A Quality Monitoring Program that Counts towards boosting your bottom line – The questions every CEO should be asking in regards to Quality Monitoring of Staff
If you have a contact centre, your employees will be familiar with one or other form of Quality Monitoring. Quality Monitoring should not be overly complicated, whether you have a formal programme or informal process, robust technology or not. Quality monitoring is one of the most effective methods for improving the service you provide to your customers and boosting your bottom line.
Quality monitoring also drives a number of improvements that contribute to the overall success of your business.
Questions every CEO should be asking
I am sure you have sat in numerous high-level contact centre performance reviews, going over key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level statistics. These KPI’s and service level statistics are essential; however, there are a few key questions I believe every CEO should be asking to drive improvement.
- How has quality monitoring streamlined the customer experience?
- How has quality monitoring enhanced agent and overall contact centre performance?
- How has quality monitoring delivered first-contact resolution?
- How has quality monitoring increased customer satisfaction?
- Has quality monitoring contributed to your bottom-line?
As you can see, quality monitoring has value-adds for the whole business and it is these value-adds that need to be monitored and reported on as well. Often call centre staff have good intentions of improving quality, but they do not always have the resources or internal champion necessary to follow through with these good intentions. Quality monitoring can instantly deliver a wealth of information and reveal a lot about your business processes, policies and your customers. A business needs to know what they are doing well on the quality front and which areas need improved upon. The key is to adopt a strategic approach to quality monitoring and not only focusing on the tactical plan.
Quality Monitoring as a strategic process
What do I mean by tactical versus strategic? Quality monitoring programs are usually implemented exclusively to monitor individual customer service agent’s performance. These quality programs were tactical in nature. They determine how agents adhere to specific processes, policies and soft skills that would be a requirement for your business. The tactical plan needs to be in place to meet customer service objectives. A strategic approach to quality monitoring, however, can also feed into cross-functional and strategic improvement needs. From the Quality Monitoring findings, a Service Improvement Plan with realistic timelines can be drawn up.
The benefits
A strategic approach can streamlined the customer experience, enhance contact centre performance, deliver first-contact resolution, increased customer satisfaction and shape your training programme.
It can also contribute to your bottom-line with increased sales, customer loyalty, increased efficiency and improved productivity.
The tactical plan needs to be in place to meet the customer service department’s objectives; considering the bigger picture as well. The bigger picture however, should not be ignored.
Where to begin
Adopting a strategic process involves appointing an internal champion that can drive improvement from a holistic perspective. The internal champion will focus on a much broader business view to driving improvement. By framing a monitoring program to mine cross-functional business insights, the internal champion can create more strategic outcomes and position the organisation to differentiate itself in the marketplace.
Creating a competitive advantage
In the globalised world we live in today, it is hard for companies to differentiate themselves. I am extremely passionate about this subject because I know the value quality monitoring can bring. We recently launched this strategic approach to quality monitoring within our organisation. We have always had a strong focus on quality, but the next level in our development is a strategic focus on global qualitative and quantitative best practice alignment. We believe this will strengthen our competitive advantage and drive improvement. I believe this is true for many companies today and something more organisations need to prioritise. . The time to adopt a strategic approach to quality is now if you want to drive improvement and differentiate your business.
