Quality control and assurance are, or ought to be, a critical part of every contact center. It is also the keyway to guaranteeing that the quality of service provided by your staff continuously fulfills your (as well as the consumer’s) expectations. At its peak, QA draws to the forefront a variety of training possibilities to educate agents in growing and performing at their peak, as well as critical business information to assist our companies in doing the same.
What exactly is QA Calibration?
Periodic calibration sessions are a vital component of a solid QA process. To put it simply:
QA Calibration is a process in which everybody in the company responsible for QA gathers to assess the same interaction, guaranteeing that everyone is on the same page and has the same objectives.
Suppose there is an event of an outsourcer, such as the FCR, there is an additional layer to this where we must be calibrated not just internally, but also with our clientele.
The very first thing in calibrating is to ensure that we have a defined set of goals in place so that anyone who performs a QA review understands what’s expected for each encounter. A quality standards guideline is the greatest place to find these standards. This guideline is a dynamic, developing manual that should preferably match with the customer service strategy, and eventually assist your customer service agents in achieving that vision, one encounter at a time.
Your parameters or methodology for measuring every client interaction must be derived from the definitions guide. Calibration is a period when everyone who conducts QA practices filling out that questionnaire together to verify that everyone is evaluating each encounter in the same manner.
Calibration Methods
It is critical to perform routine equipment calibration sessions with the QA team to enhance alignments. Whenever you deploy a new QA form or add additional people to the quality team, you should recalibrate more regularly — say, once per week. However, as the crew becomes more unified, you may increase the frequency of sessions to bi-weekly.
We can conduct calibration sessions in a variety of ways. We will go through them quickly and discuss their advantages.
Method #1: Initially, examine and rate, then discuss.
Our suggested technique for continuing calibrations is as follows:
- Ahead of the calibration process, every member of the QA team obtains the interactions to evaluate.
- They grade them and report the results on their own.
- Someone on the staff gathers the results and emphasizes the differences.
- The group then gathers to discuss their disagreements.
- The outcome should be a calibrated rating on which everyone can agree.
This calibrating approach has a bunch of advantages. First and foremost, it is the most effective way to do the session for everyone who has previously gone over the interaction on their own. The session’s objective is to address the issues and reach an agreement. There’s no need to spend energy discussing topics on which everyone already agrees. This can be an excellent approach for preventing “herd mentality” and ensuring that every player on the team provides the most accurate response.
Method #2: Examine and evaluate jointly.
The second most popular calibrating technique involves the following:
- The QA team as a whole comes together.
- They go over the encounters as a group.
- They assess the encounters as a group.
- They grade the interactions together.
This approach is common among teams who are short on time yet know they must calibrate. The session takes very little preparation ahead of time. This is a good approach for when you first introduce a new form, allowing the group to talk and go over it word by word. The disadvantage of employing this approach regularly is how hard it is to gain an accurate view of how well-calibrated each staff member is.
Method #3: Evaluate with agents.
The third approach involves the following steps:
- Arrange a one-on-one meeting with a prospective agent.
- Examine the encounters with the agent.
- Collectively, grade the encounters and reach a consensus on a result.
This approach is much more of a supplement to calibration than a replacement for it. However, reviewing encounters with your agents is an immensely valuable activity. It’s a fantastic approach to gain agents’ agreement on what qualifies for outstanding encounters by doing so and publicly discussing it.
Success Evaluation
By measuring the variation in the results after the calibration procedure, you should be able to assess the effectiveness of the approach. The average difference among every score and the agreed-upon calibrated grade is the best approach to determine the variance.
The difference between the topmost and the poorest score is yet another relatively unique approach to compute it. Your long-term aim may be to reduce the variation to less than a 5% variation on a routine basis. This will provide you with a continual perspective, not just in how well the quality team as a whole is synchronized, but also into how every single member of the quality team is doing.
Discuss Client Satisfaction.
While you’re there, have each of your reviewers put themselves in the client’s position and assess how happy they are. Discuss the major factors that contributed to the Net Promoter Score or Customer Effort Score ranking. Was there a problem with the agent’s delivery? Was there a problem with the product? This conversation raises awareness of the overall customer experience and helps transform QA into a commercial insight machine!
Ultimately, every organization’s quality assurance method is unique. Even if your forms have a multitude of information or there is no form at all, every expert on the panel must agree upon what a successful interaction feels like. That kind of congruence can only be achieved via effective communication and engagement.