Quality Is Fundamental Wp

© 2012 Aspect Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Most contact centers today have well embedded quality management processes in place, but many of these quality programs are falling short and failing to deliver on the promise of continuous improvement.While many companies can “check the box” to say they have a quality program, too often it is little more than a one-dimensional process that records and scores five calls per agent per month. Such a program may see performance spikes at implementation but these results will quickly flatline over time, and before long the objective becomes servicing the process, not improving the contact center environment.

There are many reasons why quality programs fail to deliver benefits and for most contact centers these issues can’t be addressed merely by creating better programs. There’s also the need to vastly improve the customer and agent experience by adopting a few easy-to-implement tactics and processes.

This paper offers some best practice tips to make quality a fundamental part of your contact center environment and the impetus for continuous improvement.

Understand the Purpose of Your Quality InitiativesMany contact centers have never changed their quality process since it was first implemented, perhaps many years ago. At the time this process was implemented it likely had an important strategic focus and its objective and purpose were clearly defined. But are the quality initiatives you implemented years ago still aligned with current corporate objectives?

Research has shown that today’s contact center managers and supervisors are universally concerned about three core objectives:

1. Improving customer satisfaction and retention levels.

2. Decreasing operational costs.

3. Increasing revenue.

White Paper

Why is Quality Fundamental to the Success of Your Contact Center?Using quality management, advanced analytics and performance management to create an environment of continuous improvement

1

Improve CustomerSatisfaction & Retention

DecreaseOperational Costs

Decrease Transfers

Improve Self-ServiceImprove First

Call ResolutionDecrease Average

Handle Time

ConductCompetitive

Analysis

EliminateIneffectiveMarketingCampaigns

DecreaseTraining

Costs

IncreaseTraining

Efficiency

ImproveProduct and

ServiceOfferings

PerformTargeted AgentAssessments

Provide Agents withRelevant Product Information

Improve Policy Adherence

Provide ImprovedAgent Information

Decrease Liability Risks

Increase Revenue

Incr

ease

Mar

ket

Monitor Compliance

Improve A

gentPerform

ance

Improve Business Processes

Inte

llige

nce

Four areas of focus for quality analytics drive optimal outcomes, which support the primary management objectives at the core of every contact center’s foundation.

WHITE PAPER

2 White Paper Why is Quality Fundamental to the Success of Your Contact Center? © 2012 Aspect Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Table of Contents

Understand the Purpose of Your Quality Initiatives ................................................................................................................ 1

Key Technologies for Maximum Results .................................................................................................................................... 3

Understand the Results of Your Quality Program .................................................................................................................... 5

Consider Who is Responsible for Monitoring Interactions and Why ................................................................................. 5

Determine the Optimum Frequency and Number of Evaluations ....................................................................................... 6

Review Your Scorecards on a Regular Basis .............................................................................................................................. 6

Ensure Your Coaching Process is Effective and is Taking Place ............................................................................................ 7

Ensure You Have a Closed Loop Training Process.................................................................................................................... 7

Don’t Forget Reward and Recognition......................................................................................................................................... 8

Quality is Fundamental ................................................................................................................................................................... 8

WHITE PAPER


Quality analytics, as the foundation of your contact center, can help you achieve better outcomes aligned with your core objectives by:

Improving Business Processes1. Decrease transfers: Identify calls where supplying agents with more information or widening permissions levels

would reduce unnecessary transfers.

2. Improve self-service: Mine information to find what is driving call volumes and locate areas where an IVR menu could be improved or augmented.

3. Improve first call resolution (FCR): Use call categorization and root-cause analysis to determine the relationship between and the issues behind repeat calls.

Monitoring Compliance1. Improve policy adherence: Discover where agents are deviating from established protocols and procedures.

2. Decrease liability risks: Search for key terms in calls to measure agents’ knowledge of standards and their adherence to policy.

3. Provide improved agent information: Use agent assist and real-time monitoring to provide agents with clearly defined policies, procedures and expectations as calls occur.

Improving Agent Performance1. Perform targeted agent assessments: Provide meaningful feedback by reviewing calls on key corporate

objectives.

2. Decrease training costs and increase training efficiency: Target training to the individual and the call type; don’t waste money on blanket programs.

3. Decrease average handle time: Identify which call types have the longest average handle time (AHT) and when a lack of agent information or broken process is causing the time to increase.

Increasing Market Intelligence1. Provide agents with relevant product/service information: Utilize ESI–Monitor and Agent Assist to ensure agents

have the most relevant information as a call is occurring.

2. Conduct competitive analysis: Automatically categorize calls where a competitor is mentioned and the context.

3. Decrease money spent on ineffective marketing campaigns: Determine the effectiveness of campaigns while they are occurring and the opportunity for modification still exists.

4. Improve product and service offerings through market research: Leverage tools for call categorization and call driver metrics to determine what actual and desired products and services are driving calls. Use feedback recorded during beta phases to help drive future marketing and product plans.

If your current quality program is not delivering value in all of these areas today, then it’s time to step back and reassess the analytical tools you are using.

Key Technologies for Maximum ResultsVoice recording tools are almost considered a commodity today. Most enterprises actively record agent-customer conversations, but the volume of recordings can be overwhelming and supervisors rarely have time to listen to more than a handful of calls.

The ability to capture real-time interaction intelligence is very difficult if you depend solely on a voice recording tool. The real value of captured data is its ability to render meaningful information to generate timely decisions that directly impact quality initiatives. Simple, one-dimensional, voice recording tools fail to deliver. Key technologies that incorporate speech and desktop analytics and infuse these findings into performance management applications will allow enterprises to deliver customer experiences that exceed expectations.

WHITE PAPER


Speech AnalyticsSpeech analytics applications are compelling because they deliver positive benefits such as reduced costs and increased revenue while improving the overall customer experience. Speech analytics also has the potential to reach beyond the contact center to help the enterprise improve processes and product quality, making it hard to ignore the possibilities.

Speech analytics provides these possibilities through functionality that analyzes large volumes of unstructured audio from customer-agent interactions and allows you to extract meaningful business intelligence.

The benefits are significant:

1. Analyze 100% of customer calls to capture a full-spectrum view of your operations in both the front and back office.

2. Categorize calls to perform root cause analysis so you can really understand where the problem is.

3. Pinpoint process improvement and understand where the bottlenecks are in your contact center.

4. Identify training/coaching opportunities – are agents following proper procedure (compliance), and are they providing a great customer experience?

5. Enhance your customer’s experience by increasing first call resolution and reducing average handle times.

6. Improve your overall sales effectiveness by creating up-sell/cross-sell opportunities.

Desktop AnalyticsThe ability to capture and analyze user activity at the desktop level is useful in many ways. With information about individual application usage, enterprises can better manage IT resources and spending. By understanding how agents interact with their desktop environment to perform tasks, managers can gain valuable performance insights that can help identify and replicate best practices across the enterprise. Evaluating agent activity may allow for the detection of process bottlenecks, possible compliance violations and other value leaks. And by tracking processes both before and after process improvement projects, you can measure the impact of your efforts.

1. Analyze business processes: Monitor individual processes such as order entry or call wrap-up to identify opportunities for automation. Track specific processes that relate to key performance indicators (KPIs) or business metrics, such as sales promotion success or AHT in the contact center. Detect and alert on suspicious activity, procedural deviations or compliance violations in front- or back-office processes.

2. Perform workflow analysis: Gather workflow information across the entire workforce for aggregated reporting, or filter to review by group, team or region, or drill down into individual user performance.

3. Measure the impact of process improvement efforts: Establish accurate baselines and benchmarks before implementing process improvements so the impact can also be accurately measured.

4. Archive activity data: Store user activity data in a central repository for audit trail purposes, compliance reporting and historical analysis.

Performance ManagementPerformance management, along with speech and desktop analytics, provides the data you need to assess how well you are meeting your quality objectives. Performance management helps turn this data into actionable intelligence for management, supervisors and agents. It provides the ability to get a full view into how well you are serving customer needs while meeting service-level commitments such as AHT, FCR, wait times and more. And with the workflow capabilities that are part of performance management, you can infuse this intelligence into your operations.

1. Automate workflows: Create alerts and notifications based on KPIs that balance performance and quality outcomes and take corrective action immediately.

2. Create a better coaching process: Score and evaluate based on a full view of agent effectiveness and efficiency and measure coaching against balanced KPIs.

WHITE PAPER


3. Balance effectiveness and efficiency: Create a comprehensive view into your operations with both time-based (wait times, handle times) and value-based (quality, customer satisfaction) metrics.

4. Measure progress against corporate objectives: Leverage enterprise-level data stores, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and human resource data repositories (HR systems), to identify impact to corporate objectives (attrition, customer retention, customer spend).

Understand the Results of Your Quality ProgramOnce you have agreed on the objectives, desired value outcomes and quality monitoring tools you want to deploy, you need to be able to measure and articulate the results of the process you have in place against all the areas described above.

Publishing a weekly quality score on a performance dashboard seems to be a common method of assessing and articulating the results of the quality program, but quality scores do flatline over time and this methodology does not show the true value the process is delivering.

Many call center professionals admit that their quality assurance personnel don’t always receive the time and resources they need to lead an effective quality program. This often stems from the fact that they aren’t sharing enough of the key data uncovered during monitoring with the enterprise as a whole, and are not expressing the value of the quality monitoring process in real terms.

Results of the quality process should be measured in real terms and shared across the enterprise including:

1. Improvements in productivity

2. Enhancements in customer loyalty, satisfaction and share of wallet

3. Improvements in inefficient and broken operating procedures

4. Increased sales and service performance

8. Reduced operating costs

6. Improved employee satisfaction

7. Reduced attrition

Ensure your quality monitoring program has a process for capturing, measuring and reporting the results in each of these areas on an ongoing basis.

Consider Who is Responsible for Monitoring Interactions and WhyOnce you’ve decided why you are monitoring interactions, you need to think about who is the appropriate person or group to evaluate the calls. If the quality program is going to be effective in all the desired value areas, then different groups should be responsible for evaluating.

Quality and customer experience is often measured from an internal perspective and is the sole responsibility of the team leader. Can a team leader really judge whether a particular call delivered a great customer experience? Does your quality process and technology enable you to have customers evaluate calls?

The team leader should be responsible for agent performance and development, but consider having a separate quality assurance (QA) team that is responsible for monitoring strategic initiatives on an enterprise-wide basis. QA teams should also monitor the final transaction disposition in the back office, back office trends and root cause analysis to get to the bottom of problems and process improvements. However, that QA team cannot work in isolation but needs to be closely aligned with the team leader to ensure that quality and performance are not evaluated in a silo.

The training and education team should also be part of the call evaluation process to measure the impact of the training courses they are developing and delivering and to identify opportunities for improvements in their area.

Finally, bring the agent into the process. Have the agent evaluate their own calls and potentially their peers’ calls. Engaging agents in the process will foster motivation and empowerment in addition to enhancing their perception of the program’s credibility.

WHITE PAPER


Determine the Optimum Frequency and Number of EvaluationsIn order to have confidence in the results of the program, you will need to ensure they are based on a statistically significant analysis of service delivery and quality. What do the number and type of interactions you are evaluating per month represent as a percentage of the total interaction volume, and does that percentage represent a statistically relevant sample?

Most contact centers do not have adequate resources to conduct a statistically valid sample because recording interactions and evaluating them is a labor intensive and time consuming process. Consider moving away from the one-size-fits-all, low value approach to a more strategic approach to the challenge, such as performance-based monitoring. Heavily monitor your best performers to understand what they are doing that makes them excel, and identify ways to start driving this best practice throughout the organization.

By leading monitoring activities, agents are able to flag calls where they feel they need more training, when they did a great job or to bring a potential customer or process issue to management’s attention. This also engages agents in the process and can impact employee satisfaction and attrition.

Review Your Scorecards on a Regular BasisMany contact centers spend a lot of time developing scorecards when the quality monitoring program is first implemented. While the business focus and the contact center objectives may change over the years, the scorecards tend to remain untouched and therefore are often no longer aligned to the corporate objectives. Scorecards should be reviewed and assessed for appropriateness at least every 9–12 months.

As more and more companies are embracing customer-focused quality, the scorecard should become less about metrics and more about improving the value from the customer’s perspective. Moving the external quality metrics and numbers to a customer-driven and focused approach frees the contact center from managing to a number and servicing a process.

A numerical, results-oriented scorecard with potential agent disciplinary actions based on low scores creates a distraction for everyone and has little impact on the customer. Quality programs that focus on behaviors and use scorecards as a mechanism for identifying opportunities for developing critical skills and knowledge provide agents with the tools and feedback needed to truly improve the customer interaction. In turn, this allows your team leaders to become coaches rather than scorekeepers.

Many organizations evaluate and score calls in isolation from other performance data. Scorecards that do not provide a holistic view of performance and trends over time place the focus on the score rather than the performance opportunity. Consider incorporating quality scoring into a performance management solution to provide a broader, more discerning perspective. A performance management solution will enable you to recreate scorecards and also embed additional performance data, graphs and trends to ensure that the process remains performance focused, rather than score focused.

On a regular basis, it’s important not only to review the questions and sections on the scorecard, but also the scoring ranges. The ranges should be high enough to clearly identify an excellent transaction but not so high that few agents can attain an excellent rating. Plus, be sure to tighten the ranges over time to ensure that the scores do not flatline. For example, when a quality monitoring program is first implemented, excellence might be represented by any score over 85 percent. Most customers are unlikely to think that 85 percent is excellent, so the range needs to be gradually narrowed to 90 percent and above.

WHITE PAPER


Ensure Your Coaching Process is Effective and is Taking PlaceLack of coaching is the primary reason why most quality monitoring programs fail. Typically, organizations conduct quality coaching sessions on the back of calls that are evaluated and scored to provide feedback and mentoring to improve agent performance. Unfortunately, these sessions don’t take place as often as they should because of team leader time constraints. Listening to calls without providing feedback not only deprives agents of valuable insight into performance improvement, it also diminishes the potential value of the quality process itself.

Coaching is the most important part of the QA process and is the delivery mechanism for improving performance and providing value. Advisors and team leaders should be as prepared as possible for such sessions. Advisors should have had the opportunity to listen to the call or monitor the agent’s screen and consider what was good and what could be improved so that coaching sessions are as effective as possible.

All too often, coaching sessions take place with no output or actions. Feedback alone may be enough for some agents to up their game, but for most people some additional actions, such as setting incremental goals, attending additional training, etc. is required to derive performance improvements and value from the process.

Most companies have no visibility into this part of the QA process and they assume that because the procedure says five coaching sessions per week, then these sessions will be conducted and that they will be conducted well.

Consider all quality factors, including how you can track the number of coaching sessions that need to take place, time to action, time spent in coaching and the effectiveness of that coaching session. You may be surprised at the results, and certainly, you would then be able to identify opportunities to improve and deliver more value out of the quality process.

Integrating a performance management solution into your quality process would allow you to track these coaching sessions in terms of timeliness and value, and then report on how effectively this part of the process is being managed. This will help drive the transition from coaching to numbers – to coaching to behaviors. Furthermore, incorporating the quality process into the performance management solution would enable you to capture, understand and then incorporate best practices into all coaching sessions.

Ensure You Have a Closed Loop Training ProcessDeveloping a closed loop training process is an important part of any quality monitoring program. Use knowledge gleaned from the quality process to identify trends and training opportunities and also to measure the effectiveness of your training department. Include a process for funneling recommendations to the training department, or ideally have them be part of the evaluation process itself, and ensure all training, reference materials, policies and procedures are accurate and up-to-date. The training department and quality team should hold monthly meetings to assess the effectiveness of training and identify new opportunities.

An integrated eLearning solution can ensure agents receive consistent and timely training based on opportunities identified in the quality process. Great interactions can be transformed into best practice audio clips and sent via eLearning for the benefit of the whole team or contact center. This can prove to be a great way to show what a good customer experience sounds like and provide a great motivational tool for agents whose calls are turned into training sessions.

A well-constructed quality program conducts call and screen recordings and identifies opportunities for improving process, procedure, systems, etc. It also delivers timely updates to agents without impacting service levels, ensuring they have the relevant knowledge and skills they need to deliver great quality.

An eLearning solution that is integrated to the automatic call distributor (ACD) and the workforce management system will ensure that agents can receive more personalized reinforcement training, as well as regular communication updates regarding improvements to process and procedures and new system and policy requirements without increasing costs and impacting service levels.

Results of training and communication content delivered to agents through this method can be reported upon to ensure they have experienced the training and understood it. A closed loop process can then be implemented to drive business rules on your recording platform around whom, when and how often to record agents based on results of their training sessions and overall performance.

WHITE PAPER

8 White Paper Why is Quality Fundamental to the Success of Your Contact Center? © 2012 Aspect Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3847US-A 7/12

Corporate Headquarters300 Apollo Drive Chelmsford, MA 01824

978 250 7900 office 978 244 7410 fax

Europe & Africa Headquarters2 The Square, Stockley Park Uxbridge Middlesex UB11 1AD

+(44) 20 8589 1000 office +(44) 20 8589 1001 fax

Asia Pacific & Middle East Headquarters138 Robinson Road #13-00 The Corporate Office Singapore 068906

+(65) 6590 0388 office +(65) 6324 1003 fax

aspect.com

Don’t Forget Reward and RecognitionSome contact centers use the quality monitoring process simply to identify opportunities for performance improvement. It can also be a powerful tool for motivating agents and as such, a rewards and recognition element of the process is a must. Recognition can be as simple as sharing a great call amongst peers or inviting top performers to take part in department activities, such as coaching new hires, becoming a subject matter expert or delivering an up-skilling session.

However, recognition must be done in a way that ensures it is not always the top performers being recognized – remember the most improved agents and the ones that add value by flagging calls that identify broken processes. This helps to drive empowerment and adoption by everyone.

It is never too late to evaluate your quality process and it’s important to recognize whether your organization is servicing a process or adding value. Your quality process needs to be assessed regularly to ensure it is delivering results – if it’s not adding value then make changes now. Implementing best practices and evaluating the entire customer experience will deliver business benefits that go well beyond agent productivity and will ensure that you make significant steps in advancing the perception of the contact center’s value within the organization.

Quality is FundamentalThe Performance Management Process represents a continual improvement cycle for enterprises that:

1. Aligns employee goals with the enterprise to set achievement benchmarks

2. Measures employee attainment of their KPIs to understand performance shortfalls

3. Automatically coaches low performers as part of a continuous improvement process

4. Measures ongoing coaching effectiveness as part of a performance improvement culture

Quality is fundamental to the success of this process. Key technologies such as speech and desktop analytics along with performance management applications provide the unstructured data necessary to make business decisions that will ultimately improve the customer experience.

A continuous improvement environment means having in place processes for discovery and elimination of the root causes of problems. This continuous process combines speech and desktop analytical tools with performance management applications to create initiatives that instill a higher level of quality within your organization. By taking incremental steps rather than implementing a broad-brush approach, you gain the flexibility to successfully target core business objectives and foster continuous improvement in the content center.

About AspectAspect builds customer-company relationships through a combination of customer contact software and Microsoft platform solutions along with workforce optimization for the enterprise. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.

http://www.aspect.com

http://www.aspect.com

Documents

Quality Is Fundamental Wp