30 Tips to Improve Monitoring

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    Monitoring isnt all about spotting problems and dealing with them. Its also about identifying and

    amplifying positive messages. Even in todays technologically sophisticated contact centres, a simple

    thank you can work wonders. Here our panels of experts share their tips with us.

    1. Make good use of the information you gather

    James Le Roth

    Call quality monitoring is essential for any contact centre, providing invaluable insight into how you are

    performing and what consumers are really experiencing.

    The most useful results often stem from measuring and improvement processes that go beyond

    monitoring sample calls, impinging on wider areas of the business, from the setting and evaluating of

    standards, to advisor coaching, through to the training and development of staff.

    2. Get the small things right

    Having said that, regular monitoring is a good way of maintaining best practice, ensuring advisors get the

    details right: greeting consumers appropriately, adhering to the laid-down call structure, and using agreed

    positive phases throughout the call.

    With regular quality monitoring, you can prevent bad habits creeping in, spreading from advisor to

    advisor, and contact centre to contact centre. Regular monitoring, support, feedback and training all help

    you maintain your high standards.

    3. It doesnt have to be hi-tech

    But you dont have to go hi-tech. Remember, some monitoring even the most basic is better than no

    monitoring at all. You can start with simple activities a spreadsheet with tick boxes filled in manually

    and work your way up slowly. And if you set realistic targets, achieving them will be motivating, paving the

    way to other more ambitious goals.

    4. Were not out to catch you out

    Winning employee engagement and involvement from early on in the monitoring process is essential.

    When monitoring is first introduced, theres a tendency for some people to think it will be critical. On the

    other hand, where a monitoring system has been in place unchanged for a long time, advisors may start

    to take it for granted.

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    Call quality monitoring is not or should not be a negative, top-down activity, designed to trip advisors

    up. In the best contact centres, it is an integral part of the skills programme, of benefit to advisors as well

    as consumers.

    Monitoring that is collaborative rather than prescriptive, inclusive rather than authoritarian, is likely to lead

    to more acceptance and co-operation. Most advisors find it helpful to know what the company expects ofthem and why their calls are important to the business and its customers.

    5. Feedback, support and training are fundamental

    Feedback from the monitoring process should be objective, using a method of scoring and evaluating that

    is fair and agreed by all in advance, and it must be consistent and regular. Once milestones are agreed

    and set, they must be kept to, built on and progressed.

    Feedback can be delivered one-to-one, remotely, or via group sessions where advisors share and spread

    best practice. Whatever method is selected, the important thing is that there is an opportunity for

    individual advisors to contribute to the discussion.

    Not only does this encourage their buy-in to the process, their comments and suggestions are often

    extremely insightful. But bear in mind that advisors are sometimes harder on their own and colleagues

    performances than supervisors would be.

    Staff support should be provided through interventions such as refresher and formal skills training, and

    development and action plans to improve advisor performance, always with the aim of improving the

    customer experience and achieving your business objectives.

    6. Quality people for quality monitoring

    Quality evaluation is only as good as the person doing the evaluating.

    If possible, its worthwhile investing in a dedicated person or, in the case of larger contact centres, a

    specialist team to monitor quality in your contact centre. Supervisors are there to manage the floor and

    plan campaigns, not to monitor quality. By giving that role to a dedicated individual or team, you leave

    your operational staff free to manage.

    Once you have identified someone to handle monitoring, evaluating and training, give them the

    resources, training and skills they need to carry out appraisals, coaching, training and development,

    either by developing your own people or by recruiting in the required expertise.

    7. Time and effort spent on monitoring is never wasted

    Theres a direct correlation between call quality and the accuracy, frequency and excellence of monitoring

    and coaching. The equation is simple: the more time and effort you invest in monitoring and coaching, the

    better the service to your customers will be, and the bigger the benefits to sales and customer retention

    levels.

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    8. External benchmarking

    As well as internal monitoring, its also helpful to compare your performance with others, especially the

    competition. Internal checks will give you a more subjective picture, which could be misleading. For a truly

    objective result, you need external benchmarking. Contact centres with no monitoring systems or

    resources in place should consider outsourcing these functions to an external agency. It can be a cost-effective option.

    9. Reward best practice

    Reward high-quality work through mechanisms such as advisor of the month awards and staff

    excellence certificates, or highlight it in your company newsletter and intranet site. And if consumers are

    pleased with the service, pass on their messages. Integrate all these positive points into the companys

    annual appraisal and benefits schemes.

    James Le Roth, Eclipse Marketing(www.eclipsemarketing.co.uk)

    ________________________________________________________

    10. Save your Golden calls

    Jonathan Evans

    Identify and save examples of your best practice or Golden calls so that they can be used as a training

    aid to help continually improve the overall call handling process.

    Jonathan Evans, Senior Business Systems Manager, TNT Express(www.tnt.com)

    ________________________________________________________

    11. Apply a well-thought-out quality management procedure

    I am amazed at the number of companies who purchase call recording solutions in order to remaincompliant with security or FSA regulations, that do not have a structured call quality monitoring policy in

    place. Its always one of those well get to it sometime things that might not show itself as important, or

    possibly there are other larger fires to fight in your business. Others may baulk at the inordinate amount

    of time or effort to manage the process as well.

    If you want to see an uplift in the overall customer experience, a well-thought-out quality management

    procedure can work wonders. It gives your agents something to strive for. It gives you insight into the core

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    traits and skills that your agents need to interact with your customers, and the customers themselves will

    also have a more positive experience when doing business with you, giving your business that

    competitive advantage.

    12. Get your contact centre involved in defining the criteria

    Gene Reynolds

    Section the call into a number of points where you can create criteria which would satisfy the majority of

    customers. It could be something very tangible such as offering your name to the caller, or something

    more intangible or subjective, such as showing empathy on the call. People tend to have shied away from

    those criteria, but, I can assure you, they are measurable, and there are methods and tools to coach in

    those sort of skills.

    Make sure you get your contact centre involved in defining the criteria. The last thing they need is another

    rule or policy that has been imposed on them. Having a team of people design the call quality procedure

    makes them advocates and champions to the cause.

    13. Put the time into training and coaching

    In my experience, the biggest issue where these quality monitoring processes fall down is a lack of

    thought put to training and coaching the skills the agents are going to need in order to succeed. Be sure

    you have spent some time with some experts who can show you how to coach these skills effectively into

    your operation when required.

    Also, dont underestimate the power of an application to assist your agents and your team leaders

    through the procedures. Introducing a call quality process will also introduce another load of work on your

    team leaders and agents. Be sure to look for applications which will mitigate this. In some cases, the

    technology pays for itself in the form of reclaimed time.

    14. Include a feedback process

    Lastly, make sure there is a feedback process in your operation to gauge customer satisfaction when

    interacting with your operation. Theres no point in assuming what your customers want in terms of call

    quality. A simple yet effective customer advocacy survey will help to validate the steps you are taking in

    your operation and will help identify where to fine tune the process.

    Gene Reynolds, Senior Consultant, Corporate Communications(www.cc.net)

    http://www.cc.net/http://www.cc.net/http://www.cc.net/http://www.cc.net/
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    ________________________________________________________

    15. Define what good looks like

    Janette Coulthard

    Call monitoring will not be effective unless you fully understand the reason for monitoring and what you

    are trying to measure or discover. Identifying what good or unsatisfactory looks like is essential for

    objective and effective call monitoring. Good will be different depending on the reason for monitoring.

    16. Get your scripts right

    Ensure the wording in your scripts, or what your agents are expected to say to be compliant, is identified

    in your call monitoring forms and that your scoring reflects the common understanding of what would be

    classed as compliant or a breach.

    17. Set up a call quality forum

    An additional step of setting up a forum to reach a consensus on what good looks like will pay dividends.

    Ensuring that all stakeholders are agreed on what constitutes good and capturing the criteria in your

    monitoring forms will support your call and quality monitoring staff in achieving the objectivity that is soessential. It is critical that measurement criteria are clearly defined and agreed and there is consensus

    on what good looks like.

    18. Set up call levelling sessions

    The best way to do this is to set up call levelling sessions that are held on an ongoing basis. Take a

    random selection of calls. Get all stakeholders and, where possible, call monitoring staff, or managers if

    this is not feasible, and listen to the calls together. Score them as you go along.

    After each call, discuss the scores for the criteria monitored and where there is a wide variation, the

    reasons. If all scores are within a narrow range youre in luck, but more often than not, there will be a

    wide variation between the scores for many elements of the call, especially when you first start this

    process. Through the session the range of scores should narrow as the various stakeholders adjust their

    scoring and reach consensus. Over time, opinion and individuals involved will change so it is important to

    have regular call levelling sessions in order to maintain the consensus.

    19. Use an independent call monitoring facility

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    Objective call monitoring can be difficult to achieve and maintain when all monitoring activity is carried out

    internally using your own people. There are companies who offer independent call monitoring services

    and can provide you with a truly objective view of the quality of your calls, whether they are compliant with

    the prevailing industry guidelines and regulations and in some cases benchmarking. To keep control of

    costs, look for companies who are happy to give you a one-off report covering a batch of calls, perhaps

    the same batch of calls used for your call levelling sessions.

    Janette Coulthard, Marketing & Communications Director, 2getherConsulting(www.2getherconsulting.co.uk)

    ________________________________________________________

    20. Assign quality ownership

    Brent Bischoff

    It sounds obvious, but if nobody wants to own the process, how can it be audited and calibrated to ensure

    it is effective and continues to improve and adapt to the businesss changing needs? Similarly, there

    should be a clearly documented process for monitoring and evaluating calls, and all agents and team

    managers should be trained and familiar with all areas of quality monitoring and how to get the most from

    the system they have in place.

    21. Develop and maintain evaluation forms

    Evaluation forms are at the heart of a good quality monitoring programme and when compiling them you

    need to ask yourself:

    Am I asking the right questions?

    Am I getting the required results? i.e. output which leads to a continuous coaching and development plan

    for my team

    Does the scoring mechanism allow agents to provide an outstanding or Wow factor service not just an

    average or satisfactory service?

    22. Evaluation dispute process

    Agents need to be given the opportunity to dispute their evaluation if they feel they are not happy with any

    aspect of it. The dispute process allows the agent the opportunity to have their evaluation re-evaluated by

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    another person if they are unhappy with the result. This way, agents feel they have more control over

    their call evaluation, thus further empowering them to take ownership of their own quality

    23. Agent synergy session

    Synergy sessions involve groups of agents, team managers, CSMs and trainers listening to calls togetherto discuss call-handling techniques and evaluate the quality of the call. These sessions help reinforce

    quality standards and allow new and experienced agents to share experiences, best practice and provide

    a natural way to cross-skill agents from different departments. Recent studies have shown that agents

    attending regular synergy sessions achieve anywhere from 5% to 20% higher quality scores than the

    overall contact centre.

    Brent Bischoff, Business Solutions Consultant, Business Systems (UK)Ltd(www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk)

    ________________________________________________________

    A further 6 quick-fire tips

    24. Keep your call monitoring standardised

    Cameron Ross

    Keep your call monitoring standardised and consistent so you can build a steady, reliable picture of

    performance within your business.

    25. Dont waste time searching

    Dont waste time searching through your database for suitable calls use a tool which allows you to find

    and recall calls quickly and easily.

    26. Record calls in the background

    Remove agents stress from call monitoring by using a solution which records quietly in the background,

    without influencing the behaviour of the individual under assessment. [In one call centre I went to the

    agents knew they were being monitored when the supervisor put her headset on - editor]

    27. Allow self assessment

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    Gain buy-in from your teams by allowing agents to self-assess some of their work make them feel their

    input is valued and that your team ethos is inclusive.

    28. Make it a habit

    Monitor calls on a regular basis to build a progressive picture of your teams performance.

    29. Assess the effectiveness of your training programmes

    Use call quality monitoring to assess the effectiveness of your training programmes listen in to verify

    that points taught in training sessions have been noted and put into practice. Call quality monitoring is

    also an easy means of assessing where gaps in knowledge or practice may exist use this learning to

    build training solutions which close those gaps off.

    Cameron Ross, Managing Director, Veritape(www.veritape.com)

    ________________________________________________________

    30. Define what constitutes a quality customer interaction and what you aremeasuring

    Craig Pumfrey

    A typical example of best practise is a call answered in a timely and appropriate manner, dealt with swiftly

    and to the customers satisfaction, meeting service levels and KPIs.

    The aim of quality monitoring from an operational point of view is to identify the calls failing to meet pre-

    defined standards and get to the root cause of why. You can then make informed decisions to make the

    process better, faster and quicker, e.g. implement or refine agent training and coaching initiatives to

    bridge skills gaps, correct broken internal processes, improve workforce scheduling, or perhaps alert

    other areas of the organisation that are having an impact.

    To achieve this you need to be able to evaluate a representative sample of interactions. The smaller the

    sample, the less accurate your benchmark scoring will be and you will run the risk of making the wrong

    decisions.

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    Using modern recording and quality monitoring tools it is possible to capture not only the call itself but the

    activity that took place on the agents screen and score 100% of the interactions, giving an accurate and

    comprehensive view of agent, team, campaign and overall contact centre performance.