capability is high levels of consistency across the entire population of coaches, team leads, and QA staff, all of whom provide feedback and coaching to agents.

Most organizations have implemented some type of Quality Monitoring (QM) program. If you were involved in the selection process, you are aware there is no shortage of available programs. While most QM programs address the need to measure transactional activities, they do not provide the tools to determine the impact QM programs have on customer satisfaction.

Quality Monitoring, once defined primarily in terms of soft skill performance, has expanded to include any number of components such as efficiency and revenue attained. As a result, most of the tools and “solutions” are designed to assist management in monitoring this broadened array of metrics. The goal, of course, is to provide information and data that can be used to improve performance without sacrificing a high level of CSAT.

The theory is sound. Unless your monitoring methodology generates data that links with and corroborates your CSAT data, it fails in its purpose. In practice, however, most monitoring systems do not produce data capable of driving positive results. They lack a critical component – calibration. As with any measurement tool, unless it is properly calibrated, the data it yields is generally inaccurate, misleading, and, as a result, meaningless. Without a way of assuring consistency in the monitoring process, you end up with a “comparing apples to oranges” scenario.

For example, you find that your assessment and audit scores differ significantly depending on who is conducting the audit. Your agents complain that some supervisors are “tougher” than others. Without the implementation of well-defined criteria, every person approaches the task of quality monitoring differently. You’re accumulating information, but does it speak directly to objectives? Is your quality monitoring telling you one thing, while you’re CSAT data indicates something different? Does the information you receive equip you to improve performance while driving customer satisfaction?

Why is calibration so important? Because quality monitoring is conducted by people, there is inherent variation in the areas of accuracy, reproducibility and repeatability. The lower the variation, the more meaningful the final scores or data used to measure both the process and the staff who perform the monitored activities becomes. This data can then be used to effectively drive decisions concerning process capabilities: How accurate can the process get? How does process performance affect CSAT? Which forms and questions are the easiest or hardest to use? And people capabilities: Which supervisors or coaches have systemic issues with calibration and require additional training?

Unless everyone is on the same page in the monitoring process, the usefulness of the data generated will be severely limited. Consistency between auditors is an indispensable first-step toward ensuring monitoring results that effectively drive customer satisfaction. Data collected through transaction monitoring typically has little data integrity because auditors are not calibrated. To deliver an ROI that supports the heavy investment in Quality Monitoring made by most firms, the next generation of QA tools need to provide more than a “check-box” activity. The best of these tools will supply management with reliable data that relates directly to CSAT objectives. Using tools and methodology that allow for a consistent calibration system is key to driving customer satisfaction levels.

The question, then, becomes not so much whether or not you are monitoring but, more to the point, does the information your monitoring system generates track with your CSAT data?

As you review and evaluate your calibration methodology, introducing assessments that accurately reflect your CSAT objectives can produce quality assurance scores backed up by customer satisfaction information. As a result you will realize genuine QA credibility that provides the basis for authentic operational improvement and improved, sustainable CSAT.

To achieve these business goals, the co-developers of the COPC-2000® Standard developed SmartScore(TM). Recognizing the need to bridge the gap between QA scores and customer satisfaction data, Customers Operation Performance Center (COPC) developed a suite of services offering contact centers a dynamic solution to ensuring an effective, consistent monitoring process focused on measurement of items directly related to CSAT.

SmartScore(TM) is a powerful web-based application tool to measure value-add activity to improve performance. Through its calibration process implementation, SmartScore(TM) objectively measures the consistency for all staff who score calls, emails, chat, or other agent-provisioned activities. Management then has an objective calibration measure, which is the basis for process improvement. By objectively measuring the consistency of auditors, reducing variation among them, and identifying people and process variation, transactional activity data becomes more reliable for use in process improvement. As a result, the process gains efficiencies from the resources being utilized.

Focusing on calibration and process level analysis, the SmartScore™ suite of services takes a unique two-phase approach: Current State Assessment followed by Solutions Implementation. During the Current State Assessment phase organizations receive a thorough assessment of the methodology and form of any QM program they may have in place. Process and CSAT objectives are then incorporated into recommendations for solution implementation. Skilled, experienced consultants work together with management throughout the process. The result ensures consistency among QM evaluators, enabling companies to maximize ROI of their Quality Monitoring systems. By increasing the focus on actual process improvement rather than “check box” exercises, the organization benefits by moving toward calibrating against customer satisfaction data to develop true predictors of CSAT scores based on their QM data.

Solutions, such as SmartScore(TM), that are successful in incorporating calibration as an integral component of transactional monitoring will provide contact center QM with the missing link between performance and customer satisfaction. They will empower management to make intelligent, supportable decisions based on data that tracks with and impacts overall CSAT objectives. The result should be a more clearly defined return on their QM investment and a discernable positive impact on overall ROI.