Your call center agents are one of the key lifelines of your business, but staying on top of their performance at scale can be tricky.
You'll need the right system, and a call center agent performance scorecard comes in handy. With an effective scorecard, you can see the successful agents, those who need guidance, and where your processes require improvement.
Our guide today covers what makes call center scorecards effective, the metrics you need to track, and the best software to help you make your scorecards more efficient.
TL;DR - How to Evaluate Call Center Agent Performance
Let's start with a quick overview of how to evaluate how your call center agents perform.
1. Define Clear Objectives: Align scorecard metrics with business goals and customer expectations.
2. Select Key Performance Metrics: Focus on relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) such as AHT, FCR, CSAT, QA scores, and adherence to standards.
3. Use a Weighted Scoring System: Prioritize metrics based on their impact, giving more weight to the ones that have higher impact.
4. Incorporate Both Quantitative & Qualitative Measures: Balance tangible data with qualitative aspects such as call quality, empathy, and soft skills.
5. Customize for Roles: Since agents have different roles, tailor scorecards for inbound vs. outbound roles, junior vs. senior agents, and any specialized roles you may have.
6. Ensure Transparency & Agent Buy-In: Share your performance evaluation criteria and scoring logic with agents to secure their buy-in.
7. Review & Update Regularly: Refine your scorecard to ensure it remains relevant as business needs evolve.
8. Use Data and Insights for Coaching: Use the results from your scorecards to help you offer personalized feedback and training to your agents.
As mentioned, you'll need the right software to help you ensure your scorecards evaluate agent performance efficiently.
With Hear, a comprehensive call and contact center software solution, you can automate and optimise various agent performance evaluation processes.
For example, you can automate quality assurance (QA) scoring to ensure your performance tracking, service quality, and coaching recommendations are consistent.
Book a demo today to see what Hear can do for you.
What Is a Call Center Agent Performance Scorecard?
A call center agent performance scorecard is a structured system that call centers use to track, measure, and improve how their agents perform against certain predefined quantitative and qualitative KPIs.
You can look at the scorecard as a report card that shows the areas where your agents excel and where they need to improve through targeted guidance and coaching.
Call Center vs. Contact Center Scorecard
A call center scorecard focuses primarily on phone calls (voice-based agent-customer interactions), and follows metrics such as first-call resolution and average call handling time.
A contact center scorecard is broader and includes various communications channels besides voice, including chat and email.
Contact centers go beyond the key metrics for call centers to cover advanced ones such as response time, customer engagement, and resolution rates.
The Importance of Performance Scorecards in Call Centers
Whether you run a small or large call center, you'll find that scorecards are important in ways such as:
- Ensuring Consistency in Evaluation and Service Quality: Scorecards provide a standardized way to assess agent interactions and performance, ensuring consistent service delivery and adherence to industry or company quality standards.
- Enhancing Customer Experience: A good scorecard focuses on key metrics like customer satisfaction, which helps optimize customer journeys for a better experience.
- Optimizing Efficiency and Productivity: Scorecards help uncover areas where your processes are inefficient, such as long call handling times. You can address these to improve agent productivity, reduce costs, and optimize how you allocate resources.
- Motivates Agents to Do Better: Clear performance expectations and feedback allow your agents to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing and rewarding high performers can motivate them to improve their performance.
- Enabling Continuous Improvement: Scorecards provide valuable data you can use to spot trends, track progress, and make informed decisions on how to improve your processes or train your agents. Reviewing and updating them regularly ensures they evolve and adapt to meet the changing needs of customers and the business.
Call Center Agent Performance Metrics
You can include several metrics or KPIs in your scorecards as discussed below.
1. Call Efficiency Metrics
Include the following metrics to track how efficiently your agents handle calls.
- Average Handling Time: This measures the average duration of calls, including the hold time, conversation time, and post-interaction work related to the call.
- Number of Calls Handled: With this metric, you can track the volume of calls each agent handles within a given time.
- First Call Resolution: You can measure the percentage of calls resolved in the first interaction to see how effective your agents are at handling issues.
- Service Level: Use this metric to see the percentage of calls your agents answer within a specific timeframe, which is typically a set number of seconds.
2. Customer Satisfaction Metrics
You'll want to loop in various metrics related to customer satisfaction score, such as:
- Customer Satisfaction Score: You can measure how customers are satisfied or pleased with the service they received. The metric works well when you use feedback forms or surveys.
- Customer Effort Score (CES): This metric gauges how much effort a customer puts in to resolve an issue.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): You can track this metric to gauge customer loyalty and their willingness to recommend your company or business to others.
3. Agent Productivity and Adherence Metrics
Consider the following metrics to see how your agents maintain productivity and adhere to different aspects.
- Adherence to Scripts: Monitor how closely your agents follow predefined scripts and procedures.
- Schedule Adherence: Check how closely your agents stick to their scheduled work hours.
- Occupancy Rate: This metric measures the percentage of time an agent is actively involved in customer interactions or related tasks.
- Quality Assurance Score: The QA score shows the quality of agent interactions based on various predefined criteria.
- Average Order Value (AOV): The AOV measures the average sales an agent generates during calls.
How to Create an Effective Performance Scorecard
Let's now explore the steps for creating and implementing a practical scorecard for measuring call center performance.
- Define Your Goals: Set the goals you want to achieve with the scorecard. For example, you can purpose to increase operational efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
- Set Your Key Performance Indicators: Select relevant and measurable metrics that match business objectives.
- Establish Scoring Criteria: Set unbiased scoring criteria for each metric to ensure the evaluation is fair for each agent.
- Prioritize and Assign Weights to Metrics: Determine the importance of each metric and give more weight to high-impact metrics that align with business goals.
- Design the Scorecard Layout and Develop a Template: Use a simple format that highlights scores, weights, and agent performance per category. Create a user-friendly call center agent scorecard template that is easy to use and understand for all agents.
- Customize for Roles: Adjust the metrics and weightings based on agent roles, such as inbound vs. outbound sales, since their expected outcomes are different.
- Set Performance Targets or Benchmarks: Establish realistic, data-driven goals to measure against.
- Pilot the Scorecard: Test your scorecard with a small group of agents and tweak based on their feedback.
- Implement and Train: Roll out the scorecard fully and provide training to agents and supervisors on how to use it effectively. Ensure everyone understands how you'll use it to evaluate performance.
- Monitor and Review: Regularly track agent performance and provide feedback based on the scorecard data.
- Update and Refine: Monitor how you use the scorecard and its effectiveness. Check that it remains relevant and update it to reflect new goals, feedback, or operational changes.
Best Tools to Enhance Scorecard Efficiency
When choosing the right tool to enhance the efficiency of your scorecard, you'll want one that prioritizes automation, instant feedback, and data-driven insights.
Let's consider the top options.
1. Hear
Hear is an AI-driven call and contact center conversation intelligence platform that helps you improve agent performance, boost operational efficiency, and enhance customer experience.
With Hear, you get the following solutions:
- Practical Feedback: Hear allows for instant feedback based on calls to help you guide your agents on how to improve.
- In-depth Reporting: Hear analyzes your calls to create reports customized to your needs. The reports include call topics, customer feedback on products, churn intent, and first-call resolution.
- Automation: You can use Hear to eliminate manual call reviews. Our software automatically creates summaries for every call. Besides 100% call coverage, Hear also automates quality assurance scoring.
- Comprehensive Agent Evaluation: Hear can help you evaluate how agents perform based on 100% of their call interactions and your preset qualitative and quantitative metrics. You can monitor metrics such as empathy, problem solving, information accuracy, listening skills, self-presentation, service language, resolution, and compliance.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Hear uses an Interactive Insights Chat to provide data-informed recommendations to help you train your agents.
Check out Hear today to see how you can use it to transform agent performance.
2. Observe.ai
While Observe.ai offers automated scorecards, Hear provides a more comprehensive solution that includes instant feedback, deeper post-call analytics, and advanced coaching recommendations.
3. Cresta
Cresta uses real-time agent assist solutions to improve agent productivity during live calls through real-time suggestions.
While Cresta offers prompt checklists that an agent might miss easily, Hear offers continuous call center agent performance monitoring, detailed AI call analysis, and advanced AI-driven insights for detailed agent development.
4. Cogito
As an AI tool specializing in real-time emotional intelligence, Cogito helps users improve scorecard efficiency based on agents' voice tone, empathy, and customer sentiment.
Hear goes beyond the emotional intelligence element by monitoring resolution quality and churn signals across calls to improve customer satisfaction scores and retention.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Scorecard Development
You'll want to avoid various common mistakes when developing your call center scorecards. These include:
- Overemphasizing Speed Over Quality: You might focus too much on average handling time, which might make your agents rush through calls. According to a Salesforce study, 69% of agents agree that it's difficult to balance between speed and quality in customer service. To avoid the issue, ensure you balance average handling time with quality metrics like agent empathy and customer satisfaction.
- Inconsistent Scoring: If you use subjective scoring methods, your evaluators will interpret data and criteria differently. Your agents' assessments will be biased, unfair, and erratic. Instead, use clear and objective scoring guidelines, and train your evaluators regularly on how to apply your scorecards consistently.
- Not Adapting to Change: Failing to update your scorecards to reflect changes in technology, business priorities, and customer or agent needs can lower agent performance. Review and update your scorecards regularly to ensure they still align with current business goals.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Have questions about call center agent performance scorecards? We've got the answers.
How Is a Call Center Scorecard Different From a QA Evaluation?
A call center agent scorecard measures agent performance based on specific metrics like first-call resolution and customer satisfaction.
A quality assurance evaluation is a broader process that assesses the quality of calls based on specific preset criteria and standards, including agent performance metrics.
What's the Ideal Frequency for Updating Scorecard Metrics?
You can review and update your scorecard metrics regularly, ideally on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
The frequency depends on agent performance trends, effectiveness of the metrics, organizational culture, and the size of your operations.
Can Scorecards Be Used in Remote Call Centers?
You can use agent scorecards in a remote call center just as you would in an on-site center and achieve similar results.
As a remote call center, you'll want to add tailored criteria such as adherence to remote work policies, including punctuality and planned breaks.
Conclusion
Using a call center agent performance scorecard is a great way to not only improve agent productivity but also improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
While making the scorecard can be easy, ensuring its efficiency can be tricky. You can use Hear as a modern call center software solution to automate QA scoring and identify upselling opportunities to improve your agents' average order value.
Hear also helps you track and improve various agent performance metrics like average call handling time, first-call resolution, customer satisfaction score, and compliance.
Get started with Hear today to transform agent performance and customer satisfaction.