It has been discussed that we can listen beyond the usual quality form. There is so much information in a call and some are even clutter. We will now start and determine what we need to look for when listening to the calls, other than compliance.
We’ve heard this before – AHT. A metric that has been and will always be part of an agent’s goals. Normally, the supervisors or team leaders pay closer attention but QA evaluators or even QA leads need to monitor this as well. All they need to focus on is the “handle” portion of the call. Simply put, it is called effective call management.
When one monitors a call, you can determine whether a type of call is too long and what the gaps are. Start with really long calls and you will find it is information based, communication gaps or even the hold time. You can then start prioritizing those that are easy to fix and will gain more improvement in a shorter time.
One common example would be getting the customer’s account number, most especially if there are letters in the combination. It should normally take a few seconds even after verification but in reality it takes 1-2 minutes. Here are some steps to take:
- Determine the root cause – lack of listening and focus on the customer, audio quality or talking over the customer.
- Identify whether this is trend on an agent’s call
- Prepare an action plan / coaching session to drive the importance and benefit of the improving the time to get this piece of information. You can drive it further on how this will help improve their metric and get the incentive.
- Constantly monitor to ensure it is being followed and document best practices.
I have other examples but if you have any that you would like to share, please do so. We can focus on these and perhaps go further into detail how we can manage it efficiently.
Uh-oh. You mean you actually expect cal analysts to THINK instead of mindlessly checking off elements on the form? :)
Your points are excellent. I've unfortunately witnessed far too many managers and coaches harping on an agent about the AHT on a given call without looking at (a) the context of the call and why it took so long and (b) the agents average AHT in relation to the call center.
AHT is not a simple measure quality. It only points the coach in the direction of call management and efficiency.
A focus group of your QA staff can be an excellent resource for digging into the subject. Pull a valid sample of extremely long or short calls over a month period. One or two isn't enough. You should probably listen to 30 or so. Listen to them and listen for what drove the length of the call. You should see some trends or root causes that will help you address the policy and/or procedural problems. Either that, or you will identify the agents who need remedial coaching.
Posted by: Tom Vander Well | April 14, 2006 7:43 AM | Permalink to Comment