Top 10 Characteristics of an Effective Quality Management Program

Even with the cutting edge customer experience tools that contact centers have at their disposal today, inContact, a company that helps contact centers create profitable customer experiences through its cloud-based call center software solutions, is continuing to push boundaries in order to stay on top of the trends that customers care about most.

When it comes to running an efficient and productive contact center, attention to the details around quality management is imperative. In a recent blog post, inContact outlined 10 key characteristics of a successful quality management (QM) program. 

1. Synergy (News - Alert). QM begins with the culture of an organization and spreads into all areas of the program. It works best when it is informed by an established message from cultural values.  “Avoid contradictory messaging and strive to put quality assurance, training, incentives and motivation all on the same page,” writes inContact.
2. Relevance. When choosing elements of QM, you should take a cue from your company culture, and create a form that’s unique to your organization. inContact suggests pulling components from past experience, industry examples, but keeping the elements relevant to the environment. 
3. Correlation to Goal. It is key to know what you want to measure and look for opportunities to improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, reduce agent turnover, etc. “Know where you’re going, and be aware of opportunities along the way to get there,” says inContact.
4. Balance. Strike a balance between the business needs and the customer needs by aligning weights and measured behaviors to your goals. “Consider what senior management would identify as priorities in interacting with our customers as well as what the correlation data identifies as important, and land on a balance of the two.”
5. Concision. inContact says to prioritize which behaviors matter the most as not every behavior may be relevant, and then streamline the process.
6. Actionable Data. It is important to think ahead about the data and how it may be used to create actionable results. Evaluate if the form is asking the right questions, how the responses could be leveraged. 
7. Definition. Empower employees to succeed by ensuring that the criteria are defined, and a balance is met between cultural concepts and practical execution. Use gradient scoring for soft skills, limit the choices to manage the responses, and define criteria ahead of time to make sure employees are given clarity, according to inContact.
8. Calibration. inContact suggests outlining processes benefits of the organization by allowing for the use of scores for employee development, informing decisions through data-driven insights, and protecting against employee lawsuits from unfair scoring.
9. Measurement. “Quality management does require a specific level of consistency to allow for ongoing tracking, but that doesn’t mean the program should be complacent,” writes inContact. Measurement may reveal areas where the QM form is not reflecting opportunity for improvement.
10. Celebration. Finally, inContact suggests, “Get everyone on board before introducing the program, and celebrate it as a way to recognize key players who perpetuate the company’s values and reward based on those observations.”

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Edited by Brooke Neuman