Like most call centers with inefficient manual processes, you might be struggling with limited visibility into agent performance, incomplete data, and compliance risks resulting from inconsistent monitoring.
Assessing the right call center quality assurance metrics can solve these and many other problems, but it can be tricky.
In today's guide, we'll explore the most essential metrics you need to monitor to ensure better agent performance, operational efficiency, customer experience, and business success.
Pro Tip: You can use Hear, our call center conversation intelligence software, to analyze 100% of calls for the crucial data you need to measure different metrics.
Hear also helps you improve key metrics like first-call resolution and customer satisfaction score through coaching recommendations and monitoring resolution quality across calls.
Discover why top call centers use Hear to streamline QA — get a detailed demo today.
What Are Call Center Quality Assurance Metrics?
Call center quality assurance metrics are key data points CX leaders use to measure, evaluate, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of call center customer service and agent performance.
These metrics help assess how agents perform, indicating where you can improve the overall customer service and experience.
Why Quality Assurance Metrics Matter
Quality assurance (QA) metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) come in handy for CX leads, call center directors, and QA leads struggling with poor agent performance, manual QA processes, and poor compliance.
The metrics are important in:
- Ensuring Service Quality Is Consistent: Quality assurance KPIs help you establish and maintain consistent service standards across all calls, regardless of the agent handling them.
- Promoting Customer Satisfaction: With the right QA metrics, your agent-customer interactions can meet or exceed certain expectations, which leads to customer satisfaction scores and positive experiences.
- Optimizing Operational Efficiency: QA metrics can show where your processes are inefficient, allowing you to apply targeted improvement solutions. Optimal processes and agent performance can reduce the operational costs related to call handling and customer service in general.
- Supporting Business Goals: Positive customer experiences help build a strong brand reputation. You can also increase sales and revenue from repeat customers and upsell opportunities identified in calls. Improved customer satisfaction, compliance, and operational efficiency promote the overall success of your call center.
13 Call Center QA Metrics to Track
We can break down the most important call center quality assurance metrics into the main categories below.
A) Agent Performance and Efficiency Metrics
You can track the following agent-related metrics.
- Average Handling Time (AHT), which measures the average number of minutes an agent spends on a call and its follow-up activities (After-Call Work or ACW).
AHT = (Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total After-Call Work Time) ÷ Total Number of Calls
- Average Speed of Answer (ASA), which measures responsiveness in terms of the number of seconds that pass before an agent answers a call.
ASA = Total Wait Time of All Answered Calls ÷ Total Number of Calls Answered
- First Call Resolution (FCR), which monitors the percentage of calls in which an agent resolves a customer's issue in the first interaction without the need for an escalation or follow-up call.
FCR = (Total Calls Resolved on First Interaction ÷ Total Calls) x 100
- Agent Turnover Rate, which measures the rate at which agents leave your call center since this has a direct impact on training costs and service quality.
- Agent Occupancy Rate, which tracks the percentage of time your agents are actively handling customer calls or related activities.
Agent Occupancy Rate = (Total Call Handling Time ÷ Total Logged-In Time) x 100
- Quality Assurance (QA) Score or Quality Score, which is a broader grade an agent gets depending on a QA checklist that can include aspects such as tone, empathy, script adherence, problem resolution, and more.
B) Compliance and Adherence Metrics
These include:
- Compliance score, which generally monitors how well your agents follow the established customer service protocols, company policies or processes, and industry or legal regulations.
- Schedule adherence, which measures how closely your agents stick to their assigned schedules (such as shifts, log-in time, and breaks), ensuring there are enough agents available when the need arises.
- Schedule compliance, which monitors whether an agent completes their required work hours to ensure enough total time worked rather than just punctuality.
- Script compliance, which checks if your agents follow your predefined call scripts to meet company and legal requirements.
C) Customer Experience and Satisfaction Metrics
These include:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which is usually collected using surveys and feedback forms to measure how happy customers are with their call interactions. Based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Apple currently has the highest CSAT score of 85% against an average score of 81% in the personal computers industry.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is usually collected through surveys to monitor customer loyalty and the likelihood that they will recommend a company on a scale of 1-10. You then group them into Promoters (Score 9-10), Passives (Score 7-8), and Detractors (Score 0-6).
NPS = % of Promoters - % of Detractors
- Customer Effort Score (CES), which tracks customer experience in terms of how much effort a customer had to apply to get their issue resolved. (The idea is to reduce customer effort such that they don't have to exert themselves to reach their goal and be happy with your service.)
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How to Measure QA Metrics
When it comes to measuring QA metrics correctly, you'll need a holistic approach to get an all-around view of agent performance, operational efficiency, and customer experience.
Consider the steps below.
1. Identify Your Preferred Goals and Metrics
Set clear goals regarding the specific call center performance aspects you want to improve, such as resolving more issues on the first interaction. Go for useful metrics that match the goals.
2. Create Scorecards, Checklists, and Customer Surveys
Create a detailed call center quality assurance scorecard or a checklist to monitor performance against the selected metrics.
Emphasize key elements such as call handling, soft skills, product knowledge, and adherence to standards or procedures.
You'll use the scorecard to uncover areas of strength and weakness and offer constructive feedback to your agents.
You can also create surveys and feedback forms to collect customer feedback on satisfaction and areas where you can improve service.
3. Monitor, Analyze, and Score Calls
Listen to live calls or review the interactions after the call to evaluate how your agents perform based on your established criteria and the scorecard or checklist.
4. Analyze Customer Feedback
Review the customer data from the surveys and feedback forms to gauge the relevant metrics and identify patterns, trends, and areas of concern.
5. Continue Monitoring and Reporting Metrics
Keep monitoring the metrics you've selected to assess the overall performance of your call center on an ongoing basis.
Look for trends and patterns related to your metrics to identify potential issues and opportunities to improve quality assurance, agent performance, and customer service.
6. Use Call Center QA Software to Scale
If you handle a high volume of calls, consider using call center quality assurance software to scale the process.
For example, you can use Hear, a conversation intelligence platform for call centers, to streamline how you measure metrics and monitor quality.
Hear uses AI to analyze 100% of calls, automate QA scoring, flag compliance risks, and offer actionable business insights to improve agent performance and overall customer service.
Hear also helps reduce call handling time, increase FCR, and improve customer satisfaction, which drives operational efficiency.
Ready to monitor and improve various call center QA metrics? Book a demo today.
Challenges in Measuring QA Metrics
Regardless of the size of your call center, you are likely to encounter the following challenges when measuring QA metrics.
- Subjective Evaluations: Your human evaluators may interpret quality standards and scorecard aspects differently, leading to inconsistent feedback and coaching recommendations.
- Limited Call Sampling: If you use manual processes or traditional QA methods, you only analyze a small percentage of calls. Reviewing random calls can result in poor agent evaluation and biased insights.
- QA KPI Manipulation: Some agents may prioritize certain metrics for QA that favor them more and compromise genuine customer satisfaction. The customer experience is likely to suffer if agents rush calls or leave issues unresolved.
Best Practices for Enhancing Call Center QA Metrics
To overcome these and many other challenges, below are some best practices you can turn into ongoing habits.
- Set Clear Quality Standards: Identify clear and measurable quality standards with objective evaluation criteria and minimal room for subjectivity.
- Use Conversation Analytics Software: Implement interaction analytics software, such as Hear, to automate call center quality assurance. For instance, Hear can analyze 100% of your calls and assign QA scores automatically.
- Offer Comprehensive Training: Adequate training is necessary to sensitize your agents on the importance of measuring the metrics.
- Prioritize Customer Experience: Balance operational efficiency with positive customer experiences based on first-call resolution, customer satisfaction, and other relevant metrics. Encourage your agents to prioritize customer needs and build strong relationships with them as necessary.
- Review the Metrics and Measurement Process Regularly: Liaise with the agents and evaluators to review and update the metrics and measurement process regularly. Consistency is critical to ensuring fair measurement, evaluation, and training.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are answers to common questions leaders often have regarding call center QA metrics.
Are There Industry Benchmarks for Call Center QA Metrics?
Different industries have different benchmarks for various call center QA metrics. For example, a CSAT score of 85% or higher is generally seen as advantageous.
Most call centers typically create their own benchmarks. For instance, you can set an FCR target of 75%, allow only 2% of compliance errors, or choose a minimum acceptable QA score of 80%.
How Do You Ensure QA Metrics Are Aligned with Business Goals?
To ensure QA metrics align with business goals, you must first identify and understand the goals. The next step will be to select or create relevant metrics that directly match those goals.
When identifying business goals, engage all the relevant stakeholders, including business analysts, top leaders, and agents.
Can QA Metrics Be Used in Multilingual Call Centers?
You can use QA metrics in multilingual call centers if you apply the right adaptations. Standardize the metrics and adapt them to each language while considering cultural contexts, regional dialects, and communication styles.
You can also ensure your QA team is linguistically diverse, such that you have native speakers or staff members fluent in the languages you use to monitor different metrics.
Can QA Metrics Predict Customer Churn?
QA metrics can predict customer churn in different ways. Low CSAT scores and Net Promoter Scores can stem from low customer satisfaction levels, acting as strong indicators of potential churn.
As an AI-powered tool, Hear can analyze various QA metrics and criteria like customer sentiment to predict and help you reduce churn risk.
Conclusion
Monitoring and analyzing relevant call center quality assurance metrics can significantly impact how your agents perform and ensure consistent service quality.
Since there are so many metrics to consider, you'll want to focus on the most important ones. In this guide, we've covered 13 critical QA KPIs, including average handling time, customer satisfaction scores, and compliance scores.
The right call center software can save the day by automating various aspects of the process. For example, you can use Hear to automate quality assurance scoring, an important overall metric.
Hear also analyzes all your calls at scale, ensuring you have enough data to measure your preferred metrics and uncover areas for improvement.
Request a demo today to see Hear in action and learn more about its QA capabilities.