Quality Assurance Management in Your Call Center

While the economy continues to improve, it is still important for call centers to seek out low cost and low risk ways to streamline processes and spend less, while continuing to provide a high level of customer service.

Quality assurance (QA) can be a significant part of a call center workforce management strategy to build the most efficient and cost-effective performance standards into day-to-day operations. Setting these standards and meeting them is made easier by a workforce management solution that incorporates quality assurance metrics.

However, quality assurance cannot be achieved with a one-size-fits-all approach. Different call centers have different rules and goals for agent adherence, productivity, cost controls and customer service. The preventive actions initiated to address quality assurance are bound to vary from business to business.

Too often, the need for quality assurance gets lost in the day-to-day responsibilities of managers and agents. There are additional challenges as well, from systems that are not unified to differing opinions on what constitutes quality standards.

For those seeking a helpful guide to creating and maintaining a quality assurance program, Monet has created a white paper called Seven Strategies for Effective Quality Assurance In your Call Center. Here you’ll find helpful information on how to approach the QA quandary, learn about important elements to formulate a strategic approach and see how workforce management software can automate and expedite the quality management process.

Call Center Management Throughout the Day - What’s Important?

Annual stats, monthly stats, weekly stats, daily stats – all of this information is important for tracking progress on quality assurance and customer satisfaction goals.

But when you review the daily stats, you may find situations where a real-time response could have improved customer service, rather than finishing a shift with a staffing issue. All it takes is a few hours to lose a lot of customers.

That’s why it is critical for call center management to also keep track of key metrics throughout the course of the day. It’s a practice made considerably easier through workforce management software. Dashboards provide visual displays of call center data, providing insight into every key WFM process:

• Forecasts – did unforeseen circumstances render your predictions inaccurate?
• Schedules – Too many agents this shift? Not enough? Did more agents than expected call in sick?
• Adherence – Are one-hour lunch breaks becoming 90-minute breaks? Did an agent leaves ten minutes before his shift was over?

Workforce management dashboards provide call center management with an instant snapshot of what is happening at every moment throughout the day. Now you have the information you need to make changes before the customer experience can be affected.

To find our more, check out Monet’s intra-day workforce management demo.

Mobile Workforce Management for Call Centers

Mobile devices allow call center managers to stay in touch with what’s happening at their business from home or on the road. Such flexibility is an advantage, however, that doesn’t mean the workforce management features available on a mobile device have to be as comprehensive as those you can access from the office.

In almost all cases, forecasting, staffing and scheduling will be done on a desktop or laptop, where the full range of metrics that would influence such decisions are accessible. With a cloud-based solution, there is some mobility and flexibility already "built-in", since workforce planning and scheduling can be done on any computer or even a tablet from anywhere with Internet access. 

So, what is the more realistic usage scenario for mobile workforce management for contact centers? When you’re on the road, or in an airport, or taking a day off to attend your son’s soccer game, and you just need to check in or obtain a status report, there’s no need to have every workforce management feature on your phone or tablet. As long as you get automated alerts and key metrics, and take action on any adherence issues that require immediate attention, that should be all you will want or need from mobile capabilities. We think that mobile WFM for contact centers is based on two main use cases:

• Automatically getting alerts of key metrics (e.g. adherence, service level, call volumes, etc.)
• Immediately taking action by logging into the web-based WFM solution from wherever you are

We would like to hear from you about your mobile workforce management needs. Please contact us, we are looking forward to talking to you.

How to Schedule your Call Center Workforce

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Workforce management (WFM) software lends accuracy and consistency to the scheduling process in a call center. Given the impact that scheduling has on call center performance, doing it right is necessary for call centers to save time and money. Plus, when scheduling can be handled more quickly, it frees up time for managers to focus on other responsibilities.

Once configured, WFM should provide real-time data by call center or by department, that covers every aspect of the scheduling process.

Start with forecasting, which helps to determine how many agents will be needed on a given shift on a given day, taking into account special days such as holidays or the first day of a new company sales promotion.

Next, factor in employee availability, with data on vacation schedules, approved days off, and matching individual skills to forecasting and scheduling preferences. The goal is to have the correct number of agents in place for the expected workload on that shift – no more, no less. Too many agents on a shift means wasted resources; not enough means longer call wait times and frustrated customers.

During the shift, tracking metrics keep tabs on agents that leave early, show up late, or take longer breaks than allowed.

Unfortunately, once schedules are set they are not immune to revision. Last minute changes are often unavoidable, but WFM should resolve any issues before they can impact performance. If an agent can’t make it to work, WFM should identify a replacement with a comparable skill set, determine his or her availability, and expedite the change.

Other issues related to scheduling, such as employee shift swaps and separate rotations for trainees, can also be coordinated through WFM. Once generated, schedules should be easily accessible to all concerned parties so there’s never any confusion. To see call center scheduling in action, please follow this link to watch a series of videos about forecasting, scheduling, staffing, exceptions handling and intra-day management.

Workforce Management Solution 101 - what's important?

While different call centers have different needs, it’s hard to imagine a call center that could not benefit from a workforce management (WFM) solution. Whatever the specific goals of your business – lowering costs, improving efficiency, better customer service – workforce management can help to achieve them.

But how should you select a WFM solution? Here are the key capabilities to look for, and why they are important.

• Call Volume Forecast – by using historical data and real-time ACD integration, the system should produce accurate forecasts that will impact scheduling.
• Schedule Creation – The system should be able to create schedules based on shift patters, skill levels and other criteria.  
• Intra-Day Changes/Exceptions – No two days are alike in any call center. WFM should be able to consider variables and perform ‘on the fly’ scheduling when needed. It should also be able to measure agent adherence on both typical and atypical days. 
• Real-time Metrics - Getting alerts when something is not working as planned, and tracking performance and adherence metrics in real-time on a dashboard are critical.
• Implementation – How long does the system take to install, and how long before it begins to pay for itself? Will additional hardware or software purchases be necessary? How long will it take to train agents on its proper usage? Anything too complex may end up having the opposite effect on efficiency. 
• Cost – Calculate both upfront and ongoing costs of installation, implementation, integration, maintenance and support.

Our brief workforce management software selection guide provides more details and helps you ask the right questions to find the best solution for your call center.

Do You Measure Your Agent Schedule Adherence? Is it 70, 80 or 90%?

Schedules only work if employees stick to them. Most will but as call center managers have discovered, even a small drop in adherence can severely impact both productivity and costs. Many call centers are now pro-actively focusing on improving schedule adherence for increased service levels and reduced costs. Raising the adherence from 80 to 85%, or from 90% to 95% can result in huge cost differences. For example, in this Adherence whitepaper there is the case of a 300 employee call center and the assumption that each employee is 10 minutes our of adherence every day, resulting in $250,000 per year.

Fixing adherence issues is one of the quickest ways to avoid angry customers and rising costs. But first, you must determine your current adherence level. Yes, there will be math involved – but these are numbers that are vital to know.

Here’s the formula:
[phone time + other work related activity time] / ([shift time] - [lunch/dinner] -
[break] + [exception time] + [overtime]) = schedule adherence

Once you’ve got the results, you can add up the money now being wasted and put a stop to it.

What Causes Adherence Issues?
Are some agents taking too many breaks or absences? Is the schedule too rigid? Are employees showing up late and leaving early? Address these issues with agents, and make sure they realize how important schedule adherence is to the call center – and to their job.

This need not be a confrontational situation – one method that has worked at call centers is the setting of adherence goals, with rewards offered to agents that aid in their achievement. Monitor progress whether the goals are achieved or not, and keep the lines of communication open.

The Role of Workforce Management
A workforce management solution can play a key role in agent adherence. First, you don't have to calculate adherence, the system does that for you. Second, real-time tracking and monitoring makes it easier to adjust forecasts and schedules right when there is an adherence problem. Third, adherence reporting helps you analyze data from the past, identify potential issues that impact adherence and the opportunity to discuss with your team.

For more information, please download the Monet white paper Strategies for Improving Schedule Adherence.

Workforce Management Videos for Call Centers

We have just uploaded new workforce management videos to our demo center and would like to invite you to take a look. The videos cover the whole spectrum of workforce optimization, including forecasting, scheduling, staffing, adherence tracking, call recording, quality monitoring and performance management.

The videos show how a unified Workforce Optimization solution connects all aspects of scheduling, skills, adherence, quality, metrics and compliance to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. They further demonstrate how to identify patterns and analyze metrics at various levels for training and quality assurance purpose and establish quality standards and best practices. In addition, you will learn how to combine quantitative and qualitative information for a complete assessment of contact center performance. For example, if your dashboard alerts you of a potential issue, you can start a live monitoring session to get to the root cause and develop tailored training and coaching programs to address it. An integrated WFO suite allows you “connect the dots” to get the whole picture that allows you to impact the bottom line. Please take a moment to watch the workforce optimization videos and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss how your call center could benefit from a unified WFO solution.

Special Days: The Challenges of Forecasting and Scheduling

Accurate forecasts are vital to customer service and budgeting, and avoiding additional issues that occur when the center is overstaffed or understaffed. Forecasting methods must take into account changing business needs, seasonal volumes and external events that are outside the company’s control.

Special days provide another challenge. But it’s a scheduling and forecasting challenge that is manageable with a workforce management solution that handles much of the processing and calculations automatically.

But the process starts with a manager, and an effort to explore how a change in call volume or service level goals on one day, or within one week, will affect the call center. You already have the information necessary to achieve this in past call history data that covers previous similar periods. Always review both the similarities and potential variables.

Next, break down your forecast into monthly, weekly or daily intervals, with special allowances made for the “special day” effect. For some call centers, Valentine’s Day is a special day of increased orders. Forecasting efforts will already have calculations in place for February, and for the day of the week that Valentine’s Day falls upon. But then the impact of the holiday must be assessed, as well as the times of that day where call volume may be increased.

Additional “special day” provisions should also be made for other factors, including any company marketing campaigns or events, and perhaps even weather patterns; if it’s raining outside, will more customers call and place and order instead of going out and buying a gift?

Fore more information about different forecasting models and simulations tools, please watch this call forecasting video. No one every said predicting the future was easy. But workforce management can remove much of the guesswork and improve the accuracy of schedules and forecasts.