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Analytics-Enabled is the New Way to Do QA

Quality assurance (QA), also known as quality management (QM), has been used in contact centers for decades to measure and evaluate agent adherence to internal policies and procedures during customer interactions. While many contact center systems and processes have changed significantly over the years, too many contact centers use the same tools and procedures for QA that they did 15 or more years ago. It’s mission-critical for companies to perform QA, if only so agents know management is watching what they are doing. But traditional QA methods require manual evaluation of randomly selected interactions, often targeting only 2 to 10 calls (or interactions) per agent per month. The interactions, either recorded or live, are assessed by a QA analyst or contact center supervisor on an evaluation form and are scored against established contact handling criteria. The goal is to share the QA evaluations with agents, usually during scheduled coaching sessions, but all too often this step is skipped.

The Challenges of Traditional QA

Although the existence of a monitoring program is an important deterrent for some undesirable agent behaviors, the traditional QA process is statistically invalid. This means if the QA process identifies operational or product issues, it’s more likely by accident than scientific methodology. For example, if agents handle an average of 50 interactions per day, 2 to 10 interactions per month equates to only 0.2% – 1.0% of their monthly interaction volume. Increasing the number of QA analysts or supervisors barely moves the needle to 2% or maybe 3%. In the end, traditional QA remains an expensive, labor-intensive and ineffective use of money and human resources that could be better spent on interacting with and coaching agents.

Analytics-Enabled QA (AQA)

Replacing an outdated, manual QA program with AQA enables users to review up to 100% of calls, emails and chats automatically. With some AQA solutions, this also includes automated scoring of either a portion or all of the QA evaluation form. AQA technology, which leverages speech, text and desktop analytics, alleviates the “heavy lifting” for contact center personnel – QA analysts and supervisors. Using an AQA application, 100% of contact center interactions can be automatically reviewed for various agent performance and company opportunities, including: interaction trends, regulatory compliance, script adherence, sentiment, new product ideas, up-sell/cross-sell opportunities, identification of at-risk customers, collections effectiveness, etc. Although an AQA application cannot understand all aspects of conversations, because it evaluates 100% of interactions, it is more likely to identify issues than the random manual approach. Interactions identified by the AQA application for manual review are automatically presented to the appropriate personnel. Markers or “tags” are inserted in the call recording or text to enable easy identification of issues. QA resources are given the right information to utilize in coaching sessions, which are now easier to do on a timely basis.

Beyond providing insight about each agent’s performance, AQA solutions also identify important trends at the team, contact center, function and company levels. AQA enables contact center and enterprise managers to identify significant issues on a timely basis. Contact center leaders can pinpoint topics arising from a particular training class or misunderstandings on a certain supervisor’s team; marketing can quantify the cost of a campaign; and collections can determine if the required Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) language is being properly utilized by all reps.

Final Thoughts

Contact center leaders today would not dream of using 1980’s microfiche (many of you will have to Google that) instead of computers, but think nothing of using a QA process from that same era. AQA is the new way to do QA, and it is here to stay because of the tremendous value it contributes to enterprises. At DMG, we are always available to assist in improving the effectiveness of your contact center or back office. Please contact Deborah Navarra at deborah.navarra@dmgconsult.com or 516-628-1098, to see how we can help.

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Question:
What is voice biometrics and how can it be applied in the contact center?

Answer:
Voice biometrics, also known as voice recognition, is a practical science whose time has finally come. This technology, which uses the characteristics of each speaker’s voice to identify them, has been commercially available since the late 1990’s, but until recently was impractical as a business application because it was too cumbersome and difficult to use. Though it may require a significant amount of time for each user to establish a valid voice print for verification purposes, more people are now willing to put forth the effort because of growing security concerns… Read More

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DMG Consulting LLC is a leading independent research, advisory and consulting firm specializing in unified communications, contact centers, back-office and real-time analytics. Learn more at www.dmgconsult.com.