Too many call centres simply don't do quality, never mind have a quality process to support their call handling.  Why does this happen?  Do senior managers see an additional cost for this intangible thing we call quality?  Yet we all know quality pays for itself.

When we talk about the fundamentals for a call centre, it is easy to visualise the facility - the telephone switch - the people - you cannot run a call centre without any of these.  What if we said quality was also fundamental and it came in a box we could all see, would we think differently?  Well fundamental it is, so come and get your box of quality!

What should you have in this 'box' of quality:

A Quality methodology and process to fit your business

• Identify the building blocks of quality in your call centre
• Design a process to do quality

Collate & understand some of your key information

• Understand your call types through call tracking
• Understand service delivery failures across the business which create service calls

A call avoidance strategy

• Eliminate unnecessary calls which clog up lines and take up resource
• Eliminate rework and repeat calls
• Facilitate process improvement to avoid incoming calls
• First time call resolution, resulting in 15/20% reduction of staff and on-costs or an increase in call capacity

A quality assessment process          

• Design a peer monitoring programme to offset big brother
• Design customised call monitoring forms
• Provide calibration sessions for assessors to provide consistency
• Monitor and measure agent and team quality performance
• Provide the link to agent training needs analysis

Measure your customer expectations & outputs

• Measure customer satisfaction through
  • Customer satisfaction questionnaires
  • Customer focus group sessions

• Capture and measure verbal customer dissatisfaction
• Identify and eliminate written complaints
• Measure your performance through inbound mystery shopping