Contact centers or call centers must ensure there is consistency when measuring the performance and quality of customer interactions. Every call center or contact center must have a quality management system and strategies to monitor operations and agents. Moreover, the QA or quality assurance system ensures that every contact or call center element functions efficiently. Despite the set standards, different departments and stakeholders may not appear on the same page regarding quality assurance and performance ratings.
Quality analysts, the QA team, team leads, supervisors, training team and coaches, and other stakeholders must attend the calibration session to tune in and settle the differences to maintain consistency. Moreover, calibration sessions with competent quality management systems can help the contact center or call center maintain consistent QA processes and evaluations. Read the blog to understand the calibration session, its advantages, and the advantages of using quality management software systems for these sessions.
What Is a Calibration Session?
A call center calibration session is a process that involves bringing together call center or contact center quality analysts or the QA team, agents, supervisors, managers, the training team or coaches, and any other quality stakeholders. All of the participants review and assess recorded calls to ensure consistency and accuracy in evaluating customer interactions. Moreover, the session aims to align the understanding and application of quality criteria, scoring guidelines, and performance expectations across the team. Also, if there are any differences and subjectivity in the QA scores causing variance, it will be addressed by the participants. Many quality management systems offer options to conduct calibration sessions.
Advantages of Calibration Sessions
Consistency in Evaluation:
Moreover, calibration sessions promote consistency in evaluating customer interactions by aligning the assessment criteria among different evaluators. By establishing a shared understanding of what constitutes excellent customer service, calibration sessions help eliminate subjective biases and discrepancies in scoring.
Fairness and Objectivity:
Also, calibration sessions enable supervisors to evaluate agents’ performance objectively and fairly. So, by discussing and agreeing upon evaluation standards and scoring guidelines during the session, supervisors can provide feedback and ratings consistently, ensuring that all agents are treated fairly and receive equitable assessments.
Continuous Improvement:
Calibration sessions provide an opportunity for agents and supervisors to learn from one another and improve their skills. Through collaborative discussions, agents can gain insights into areas where they can enhance their performance, learn best practices from high-performing peers, and receive constructive supervisor feedback. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the call center.
Quality Enhancement:
By identifying areas of improvement and addressing common challenges during calibration sessions, call centers can enhance the overall quality of customer interactions. Agents can adopt effective strategies to handle various customer scenarios through shared learning and best practice sharing, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Training and Development:
Calibration sessions can serve as training and development opportunities for call center agents. Agents can receive coaching, guidance, and feedback from supervisors during these sessions, enabling them to understand performance expectations and learn how to improve their skills and techniques. Regular calibration sessions contribute to ongoing agent development and skill enhancement. Input from a quality management system can enrich the entire learning process.
Performance Alignment:
Calibration sessions help align agents’ performance with organizational goals and customer-centric strategies. By ensuring that agents are evaluated based on consistent criteria and standards, call centers can ensure that individual performance aligns with broader business objectives, customer satisfaction goals, and quality metrics.
Quality Assurance and Compliance:
Calibration sessions play a crucial role in maintaining quality assurance and compliance in the call center environment. By collectively reviewing calls, supervisors can identify any potential compliance issues, adherence to regulatory requirements, and consistency in following organizational policies and procedures. It helps mitigate risks and ensures that agents deliver customer service that meets the required standards.
Using Quality Management Systems to Calibrate QA Processes.
Quality management software is crucial in facilitating calibration sessions in call centers or contact centers. It provides a centralized platform where supervisors and quality assurance teams can access recorded customer interactions, evaluation forms, and performance metrics. The software streamlines the calibration process by enabling collaboration, feedback sharing, and reconciliation of scoring differences.
It supports blind scoring for objectivity, generates comprehensive reports to identify performance variations, and offers training and coaching features for targeted feedback and development plans. Additionally, the software provides analytics and performance monitoring capabilities to track key performance indicators and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
By utilizing quality management software, call centers or contact centers can enhance the accuracy and consistency of evaluations, promote fairness, and drive overall performance improvement. It serves as a valuable tool for maintaining high-quality service and ensuring consistent customer interactions.
Endnote
An efficient QA process decides how well the contact center or call center functions and delivers quality services. Agent performance must be evaluated objectively by following established quality standards and guidelines. But human QAs or any other persons involved in call center quality assessments often become subjective and vary depending on the individuals. So, frequently conducting calibration sessions will help address these issues. Quality management systems can assist in conducting a successful calibration session and interface software systems like QA, call monitoring, and top RPA solutions assisting agents to obtain the best performance and quality outcome.
