How can you know if your customer service meets the mark?
As you scale your customer support team, it can be challenging to ensure that you’re consistently delivering exceptional customer service, especially as CSAT survey response rates continue to plummet.
The answer lies in customer service quality assurance (QA) – a systematic process that provides actionable insights to enhance the quality of customer interactions.
In this article, we’re sharing why customer service quality assurance is so important, along with the steps to implement a rock-solid quality assurance process that drives continuous improvement and boosts customer satisfaction.
What is customer service quality assurance?
Customer service quality assurance is a set of internal processes that contact centers and support teams use to assess and improve their service quality.
This includes reviewing customer service interactions against predefined criteria, analyzing call compliance data, and conducting post-call surveys to gather direct customer feedback.
Customer service QA plays a central role in achieving consistent quality of service and building strong, high-performing teams. It helps highlight gaps in agent performance and center operations and allows support managers to address those performance issues before they escalate into bigger problems that could lead to customer churn.
Support leaders often opt for open reviews where customer service agent names are shown along with each ticket.
However, in recent years, blind reviews with hidden agent names have gained popularity. They eliminate bias and provide more objective customer feedback insights based solely on the content of individual interactions rather than on reviewers’ feelings about individual agents.
If you have a smaller team where everyone has built some kind of personal relationships with each other, blind reviews are the way to go for more accurate internal evaluations.
Why is customer service quality assurance so important?
88% of CX professionals consider personalisation critical as they incorporate technologies like AI to meet rising customer expectations.
Quality customer service a must for long-term business success and customer loyalty.
You can’t rely solely on the customer satisfaction score numbers to understand how well your team is performing and how happy your customers are anymore. That’s because CSAT survey response rates typically are below 20% across industries.
Plus even when every customer service agent is putting in their best effort, a lack of alignment in internal standards can result in inconsistent customer experiences and subpar agent performance. The hard work of top-performing agents might go unnoticed, while underperforming team members keep going without any corrective actions.
That’s why customer service quality assurance plays a critical role in support operations, helping you to:
- Get everyone in the organization on the same page regarding quality standards.
- Identify improvement opportunities in the customer service workflow.
- Support growth and development of underperforming agents through coaching sessions and agent training.
- Recognize the contributions of high-performing team members through a well-structured recognition and rewards program.
Some companies see a ton of success by using QA gamification elements like an agent leaderboard. They can increase team performance levels and encourage healthy competition for the top spot, promoting service quality internally and boosting customer loyalty.
They can also lead to a hyper competitive internal culture, depending on how they’re implemented and the types of behavior they incentivize. It’s good to be a little careful about how the QA system is structured as a whole.
Customer service team roles in the QA process
Here are the key customer service team roles and responsibilities crucial for building an effective quality assurance program and achieving consistently high customer service performance:
- Customer service agents are on the front line, resolving customer issues and questions through conversations with customers.
- Quality assurance specialists assess customer contacts and share constructive feedback with agents and team leads. In larger teams, there may be multiple QA specialists who report to the support manager or a dedicated quality assurance team manager. In smaller teams, center managers, team leads or even agents themselves can take on the QA function by performing manager-, peer reviews, and self-reviews.
- Team leaders handle escalations, team coaching, and training agents based on the QA review results and feedback from customers.
- Finally, support managers own support operations, team performance, and agent engagement strategies. In smaller teams, support managers might also take on the role of a team leader, with agents reporting directly to the manager.
With many parties involved in the process, it’s important to have a clear team structure and organization so that everyone knows who to talk to about different problems.
Support reps should know who will give them feedback to agents and who they can turn to for help and additional training.
Customer service agents and team leads typically report to support managers while QA can be a separate function, working with the customer service through cross-functional collaboration.
This holistic approach helps avoid conflicts of interest and ensures honest and fair QA feedback for more effective quality assurance.
The quality assurance process
The quality assurance process can differ depending on your support channels, team size, industry, and unique business needs. But the core of the process is generally the same across the board:
- Ensuring the team is on the same page regarding quality standards.
- Defining evaluation criteria.
- Consistently monitoring and evaluating customer service interactions to ensure compliance with company policies, pinpoint process gaps, and identify areas for continuous improvement.
Types of QA reviews
Often, QA evaluations are done by a dedicated team of QA specialists who are trained to spot performance issues and provide constructive feedback tactfully.
With that said, some teams prefer peer reviews, where team members assess each other’s work, fostering transparency and a culture of agent accountability.
This is particularly effective for smaller teams of under ten people, where everyone can review a few conversations with customers from each team member without it taking overwhelmingly long every week.
For smaller teams without dedicated QA positions, manager or team lead reviews are quite common, too.
However, as the team expands, it becomes more practical to build a dedicated team for QA. Otherwise, reviews may start consuming too much of the manager’s additional time, distracting their focus from more strategic work.
Lastly, self-reviews have been gaining popularity as they empower agents to align their performance with quality standards independently and support continuous learning.
4 steps to implement a quality assurance process
Now, let’s walk through the specific steps required to successfully launch the quality assurance process within your team.
1. Define quality standards
First, you must define what quality looks like for your organization. Do you prioritize customer experience or operational efficiency? Are you focused on meeting customer expectations at all costs, as Zappos did with their legendary 10-hour customer call? Or do you prioritize upgrades and renewals to meet short-term revenue goals?
Whatever your standards, ensure they are clear to your team and everyone is on the same page regarding the expected level of efficiency and service level agreement.
2. Create a QA scorecard
The next crucial step is pinpointing the key aspects of a great service interaction for your team. These are the things you’ll include in your QA template to evaluate customer interactions and assess agent performance metrics.
These are some metrics you can include in your evaluation criteria:
- Response time and resolution times.
- Contact resolution effectiveness.
- Tone of voice, communication, and grammar (customer experience soft skills).
- Adherence to company guidelines and compliance with regulations.
- The efficiency of solutions provided for customer issues.
3. Pick your tech stack
Now, it’s time to consider your tech stack for QA reviews. This is one of the most important steps in quality assurance – your choice can either boost the team’s efficiency or significantly hinder progress if you pick a platform that doesn’t fit your team size or development stage.
There are lots of options out there, but here are the key components for selecting a QA tool:
- Integrations with your help desk and other software products you use to help customers.
- Customizable evaluation criteria that you can adjust for your specific needs.
- AI-driven tools for streamlining reviews and saving time with natural language processing models.
- Reports and analytics to monitor your team’s key performance indicators effectively.
- Coaching features for ongoing training and monitoring agent performance over time.
- Last but not least is pricing and associated costs, including implementation fees and artificial intelligence automation add-ons if they aren’t included in your subscription.
For smaller teams, starting with Google Sheets might suffice with minimal effort, while larger or more established teams normally go with specialized platforms.
Commonly used QA tools like Supportman and Evaluagent are perfect choices for established teams for comprehensive service quality management through technology tools.
4. Launch the QA review process
Now, it’s time to document the process and kick things off. Typically, the process will involve:
- Using artificial intelligence to review 100% of interactions and flag cases for human review.
- Setting up filters for human review based on specific criteria like customer satisfaction score, ticket tags, keywords, or response time.
- Combining reviews from both AI and humans to provide agents with actionable insights and regular feedback, allowing agents to agree or appeal scores.
- Reviewing agent feedback and adjusting support workflows as needed. For example, your machine learning model may not be set up correctly resulting in scoring mistakes or your knowledge base has outdated information leading to incorrect support responses.
- Conducting coaching sessions to help agents improve. You can focus on specific soft skills each agent can work on to perform better and keep an eye on their progress with ongoing QA checks.
Encouraging two-way customer communication and involving agents in the assessment process is crucial for building a strong QA workflow.
Agents should be able to challenge scores they don’t agree with and point out where the process isn’t working well, causing low scores and a poor customer experience.
Collaboration and open customer feedback culture are key to continuous improvement in your quality assurance process.
Tips for a great QA program
Develop an outside-in QA program
Traditional quality assurance often takes an inside-out approach, focusing on internal metrics and company policies.
An outside-in QA approach centers on actual customer priorities and customer sentiment.
This approach links quality assurance evaluations directly to customer expectations and helps identify gaps between customer expectations and service delivery.
You can incorporate post-call CX surveys and align QA scores with customer feedback. That can ensure your quality standards reflect what actually matters to customers.
Leverage AI technology
Modern quality assurance benefits greatly from technology:
- AI-powered tools can analyze 100% of interactions rather than just a small sample.
- Real-time monitoring tools alert managers to issues as they happen.
- Machine learning identifies patterns in customer contacts that might indicate systemic problems.
- Natural language processing helps assess tone and sentiment in written communication.
These technology tools not only make the QA process more efficient but also provide more comprehensive and data-driven insights.
Build a culture of continuous improvement
For quality assurance efforts to truly succeed, they must be part of an ongoing process of continuous improvement:
- Share regular feedback with agents in a constructive manner
- Develop action plans to address recurring issues
- Track effectiveness over time with well-defined metrics
- Promote peer learning and knowledge sharing
- Celebrate improvements and recognize excellence through real-time financial recognition
This approach transforms QA from a dreaded evaluation into a valued tool for professional development and performance improvement.
Connect QA to business outcomes
The ultimate goal of customer service quality assurance is to drive business results:
- Reduced customer churn and rates of customer dissatisfaction.
- Improvements in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Lower operational costs through increased efficiency.
- Higher first contact resolution rates.
- Greater customer lifetime value.
By tracking how improvements in QA scores correlate with these business metrics, you can demonstrate the ROI of your quality assurance program and secure continued support for your quality assurance efforts.
Create extraordinary customer experiences through QA
Customer service quality assurance is not just about monitoring individual agents or enforcing scripts.
When implemented effectively, it’s a powerful tool for creating exceptional customer experiences that drive loyalty and business growth.
You can build a quality assurance program that balances operational efficiency with a genuine focus on customer happiness.
The goal will never be perfection. It’s always continuous improvement.
Each interaction is an opportunity to learn and enhance your quality of service, turning customer frustrations into positive customer experiences that build lasting relationships.
Supportman’s powerful AI-driven tools combined with a simple, accessible, and intuitive interface can streamline QA reviews, provide actionable insights to agents, and track key performance indicators that matter most to your business.
It’s the perfect, easy-to-use QA tool for support teams that operate on Intercom, and you can try out a free 14-day trial today!
