HyperQuality Success at a Glance

Challenge
A well-known manufacturer of fitness equipment knew that customer service means retaining customers, so it wanted to improve the performance of its contact center, which was achieving only in the mid-60th percentile in average quality score. The company also wanted to improve sales, where agents were auto-failing on 90 percent of the calls — a significant hit to revenue goals. Ultimately, the company needed to ensure that agents were communicating with customers effectively and consistently, as well as adhering to various FTC guidelines.

Solution
The fitness manufacturer hired HyperQuality to monitor customer care calls. At the inception of the program, the company went through several weeks of call calibration sessions with HyperQuality, ensuring there were no discrepancies between the two companies’ approach. HyperQuality was soon evaluating about 5,000 calls a month — well up from the 200 the fitness company was doing internally. Soon, HyperQuality began monitoring sales calls as well.

		Average Quality Scores (AQS) advanced from the 60th percentile to the low 90th.
		The company has also been at zero percent auto- fails for the past few months; for the year to date, agents are at a mere 1.3 percent auto-fails.

		Overall quality scores jumped from 15 percent to 64 percent; the goal for fourth quarter is 70 percent or above.
		Earlier in the year, the auto-fail rate was about 33 percent; it is now less than 20 percent.

As with most successful companies, a major fitness equipment manufacturer puts a premium on continuous improvement. Towards that end, the company frequently performs fitness “check-ups” on its various internal operations. And although the majority of these operations are the picture of health, the company did uncover one area that required some attention: the contact center operations.

To begin with, the customer care side of the contact center -anywhere from 65-90 agents - was only in the mid-60th percentile in terms of average quality score, a lukewarm performance at best. The performance of the contact center’s sales side was even more troublesome: agents were auto-failing on almost 90 percent of the calls, primarily because they were not asking for the sale — a basic sales concept.

These shortcomings were hitting the bottom line, and the fitness manufacturer knew it needed to make improvements in order to drive better business growth. Quality customer services helps all businesses acquire and retain customers, and nowhere is that more true than in the competitive fitness industry.

The company did have some tools in place that were intended to pinpoint and improve these problems. The most obvious one, call monitoring, had been in effect for quite some time. However, that endeavor was not yielding the results — or improvements — that the fitness equipment manufacturer expected. The main reason for this failure was that the call monitoring was being handled by in-house resources, specifically contact center supervisors who already had too many duties on their collective plate.

“Our call center supervisors were responsible for pulling calls, listening to the recordings, doing the call evaluation sessions, and coaching the agents,” said a company representative. “What we found is that the supervisors were able to complete only one to two call quality evaluations per agent per month, at best. This meant that the evaluations were statistically invalid.

“What’s more, we found that the evaluations contained a certain amount of bias because they were done internally. I don’t believe any of that was intentional, it was just human nature.”

From Inside to Outside

It became apparent to company management that an outside call monitoring source might be the answer to these shortcomings. An outsourced solution would ensure that the company would receive a truly impartial, third-party perspective. In addition, an outside firm would be able to monitor a higher volume of calls; consequently, the results would be statistically relevant and could form the foundation for positive action.

Interestingly, years earlier, this company had examined the possibility of outsourcing this function for sales. The company had contacted HyperQuality, an industry-leading contact center quality assurance firm. But the need to improve sales hadn’t seemed urgent.

“At the time we couldn’t get executive buy-in, so it was decided to shelve the idea,” recalled the company representative. “But then, when we looked at the company again to monitor both the sales and service efforts, we decided that the need was too pressing to pass up. Not only was the cost reasonable, executive management was convinced that HyperQuality’s call monitoring program could significantly impact sales and customer satisfaction.”

But the true “deal closer” was the fact that HyperQuality was capable of monitoring 10 to 15 times the volume of calls that the fitness company could monitor internally. This would create a statistically valid sample to more accurately gauge the company’s contact center performance, not only as an entire entity but on an individual-agent basis.

The call monitoring program was instituted on the customer care side of the company’s primary contact center. In developing the program, HyperQuality was faced with a two-fold business challenge.

		Provide General Training. HyperQuality needed to make sure that agents were communicating with customers in the way that the fitness company wanted them to, in order to get more standardization and more consistency in the message they were delivering to customers.
		The Compliance Factor. Because the fitness company deals with financing and credit disclosures, as well as needing to adhere to various FTC guidelines, the company needed a methodology that would help it monitor and measure performance against those factors. This would provide protection if the company was ever asked to provide proof of compliance with those regulatory or legislative standards.

At the inception of the call monitoring program, the company went through several weeks of call calibration sessions with HyperQuality, making certain there were no discrepancies between the two companies’ approach. The process was evidently effective, as the company was quickly running at zero percent differential on calibration.

A Rise in Quality Scores

More importantly, the program, which has been in place for just over a year, has yielded some impressive metrics. The average quality score (AQS) numbers advanced from the 60th percentile to the low 90th percentile. The fitness company also achieved zero percent auto-fails. Aside from the metrics, the volume of calls evaluated has also given the company a more solid platform for agent evaluation — and improvement.

“We’ve gone from performing one to two evaluations per agent per month using in-house resources to one to two evaluations per agent per day — from around 200 a month to more than 5,000,” said the company representative. “This is providing a much larger pool for agent evaluation, and a better indicator of actual performance. Before, agents would get one or two calls evaluated and all of a sudden, that was half their score.”

The HyperQuality program also removed the number one concern for supervisors: the amount of time they had to spend pulling calls, listening to them, and evaluating them, let alone the time to sit down and coach agents against the results of calls. And because the reports are provided via HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, they are extremely accessible.

“By having HyperQuality perform the evaluations, score them, and get them back to supervisors, the supervisors were able to quickly pinpoint the areas of concern that required additional attention, such as auto fails or low quality scores,” said the representative. “They could subsequently put their coaching notes into the HyperQuality evaluation report, giving the company an automated, archival record, as opposed to the cumbersome paper-based records that were previously used.”

Call monitoring on the sales side of the contact center was added soon thereafter. According to the representative, the company’s 120-agent sales component presented a more difficult test.

“The sales side has been in existence about seven years longer than the customer care side,” he said. “As a result, it had more ingrained and entrenched habits that would be harder to change.”

There were also a few surprises once evaluation of the sales calls began.

“We uncovered some information that we simply didn’t know on the sales side,” said the representative. “Before the call monitoring effort, our information was more anecdotal. But when you start to look at hundreds of thousands of call evaluations and discover that you’re failing a high percentage of them because of basic mistakes — like simply not asking for the sale - that was a real eye opener for us. It’s highly doubtful we would have identified this area using only our internal resources. It made us change focus not only on how we were managing but what we were managing.”

Sold on Improved Performance

At the start of the monitoring program, overall quality scores were at about 15 percent. In just months, that figure had jumped to 64 percent. The auto-fail rate was about 33 percent; it is now less than 20 percent.

“The company provided its agents with access to the HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, which was previously for the eyes of supervisors and managers only. The intent is now to help contact center agents on both the customer care and sales sides manage themselves.

“Ultimately, we want to have agents empowered to evaluate their own calls and make their own changes,” the representative said. “By listening to their calls, they will begin to see the areas where they can make the appropriate course correction for the next call. They can also use the information as preparation for their coaching sessions with supervisors. “The agents can even question their scores,” he added. “If they feel they weren’t scored correctly, we want to encourage them to speak up. Then we can discuss the score and bring it up with HyperQuality.”

Based on the rousing success of the call monitoring program, the representative said that the company will likely initiate additional monitoring efforts, as well as other HyperQuality products.

“We’re looking to expand the program to another of our call centers in the third quarter of this year, and another in the fourth quarter or early first quarter next year,” he said. “We’re also taking a hard look at HyperSurvey [an e-mail survey that helps companies gauge customer attitudes and perceptions], as well as some comprehensive benchmarking. Through HyperQuality’s Business Process Analysis division, we might begin to examine the interrelationship between the various metrics, which will help us more accurately predict performance down the road.”

HyperQuality’s call monitoring program has already strengthened the company sales and customer care functions, so much so this client wants additional services. Without question, the HyperQuality program was just what the doctor ordered.

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