Quality Assurance Programs can make or break the customer experience
and your business
Organisations which continually deliver a great customer experience do so because they set very clear expectations of the service experience they wish to provide their customers and then work hard to ensure every member of their team delivers this consistently.
One way to have consistent customer experience is through a well structured Quality Assurance Program. Over the years CSBA has seen a range of programs and we have identified the key success factors for developing and implementing such a program.
The program must to be driven by customer satisfaction research that clearly identifies the important attributes and more importantly the relative importance of each attribute.
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Starting with the customer experience helps significantly in designing the right evaluation and the weighting.
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If product knowledge is important to the customer then it should be measured and the weighting of the attribute in an overall score should be designed to reflect the level of importance.
Feedback on quality must be delivered by the team leader. This is the person the agents listen to (and trust) most and is integral to their coaching and development role.
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Externally organised quality assessment is helpful in busy times and when recalibration and benchmarking is required.
Assessing regularly needs calibration sessions to ensure consistent evaluation across teams and sites, especially in the ‘softer attributes’ like manner and empathy.
Management must show interest by committing real resources to the project, being involved in regular update meetings as well as rewarding those who are consistently providing the right experience.
Team leaders need to be coached in how to monitor and deliver assessment outcomes.
Be prepared to work on the program continuously, test the effectiveness of the performance and reset the evaluation program and scoring. This is the best investment your company can make to keep the benefits of sound experience design and staff training.
From the extensive assessments CSBA has conducted we have a fantastic knowledge base of Customer Experience Quality Assurance. We have seen programs work well and others fail. We have seen the effects of short term and long term thinking.
If you would like more information, please feel free to contact Sue Khoo or Richard Gaze on (03) 9605 4900.