In Part 1 and Part 2 of this four-part series, we focused on one of the key enablers in contact centers – making it easy for the customer to do business with us. The other critical element that is often cited by contact centers is quality, which is too often determined from an internal perspective. However, more companies are beginning to view quality from the customer’s point of view.
As with availability measures, quality scores are important to know, track and report, but quality is not the way a contact center adds value – it’s basically the price of admission. Without quality interactions, customers will eventually leave, High quality must be maintained, which can be a challenge given the fact that the bar is continually being raised by the ever-changing expectations and demands of customers. Most customers base their service expectations on their last interaction with a contact center — and the quality received; they seldom base their expectations against your competition because they typically don’t have a reason to contact them. Because of this fact, the minimum quality you must provide is a moving target — what some consider world-class today can become the norm by the middle of next month.
If quality is the price of admission, at what point does quality become a value-add measure for the contact center? It’s when the customer’s perception of the service quality has exceeded their expectation at that point in time. All of the internal quality metrics and scores mean nothing if the interactions don’t exceed the customer’s needs, and this is often the part where contact centers fail. Internal quality programs are necessary in all contact centers, and most centers have some type of program in place. Unfortunately, the programs are normally built on an internal perception of what defines quality, with little focus on the customer and their continually evolving expectations.
Once you understand that quality is the price of admission, your program and approach becomes 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 a contact center from the self-inflicted pain of managing internal quality to a number. You can leverage your internal quality program to improve the customer’s perception, but not with a metrics focus. Just as with accessibility results, it’s more about what you do with the findings than the numbers themselves.
Quality programs need to be flexible to the customer and focused on agent development. A numerical results-oriented program with potential agent disciplinary actions based on low scores create a distraction for everyone….and have little impact on the customer. Quality programs that focus on agent behaviors and use quality monitoring as a mechanism for developing critical skills and knowledge provide agents with the tools and feedback needed to truly improve the customer interaction. This is a tough transition for most contact centers, as it forces frontline leaders to become coaches vs. score keepers – and coaching against a number is much easier than coaching against a behavior.
As with accessibility objectives, the key is education and ensuring everyone knows their role and is comfortable delivering the quality message. To accomplish the transition from a rigid score-keeper approach to an agent- and customer-centric coaching approach, a contact center must commit to and deliver on the promise, and make it a focused and respected job activity. Without this focus, nothing will move and what you’ve always experienced is what you’ll always get.
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