HyperQuality Success at a Glance

Challenge
The executive leadership at this national provider of waste and environmental services determined that they could achieve better business results if they operated more efficiently within their contact centers. In order to improve the quality of their customer contact services, they would need to do a better job of evaluating and assessing individual contact center agents. Monitoring and evaluating phone calls by its own internal teams had proven ineffective for a variety of reasons, including a statistically invalid sample size and evaluation feedback that was overly subjective.

Solution
HyperQuality conducted a three-month pilot program of agent evaluations in two of the customer’s 50-agent contact centers; HyperQuality’s proprietary Web-based product, HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, was used to deliver results. Site A gave full HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution access to each agent, while at Site B, access to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution reports was given only to supervisors, who would review the feedback and deliver evaluations and coaching to the agents. HyperQuality monitored every agent an average of 90 times during the program.

Results
While there were improved quality scores in both contact centers, Site A’s improvement was remarkable, given that the only difference was in how the feedback was delivered to agents.

		At Site B (where supervisors delivered scores and feedback to agents), there was a 12% improvement in total quality score during the three-month program. At Site A (where agents had direct access to their scores and results), there was a 54% improvement
		The average attribute percentage improvement for Site A was 7.43%; for Site B, 1.15%
		Site A improved performance on 87% of the attributes evaluated; Site B improved on 67% of the attributes evaluated

Executive Summary

Customer contact executives know that call quality monitoring is one of the best ways to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs at a contact center. The leading provider of comprehensive waste and environmental services in North America, a $12-billion company with 35 contact centers and 1,500 agents, conducted a call quality monitoring test utilizing HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, at two of its busy call centers. When agents were given direct access to their quality evaluation scores and feedback, that contact center experienced a 54% improvement in total quality score. In contrast, when agents received feedback from supervisors, the center experienced a much-lower 12% improvement in total quality score. The waste and environmental services company received powerful proof that agents will improve on their own when they have the tools to receive accurate, reliable and consistent feedback. In addition, supervisors were freed-up from the constant pressure to monitor and evaluate, and were able to focus on supervising, specialized coaching and day-to-day operations, resulting in additional performance benefits and cost savings.

Contact center quality: the final frontier?

In the “old days,” a contact center’s performance was judged solely upon call handling quantity, namely handling more calls in less time. Contact center managers would work hard to improve their numbers on average talk time, after call handle yime, etc. Today, the contact centers that perform the best and drive business objectives have a more balanced focus on call handling quality and, by extension, customer satisfaction.

Customer service is often the only way to differentiate between your company and your competitor.

In today’s competitive marketplace, successful companies have learned that customer service is often the only way to retain and acquire customers – the lifeblood of any business. Since your contact center is the primary touchpoint between your company and your customers, it goes without saying that improving the quality of your center’s service will improve your company’s relationship with customers. In fact, your center’s quality has a direct impact on the customer’s perception of who you are and on that customer’s loyalty to your company and your products.

Proper call quality monitoring is one of the best ways to improve any call center.

In the pursuit of better customer service, contact center managers will naturally want to evaluate the performance of their center’s agents. According to Dr. Jon Anton, researcher and author from the Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ at Purdue University, the average contact center evaluates five calls per every 1,500 calls per month, for each agent. Agents are usually evaluated by supervisors or managers, who may sit side-by-side with agents and listen to customer calls “real time,” or they may listen to recorded calls. After listening to calls, the supervisor or manager will evaluate the agent and create feedback – which is delivered to the agent in the form of a written scorecard, via e-mail, or directly in a face-to-face meeting.

It seemed to this national provider of waste and environmental services, that there must be a better, way – a method to evaluate calls and relay feedback that was less time consuming and subjective, and drove real improvements among the agents. The client contracted with Seattle-based HyperQuality, Inc., to conduct a pilot program of agent evaluations in two of is contact centers. HyperQuality’s proprietary Web-based product, HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, was used to deliver results. The results were positive – and surprising!

The challenge: improve call quality with better quality monitoring.

As part of a robust, company-wide focus on improving the quality of its services overall, the waste and environmental services company managers determined that in order to improve the quality of their customer contact services, they would need to do a better job of evaluating and assessing their individual agents.

Like many companies, monitoring and evaluating phone calls was handled by its own internal teams. Supervisors were developing their own tools and procedures for monitoring call quality. Each supervisor conducted three to five evaluations per month, and tallied scores and comments on a written scorecard. Scores were focused on four key areas of service:

While the company did experience some minor success with their system of internal monitoring and evaluations (after all, some evaluation is better than none at all), it was soon apparent that the program had several flaws. First, with supervisors evaluating three to five calls per agent, per month, the evaluations were too infrequent to have a real impact on each agent’s behavior. In addition, the small number of evaluations created a statistically invalid sample size for evaluating center-wide trends. Also, scores and comments were subjective, with little opportunity for calibration from supervisor to supervisor or from week to week. Finally, the schedule challenges and day-to-day reality of a busy contact center meant that supervisors’ availability – and thus, evaluations – were inconsistent.

The waste and environmental services company was experiencing what happens every day in contact centers everywhere. In most centers, quality monitoring and coaching is considered to be a “necessary evil.” It’s something that is mandated by others (upper management) and takes place – if at all – when time allows. In most contact centers, there is simply not enough staff to get the job done with any regularity. And, of course, on any given day, if call volumes increase unexpectedly (as they often do), supervisors must abandon their monitoring to the back burner so they can jump on the phones and help handle calls. Often, supervisors run out of time and find themselves rushed to complete evaluations during the last few days of the month – certainly not the most accurate way to judge an agent’s – or a center’s – total quality.

Solving the problem: in-house or outsource?

The waste and environmental services company had two main options for tackling its call monitoring and evaluation challenge. First, the company could have continued its efforts to develop an internal monitoring process and system. For a company of their size and scope, this would have required the investment of millions of dollars more in technology and personnel. The second option was to explore outsourcing their contact centers’ quality monitoring and evaluation.

The primary benefit of outsourcing your call quality monitoring is simple: it gets done!

According to Dr. Jon Anton, the primary benefit of outsourcing your call quality monitoring is simple: it gets done! And when quality monitoring is done, businesses reap improved efficiency and performance. Setting aside the cost savings (which can be substantial), simply increasing the number of evaluations will give you a much more accurate report of your contact center’s performance.

Make sure your potential partner is truly focused on quality, rather than simply on “workforce management.”

From the typical center manager’s point of view, a casual perusal of trade magazines such as Customer Relationship Management and Call Center Magazine reveals advertisements from a number of companies offering so-called contact center monitoring, evaluation and/or improvement.

With the exception of HyperQuality, most of these companies primarily provide recording solutions or surveys for agent performance. Monitoring is generally conducted randomly, with variable schedules from agent to agent, from center to center, and from month to month. When feedback is given, scores are delivered via paper reports or email attachments, rather than a Web-based ASP-tool accessible from any location. Finally, these traditional call recording or monitoring companies tend to be heavily “consultative” in their approach. They can be expected to deliver a broad list of things to “fix,” but not at the agent-level. And, of course, rather than simply evaluating, the consultant’s ultimate goal is to sell its own solutions. When considering outsourcing options, it’s vital that your partner be completely objective. It’s the only way to get an accurate picture of your contact center – and each and every agent’s true performance. In addition, make sure your potential partner is truly focused on quality, rather than simply on “workforce management.” While many workforce management solutions will deliver some level of improvement in most center environments, to achieve truly substantive improvement that is long-term, that builds customer loyalty and delivers a positive impact to your bottom line, your partner must focus on quality.

It is important to note that up until now, the discussion of potential solutions has focused on the monitoring of agents, with no real attention to the way in which quality scores are communicated. As you will see below, the way in which agents receive feedback plays a large part in the improvement of quality scores.

The waste and environmental services company tests HyperQuality – with a few surprises.

The waste and environmental services company contracted with HyperQuality for a three-month pilot program.

HyperQuality developed a custom monitoring program to be tested at two of the company’s 50-agent centers. At both centers, HyperQuality’s program would evaluate agents and deliver evaluations and feedback via the company’s proprietary Web–based data collection and dissemination tool, HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution. The Site A call center would give full HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution access to each individual agent. The agents would receive log-in and passwords to view a variety of agent–specific reports at any time. At the Site B call center, the log–in and password access to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution reports would be given only to supervisors, who would review the feedback and deliver evaluations and coaching to the agents.

The purpose of the pilot program was to prove or disprove the HyperQuality concept in terms of:

During the pilot program, agents were evaluated on a wide variety of attributes, including:

Over the course of the three-month pilot program, HyperQuality conducted evaluations of agents at the two contact center locations. The agents and supervisors were set-up with HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution accounts, each with their own log-in and password. Calls were monitored daily by HyperQuality staff, and the evaluations and scores were entered into HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, with reports able to be generated “on the fly” for managers, supervisors and individual agents. These reports went well beyond merely compiling data or verifying compliance with a laundry list of requirements. Instead, the reports included useful direction and real advice for agent behavior that could deliver measurable improvements in customer care. Agents and/or supervisors (depending on whether they were at Site A or Site B) were able to log-in to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution at any time and review agent evaluations, listen to recorded calls and review up-to-the-minute reports.

Agents logged-on to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution to view any of the following reports:

		Quality Evaluation — Displays overall quality results and call category results;
		Weekly Report — Allows the agent to view specific call performance details by attribute;
		Monthly Report — Displays the agent’s week-to-week performance by individual attribute and by attribute category;
		Total Quality Trend — Allows the agent to monitor his or her progress and see how he/she stacks up against other agents on the team;
		Attribute Trend — Displays the agent’s performance by individual attributes or categories;
		Quality Impact — Shows the agent’s monthly performance by attribute category.

Supervisors viewed the following reports and, at Site B, passed along evaluations to agents:

		Periodic Report — Displays overall quality scores by agent and highlights opportunities for EvenBetter™ performance;
		Quality Score By Week — Weekly snapshot, showing the number of evaluations completed by agent, and the overall quality percentage achieved for all completed evaluations;
		Stack Rank Summary — Shows agent results by quality percentage to compare individual agents’ performance within a category or among peers;
		Performance By Threshold — Displays number of agents performing within each score threshold, emphasizing what percentage of agents need improvement;
		Attribute Trending — Agent evaluations broken down to show strengths and weaknesses by attribute;
		Performance By Threshold — Displays number of agents performing within each score threshold, emphasizing what percentage of agents need improvement;
		Comments Report — Displays all comments written, with selection available by attribute;
		CARE Report — Change Add Review Escalation: discrepancy review process that allows agents to question scoring of any call.

Even before the pilot program was over, it was clear that the waste and environmental services company’s quality score had improved overall at both contact center sites due to the increased visibility into center trends and agent behavior. At Site B (where supervisors delivered scores and feedback to agents), there was a 12% improvement in total quality score during the three-month program. At Site A (where agents had direct access to their scores and results), there was a 54% improvement in total quality score.

Additional improvements were experienced at Site A:

		The number of agents with quality scores below 1.9 decreased 25%
		»	11% increased their quality scores to the 2.0-2.9 threshold
		»	15% increased their quality scores to 3.0-3.9 range
		The number of agents performing below 1.0 was reduced by 50%
		The number of agents performing in the highest threshold, above 4.0, increased by 57%

The average attribute percentage improvement for Site A was 7.43% and for Site B was 1.15%

		Site A improved performance on 87% of the attributes evaluated; Site B improved on 67% of the attributes evaluated
		Site A made an improvement of over 10% for 33% of the attributes, increasing Customer Service skills by 13%

HyperQuality monitored every agent an average of 90 times during the three-month pilot program. That means every agent – not just a random few – had the opportunity to receive real, actionable feedback to improve their performance.

The power of self-directed agent feedback

While the waste and environmental services company was pleased to experience improved quality scores in both centers, Site A’s improvement was remarkable – especially since the only difference between Site A and Site B was in how the feedback was delivered to agents.

Letting agents see their own scores and results lets them understand instantly where they are and where they are going in terms of quality performance. The simple truth is that only when agents know where they stand, can they take the necessary steps to improve.

Traditionally, agents have taken a “big brother” view of call monitoring. This is mainly due to the fact that time constraints on supervisors result in cursory feedback that focuses on the negatives: what’s wrong and what needs improvement. Because the feedback agents tend to receive is mainly negative, agents brace themselves for the worst, even before reading the supervisor’s report or sitting down for the performance review. Often, even a generally positive evaluation is diluted due to the agent’s preconceived expectation of criticism.

The waste and environmental services company received powerful proof that agents will improve on their own – no supervisor is needed to focus on the negative or give a list of demands. With HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, agents were able see exactly where they excelled – and where they were struggling. They could listen to their calls and read specific comments and suggestions from the evaluators. They could identify trends in their performance and focus their attention on techniques and strategies to raise their scores. In addition, agents were able to question or respond to specific comments or scores, sometimes achieving revised scores. And all of this was accomplished under their control, at their convenience, anywhere – with an ordinary Web browser. The waste and environmental services company management’s experience with HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution proved that contact center agents are more willing to make improvements when they feel that more of the process is under their control.

And, because the supervisors at Site A were freed-up from the constant pressure to monitor and evaluate, they were able to focus on supervising, specialized coaching and day-to-day operations, resulting in additional benefits to the call center’s performance.

Further emphasizing the importance of direct agent engagement in call monitoring, the waste service client conducted another experiment months later. After agents were routinely achieving ongoing performance that met the client’s goals, it determined that access to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution could be eliminated. The client decided to stop providing agents access to the abundance of call monitoring and evaluation data. In just six months, agent performance dropped precipitously across the center, meaning customer service declined, sales opportunities dwindled and overall efficiency had declined, costing the company money. The client soon understood that regular feedback was vital to maintaining quality in its contact centers. It re-engaged its agents’ access to HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution, and almost instantly, performance increased significantly. Access to the HyperQuality's performance and workflow management SaaS solution evaluation information improved the contact center’s quality assurance score by 71% - a truly remarkable impact on the client’s bottom line.

Conclusion: ROI is delivered through regular agent feedback

The findings of the waste and environmental services company’s pilot project with HyperQuality proved that for dramatic improvements in agent performance and call quality, agents need direct access to reliable and consistent evaluations. The ROI associated with this simple and minor investment is immeasureable.

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