Research Insights – How Well Are Contact Centres Managing Quality Assurance?

In our What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2023 Edition) research – sponsored by Scorebuddy – we polled the industry on the challenges of managing quality assurance. Here’s what they said…

13% Said They Wanted a New Scoring Mechanism

Many Would Like the Gift of Time

46.4% of survey respondents said they’d like to have more time for analysing and calibrating, and the root cause for this could be twofold.

Firstly, these contact centre professionals could be using long-winded methods to complete their regular quality monitoring exercises, such as manual call listening and marking against spreadsheets.

Around One Fifth Want to Ditch Spreadsheets

Furthermore, it was interesting to see that 18.8% of survey respondents cited the desire to move away from spreadsheets – suggesting that there are several contact centres yet to utilize the latest quality monitoring technology.

13.3% also said they most wanted to see change in the form of a new scoring mechanism, showing that some need to dedicate some strategic thinking time to their quality monitoring processes.

In addition, of the 3.9% who said ‘other’, survey respondents cited introducing a QA department and increasing the volume of calls evaluated.

Overall, the findings suggest there’s plenty of room for improvement across the board when it comes to delivering a great quality monitoring programme.

7% Admitted to Never Updating Their QA Scorecards

Half of Contact Centres Review Their Quality Scorecard Questions Annually

It was great to see that 50% of survey respondents said they’d last changed the questions on their quality scorecard in the past year – suggesting many have an annual process for reviewing quality scorecard questions year-on-year.

Alongside this, over a quarter (26.4%) said that they’d changed their questions in the past month, while only 3.3% said they’d done it in the last week. These findings suggest that most contact centres are keeping a relatively close eye on the questions on their quality scorecards to check they are fit for purpose.

Almost a Fifth Failing to Regularly Review the Questions on Their Quality Scorecards

On the flipside, 12.6% of survey respondents revealed they’d only completed this exercise in the past five years, while 7.7% said they’d never done it.

This is concerning, as it suggests that a fifth of contact centres are not engaged in a cycle of continuous improvement and are letting their quality monitoring process go stale.

64% Measured Compliance on Digital Channels

Equal Emphasis on a Range of Attributes

Compliance, speed of response, friendliness, advisor empathy, and spelling and grammar all ranked similarly here, with no major outliers – showing that many contact centres capture a broad view when it comes to monitoring their digital channels.

Most Contact Centres Do Not Measure Spelling and Grammar

That aside, as ‘select all that apply’ was an available option in the survey, it’s somewhat concerning to see spelling and grammar and compliance not ranking higher, suggesting that several contact centres aren’t measuring these consistently across in their digital channels and possibly compromising the quality of these interactions.

53% of Contact Centres Still Using Spreadsheets

Analytics and Quality Tools Becoming More Mainstream

It was promising to see analytics (42.2%) and quality tools (52.8%) on a par with the more traditionally used tools of spreadsheets and basic reporting – showing that many contact centres are adopting a progressive approach to quality monitoring, and that these tools are becoming more mainstream.

In addition, of the 2.8% that said ‘other’, survey respondents cited independent offshore QA providers and relying on manual processes.

Most Contact Centres Content Using Spreadsheets

Many survey respondents (53.9%) confirmed they are still using spreadsheets as a key quality tool. Furthermore, only 18.8% of these same survey respondents said that moving away from spreadsheets was what they’d like to change most within their quality monitoring.

This suggests that around a third of contact centre professionals (35.1%) are content with their spreadsheet-based quality processes.

Only 27% Said Advisors ‘Very Engaged’ With QA Programme

Majority of Contact Centres Need to Work on Their QA Engagement

When asked ‘How engaged are your customer advisors in the QA programme of your contact centre?’, 56.4% of survey respondents said ‘moderately engaged’, whilst a further 16% of survey respondents said ‘passively engaged’. Sadly, this makes any QA efforts seem futile for many.

By contrast, only 27.6% reported that their customer advisors were ‘very engaged’. This highlights that most contact centres are struggling with QA engagement right now and need to take proactive measures to address this situation.

Run in partnership with Sabio, Centrical, Odigo, Scorebuddy, and NICE, this survey focused on the key elements of a contact centre, including advisor experience and engagement, artificial intelligence (AI), customer experience, quality assurance, workforce management, and more!