The tried-and-true quality assurance processes that many contact center practitioners relied on for years are probably well out of date. It is time to reevaluate how quality is tracked and measured, and to implement some sensible new practices that take into consideration the ways in which operations have evolved.
Traditional quality starts with recording—grabbing the actual contents of the interaction and storing it for later review. Most centers have a solid set of guidelines for supervisors (or dedicated quality control professionals) to listen to a selection of calls for each agent on a regular basis. There is usually a calibration process to ensure consistency and a mechanism for sharing the findings with agents for improvement. In recent years, many centers have acquired technology that can capture and store 100% of calls, including the agents’ desktops. This has provided a greater pool of interactions to review, but the portion of interactions typically scored remains very low, as little as 1% to 3% of the total.
