As I sat down to write this blog, I tried to brainstorm a few general corporate functions that everyone gripes about. The list I came up with was rather short (and probably very unfair): HR, Payroll, IT support. Maybe you could pile on here (feels good to vent, right?). Well, here’s another function on the list that hits rather close to home: Quality Assurance (QA).
As the CCC team spoke with countless companies across our months of developing our new research on QA, there were some common themes that emerged in conversations—including the poor perception of the QA team within the service organization. One member even told us that his QA team would probably feel better about meetings with other peers in the contact center if there were metal detectors at the door to the conference room…people were that upset with QA!
Now, let me set the record straight. This has nothing to do with the individuals on the QA team. Rather, this is a reputation problem for what this group stands for, day in and day out. And that is…be the bad guy.
No one likes to be the bad guy – the person who has the job of enforcing the rules and levying penalties when individuals break those rules.
Many organizations try to improve the QA reputation by increasing their visibility across the organization, but most approaches fall short of creating a unique role for QA that doesn’t exclusively focus on the quality scorecard. At the end of the day, we believe that by restricting QA activities to call scoring and scorecard-based coaching, organizations are ignoring an incredible source of insight around performance trends and development techniques.
What’s the answer to building a positive QA reputation, you ask?
QA can play several different roles within coaching activities, so different variations exist on how to embed the function appropriately. These variations essentially align into two categories that depend upon the constituency that QA interacts with most directly—supervisors or reps.
1. For QA–Supervisor relationships, it’s mostly about creating efficiencies. QA coaching in tandem with supervisors can often lead to redundant messaging…or worse, conflicting messaging supervisors then have to reconcile with reps.
Leading companies minimize role overlap to create complementary, rather than competing, roles for QA and supervisor to play. In one of our new best practice cases, this takes the shape of an advisory role for QA staff to serve as a coaching feedback mechanism for supervisors.
2. For QA–rep tensions, creating frequent, informal interactions can do wonders. Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, for example, breaks down its QA—rep barriers by creating a “coach line” that QA operates to provide an in-the-moment coaching option available to reps as they handle calls.
By dramatically increasing the frequency of communication between the groups, reps receive more coaching and begin to view QA feedback as more credible since the team is a day-to-day resource and presence.
What’s the reputation for your QA function? More importantly, what are you doing to fix it?
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