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Category: Customer Feedback

Customer Service Superstars: How to Evaluate Call Center Performance

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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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Behind the Customer Feedback Disconnect

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I have often wondered why so many large corporations and businesses opt to spend a lot of money on annual customer feedback surveys. Are they reliable? After all, is a customer going to recall every service touchpoint over a full year and be able to provide clear, actionable answers to survey questions?

While annual customer satisfaction surveys can provide some insights, they may have limitations that can make them less effective in capturing the dynamic nature of customer satisfaction.

Top 4 Reasons Why Annual Customer Surveys May Not Work as Well

  1. Lack of Timeliness: Annual surveys only capture feedback once a year, which means that any changes in customer preferences, experiences, or satisfaction throughout the year may go unnoticed. Customer satisfaction is a fluid and evolving aspect, and relying solely on an annual survey may miss out on capturing critical feedback that could have been addressed in a more timely manner.
  2. Recall Bias: The longer the time gap between the customer’s experience and the survey, the greater the chance of recall bias. Customers may struggle to accurately recall specific details, nuances, or emotions related to their experiences from several months ago. This can lead to less accurate or biased responses, limiting the reliability of the survey results.
  3. Inability to Address Real-Time Issues: Customer satisfaction surveys conducted annually may fail to address real-time issues or emerging trends. If a problem arises shortly after the survey is conducted, businesses may not become aware of it until the next survey cycle, missing an opportunity to address customer concerns promptly and mitigate potential negative impacts.
  4. Insufficient Actionability: Annual surveys often result in a large volume of feedback that needs to be analyzed and acted upon. Processing and interpreting the data from a comprehensive annual survey can be time-consuming, leading to delays in taking action. This diminishes the effectiveness of the survey as a tool for driving immediate improvements in customer satisfaction.

Customer Are Always Evolving

Annual surveys may not generate high levels of customer engagement or response rates. Customers may perceive them as time-consuming or repetitive, leading to survey fatigue and lower participation. This can result in a smaller sample size, potentially reducing the representativeness and reliability of the survey results.

Customer expectations and preferences are constantly evolving in response to market trends, innovations, and changing industry standards. An annual survey may not capture these evolving expectations, leaving businesses unaware of emerging customer needs and unable to adapt their strategies accordingly.

Customer satisfaction is an ongoing process, and businesses that rely solely on annual surveys may miss opportunities to collect regular feedback, make iterative improvements, and proactively respond to customer needs.

Regular Feedback

To overcome these limitations, businesses can consider supplementing annual surveys with more frequent feedback mechanisms such as post-transactional surveys, real-time feedback tools, customer support interactions, or social media monitoring. These methods enable businesses to capture timely feedback, address issues promptly, and continuously enhance customer satisfaction.

HubSpot offers an excellent explanation of how to build the best customer feedback survey. Below you will see some types of surveys. This gives us an idea of the different ways in which we can conduct surveys.

In conclusion, you can never hear form your customers too much. Maybe it is time to shake things up a bit and consider some new, innovative ways to connect!

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Did the Review Economy Kill Surveys?

With the rise of reviews online and social media, many companies have opted out of sending their clients surveys altogether. The thinking is they don’t need them since they are hearing from their customers on a regular basis online. However, is this a good strategy? Do surveys still play an important role?

Let’s start by taking a closer look at the Review Economy. Let’s face it, we have all relied on online reviews when it comes to making a purchase. I would guess that this increased a lot this past year during COVID, with most of us increasing our online shopping. in fact, we wrote about Apple Ratings and what it may do to the Review Economy down the road in a recent blog post. Apple Ratings is something to watch!

The statistics are in favor of online reviews. Northwestern University conducted a study that concluded 95% of shoppers rely on reviews before making a purchase.

Traveling and looking for a good place to eat nearby? You may very well depend on those online reviews before making your dining decision. They are not going away anytime soon.

Google Reviews

Google reviews can really make an impact on brick and mortar companies. So much so that many owners have tried to offer payment in exchange for a good Google review. Something we highly discourage our clients to do, as it is dishonest and can also come back around at some point if you are not careful. Imagine for a moment a customer does leave you a good review in exchange for monetary compensation. Down the road the same person may have an unfavorable experience at your place of business. Can you imagine if they post in social media about it? Even worse, they may cite the favorable review and the compensation. In today’s culture, anything is possible!

Good Google Reviews can make a positive impact on your business, but you had better make sure you have a process in place to monitor the site as well as others. Nothing speaks louder than an unhappy customer with zero reaction from the company. Even if it is an automatic response ( as many are ), it is still better than nothing. Keeping track of your online reputation is a must.

The Case For Surveys

Online reviews have their place, however they can never be a total replacement for conducting your own internal research. Whether you are using mystery shopping or customer surveys, a business in today’s climate can never have too much customer interaction. The Voice of the Customer is still heard the loudest in the form of surveys.

Time is money and money is time. Keep your surveys short and to the point. A short survey that is viewed as easy to take by a customer will garner some excellent results.

We have a B2B client who measures delivery satisfaction. The customer is asked to complete a 4 question Mobile survey right in the moment of experience. Drivers are incentivized to deliver good surveys. This program has run for about a year now and each month the client receives well over a hundred surveys and it is growing. When you factor in word of mouth about the program internally, and good old-fashioned competition, you can create an actionable program for pennies a day!

Question Alternatives

With today’s surveys one has many more options to make an engaging experience for your customers. Here is a great example. Consider how many people took to Tik Tok over the past year! Why? Because they were stuck indoors and found it to be very entertaining. Short, creative and sometimes educational videos by real people on all kinds of topics. In fact, the demographic of users increased because of word of mouth advertising. What started out being a young person’s social site is now used by parents and even some grandparents.

What if we could bring the same level of enthusiasm to a survey?

  • Allow the respondent to take a photo right within the survey. A restaurant customer may love to show a photo of what their entree looked like when they received it! Or how about someone who was asked to upload a photo on how they used the product once it was taken home? It is a more up close and personal kind of question.
  • Try using some humor when crafting your questions or even try using humor in your answers. For example, if fitting for your survey, use words other than excellent, very good , good, etc.. This depends on your customer demographic of course. According to humorthatworks.com, “A survey is only as good as the responses it receives from the responders”. One way to increase the number of survey responses is to use humor to make your surveys fun.” For an excellent rating you could call it “out of the park fantastic”, for example.
  • Change the wording of traditional questions. Anyone who has taken a survey, knows the “standard” questions most ask. They can become so redundant that the respondent doesn’t even think about the answer. Take the question ““How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” Boring. Instead try ““Has our service been fantastic enough that you’d happily tell you friends about us?”

So don’t disregard the old survey methodologies quite yet. They just need sprucing up a bit and some creative thinking!

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