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Category: Customer Experience

Customer Service Superstars: How to Evaluate Call Center Performance

call center evaluations

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Conducting call center evaluations for customer service is essential for ensuring consistent quality and identifying areas for improvement. However, many companies just don’t have the resources available internally to conduct evaluations on a regular basis. This was the case for one of our clients, a specialty supplier of all types of metals, parts, and more. With over 100 locations, this made call center evaluations somewhat challenging.

We worked with the client to create a customized program that would supply them with the necessary data they were looking for. Who were their star performers? Who needed more training? Once established, this was integrated into their employee evaluations.

Here is an outline on how we created the program:

Starting Point

  1. Define Evaluation Criteria: Start by establishing clear and specific evaluation criteria. These criteria should align with your organization’s customer service standards and goals. Common evaluation criteria include communication skills, problem-solving abilities, product knowledge, empathy, professionalism, and adherence to company policies.
  2. Create Evaluation Forms: Design evaluation forms or scorecards that capture the defined criteria. The forms should be user-friendly and enable evaluators to score each criterion objectively. Use a scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10) to rate performance consistently.
  3. Train Evaluators: Ensure that the evaluators are well-trained on the evaluation process and criteria. Provide examples of both excellent and subpar interactions to establish a shared understanding of expectations.

Sample Size

  1. Random Sampling: Select calls for evaluation randomly from the call center’s daily interactions. Random sampling ensures a fair representation of agents’ performance and helps identify overall trends.
  2. Blind Evaluation: For more unbiased results, consider conducting blind evaluations where the evaluator does not know which agent handled the call. This helps prevent any personal biases from influencing the evaluation.

Monitor Improvement

  1. Identify Strengths and Areas for Improvement: After evaluating multiple calls, identify patterns in both positive and negative aspects of the interactions. Recognize agents’ strengths and acknowledge outstanding performance. Simultaneously, pinpoint areas where agents can improve and provide specific feedback.
  2. Provide Feedback: Schedule feedback sessions with individual agents to discuss the evaluation results. Deliver feedback constructively, highlighting successes, and offering actionable suggestions for improvement.
  3. Offer Training and Coaching: If specific areas of improvement are identified for multiple agents, consider providing additional training or coaching sessions to address these areas comprehensively.
  4. Track Progress: Regularly track agents’ progress over time. Use call center software and tools to monitor performance metrics and determine if evaluations lead to improvements.
  5. Recognize and Reward Excellence: Establish a recognition and rewards system to celebrate outstanding customer service performance. Recognizing top-performing agents can boost morale and motivation.
  6. Continuously Review and Improve: Customer service standards and customer expectations evolve, so regularly review and update your evaluation criteria and processes to keep them relevant.

By following these steps, you can create a structured and effective call center evaluation process that supports the development of top-notch customer service and enhances overall customer satisfaction.

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Customer Service VS. Customer Experience

When you are in the business of evaluating customer services levels for your clients, you tend to notice the details. Walk into an ice cream store with your kids or grandkids and you are automatically in tune with the “vibe” of the store. Is there music playing? How easy/hard is it to figure out the menu options? Were you greeted when you walked in the door? How clean was the store? Were you thanked for business? All of these things play either a subconscious or conscious role in your experience.

I remember when an ice cream store chain stopped their mystery shopping service in lieu of social media reviews. Big mistake for a variety of reasons, but the lure of getting “free” customer reviews was enough for them to give it a try. They are not alone. There is actually a term for this. The “Review Economy”has created a dent in customer research. In fact many companies use it in lieu of customer satisfaction surveys.

A year later, I went in to one of the locations as a customer with my family. I witnessed a noticeable difference right away. I was never greeted. I placed my order after waiting in line and there was no upsell or cross sell at the register. Not a huge issue for an ice cream shop, right? When we found a place to sit however, I noticed how the floor beneath the table was very dirty and dusty. The table itself needed to be cleaned better from the previous guest. All things that as a major ice cream brand, it is hard to recover from. I will never go back to the store again after that visit. I will not share my findings in social media. I am the silent, unhappy customer.

Customer Service & Customer Experience: What’s the difference?

Customer service and customer experience are related but distinct concepts. Customer service refers to the support and assistance provided by a company to its customers before, during, and after a purchase. It includes the various ways in which a company interacts with its customers, such as answering questions, providing technical support, handling complaints, and resolving issues.

Customer experience, on the other hand, encompasses the entire customer journey, including all of the interactions and touchpoints a customer has with a company, from initial awareness and consideration, to purchase and post-purchase. It’s about creating a positive and seamless experience for customers across all channels and touchpoints, and ensuring that they feel valued, understood, and appreciated.

Customer Service is Part of the Customer Experience

While customer service is a critical component of the overall customer experience, it’s just one part of it. A company that provides excellent customer service can still fall short in terms of creating a positive and memorable customer experience. To truly excel in customer experience, companies need to focus on creating a customer-centric culture, understanding and anticipating customer needs, and delivering consistent and personalized experiences across all channels and touchpoints.

Forbes recently published a great article titled, “No Help is Better than Bad Help: Focusing on the Customer Experience.” They offered some great practical tips on how to provide a better customer experience. The one tip that stood out to me was to understand your customers.

Understand Your Customers

“Having a thorough understanding of the type of customers who walk through your door also aids in creating a positive customer experience. Know them, and figure out how to tailor their experiences to their needs. Being in tune with the customer goes a long way in creating an experience worth remembering.”

This for me sums up in part why a business still needs mystery shopping and customer satisfaction surveys. You can’t get this type of understanding from a social media review unless you can unmask the author behind the post. I am in favor of online reviews, but you need all of it to really understand how to develop, train and execute a good customer experience process.

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Audits- Brand, Legal Compliance, Reveal, Price and Merchandising

Audits are an effective observation tool for evaluating everything from product displays and use of marketing materials, to brand exclusivity, franchise compliance, and even adherence to detailed company standards. During periodic visits, auditors openly evaluate the physical and visual aspects of the site according to your customized checklist.

Brand Audit

Brand audits are designed to protect brand image in the context of the physical sales environment. Auditors record location details (which may include digital photographs and embedded video) to confirm that the sales environment mirrors corporate expectations.

These specialized audits help:

  1. Provide visual confirmation of brand presentation and representation
  2. Document that brand integrity is maintained
  3. Appropriately confirm, realign, or reconsider relationships with sales parters.

Legal Compliance Audit

Legal Compliance audits help ensure employees are observing and enforcing the laws and regulations governing your business. Auditors perform specific scenarios to test employee compliance and may take instantly alert the company of the infractions via the Instant Feedback Results feature so that immediate can taken if necessary.

These specialized audits help

  1. Ensure employees understand the importance of industry regulations and the severity of infractions
  2. Protect your company from the repercussions of negligence
  3. Maintain corporate integrity

What is a Retail Audit?

Industry Today explains it as follows. “Fundamentally, a retail audit evaluates the condition of your retail location using hard data. Vendors, employees or a third-party scrutinise your store or pop-up shop to gather information on what’s selling well and what isn’t.

Often, retailers use profits as their main method of measuring success, but when you carry out frequent store audits, you have a lot of extra analytics that provide a broader picture of what state your business is in. There are a wide range of areas an audit can focus on including, but not limited to, merchandising audits, competitor pricing audits, inventory loss audits etc.

During a retail audit, you’ll uncover insights such as:

  • Damaged products
  • Stock levels (including stock on your shelves and stock out the back)
  • Sales volume
  • An outline on what your competitors are doing
  • Calculations on visual retailing and in-store presentations
  • Position of shelves, quantity of frontings, amount of SKUs available, misplaced/incorrect shelf tags
  • An insight into your pricing scheme
  • Where the products are positioned in store

Bear in mind you’ll also have to select the kind of audit that harmonises with your requirements most.”

Keep in mind that with all of this comes the opportunity to evaluate the customer experience.

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