Customer Quality Reporting: Real Customer Satisfaction Measurement - from the horse's mouth

A Customer Satisfaction and Contact Center Quality Performance Monitoring Service
Contact centers deliver services to customers and prospects by telephone, email, and chat. It is essential that organizations have insight into the quality of those interactions. The internal perspective is often delivered through a quality listening team which reviews contacts and scores measuring based upon predetermined set of criteria. In many organizations the internal quality measures are those elements of the interaction that are believed to be important to the customer as well as company focused compliance elements.

For a number of organizations this is where the quality process ends. Research and pundits tell us the measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) is critical as CSAT has a strong correlation to customer loyalty and repurchase which contributes to lifetime value. Measuring call center CSAT is a challenge for a lot of companies. Some organizations employ omnibus CSAT surveys where they attempt to understand the customer’s satisfaction with a number of different and distinct elements. These surveys tend to be indicative of the overall feelings of satisfaction. This type of approach is not very useful when assessing transactional activities such as those generally handled by contact centers.

Some centers have embraced Net Promoter score (NPS) as a single metric upon which they can gauge the success of satisfying the customer. Net Promoter, however, is a single metric. It’s not an unbiased measure by the nature of its terminology. It is a one dimensional metric: “Will you recommend”. Many experts recommend that combining platforms is going to give you a rounder view of the customer than any single metric can achieve.

First Contact Resolution or FCR, is often touted as a premier qualitative call center benchmark. Historically the largest single challenge organizations have faced in reporting on FCR has been the data gathering process and interpretation. Very few centers are able to manage FCR on a ‘live’ basis and as a result are forced to rely on other ‘stand in’ metrics, such as a second contact from the same customer within a defined timeframe. This metric is at best an approximation as we cannot be 100% sure that this contact was related to the previous contact.

Contact centers have a number of other tools to assess the customer satisfaction such as post call IVR, after call outbound, and email surveys. Research shows that most contact centers only employ internal data as a stand in for actual customer satisfaction. Internal quality teams are important elements in many call centers. They generally complete the dual tasks of assessing call quality employing a predetermined evaluation form which highlights element which the company believes to be important to customers; and secondly as a compliance team- ensuring that agents are complaint with company policies, procedures and quality elements (proper opening, verbatim scripting, etc.).

Research and practical experience however shows that there are constant struggles with internal quality including: consistency, proper calibration, subjectivity, and scoring. And of course the fact that the basis of the quality assessment are elements thought to be important to the customer.

The Taylor Reach approach does not make any assumptions as to what the customer may value. We get our information from the ‘horse’s mouth’ – we ask the customer.

This program does not replace your quality department, it augments it. Centers still need to monitor the staff, coach for improvement and consistency. This program simply allows a company to now track Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter score and FCR on an organizational, center, team and agent level. This assists the quality team and supervisors in allocating their efforts where they can have the greatest impact on the customer.

The Taylor Reach Customer Quality Reporting provides center with a 360° view by significantly increasing the visibility of the customer’s perspective and point of view related to the services they receive from the call center.

Best practice centers measure CSAT based on what the customer determines

The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. has developed Customer Quality Reporting as a service to assist organizations in measuring and gauging customer satisfaction.

The Customer Quality Reporting Program
Taylor Reach works with your organization to identify the anticipated customer response to an emailed survey. The goal is to deliver four to five customer responses per agent per month. This creates a sample size approximately similar to that achieved with internal quality programs. This sample varies by organization. Initial outgoing surveys are 100 per agent per month.
Each email contains a survey and or survey link. The sample survey asks the following CSAT questions:
1. How satisfied were you with your interaction with our call center on date at time
2. Was your call/contact the first time you had contacted us regarding that issue?
3. Has your issue or inquiry been resolved?
4. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”

Taylor Reach manages all aspects of the program, including:
• Receive the customers to be sampled (a file containing customer email addresses)
• Creating and maintaining a ‘kill file’ to ensure that no customer is sampled more than once every six months,
• Sending out the surveys,
• Receipt, tabulation and analysis of survey results,

• Global reporting. This center wide reporting provides insight in the operational effectiveness of the center from a customer perspective. By aggregating all survey responses we gain the insight from hundreds of customer interactions. This center wide perspective is the customer’s statement regarding how well the organization is performing in terms of Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter score and First Contact Resolution. Center wide reporting includes:
o CSAT,
o NPS,
o FCR,

Trend Reporting. In these reports, we track relative performance of all three metrics over time. This reporting supports coaching guidance, based upon trend performance and specific issues.

Reporting by Agent. The ability to link specific satisfaction, net promoter and FCR data down to agent level is a significant step forward for any center. This agent level data allows for training, coaching and mentoring efforts to be targeted to poorer performing staff. It also allows the results of such coaching efforts to be surfaced quickly in subsequent reporting periods. Agent Level reporting includes:
o CSAT,
o NPS,
o FCR,

The costs for this program are outlined below;
Set Up Fee $2,500 (one time fee)
Cost per Agent per channel per month $35.00

Cost Example
In a center with 25 agents who handle phone calls, emails and chats the monthly cost will be $35 * 25 agents * 3 channels or $2,625 per month. The same center handling voice only contacts would cost $875 per month.

All Taylor Reach fees are subject to applicable taxes. All invoices are due upon receipt.
Customer Quality reporting provides a unique and timely insight into your customers. The customer voice is surfaced in your contact center. It is transparent to management and the senior leadership. This visibility delivers significant benefits beyond the call center and across the organization.

Customer Quality reporting tracks activities and improvements and ties those changes to the downstream customer provided data.

Customer Quality reporting is completed by The Taylor Reach Group, Inc, a well respected and established consulting and analysis firm. This independence provides credibility and a perspective that is not possible to achieve internally. Customer Quality reporting can be initiated quickly and with virtually no effect on your day-to-day call operations. It is convenient and continues to operate independently regardless of the internal challenges and changes to a center.

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How Good is your Call Center Training: Take the Quiz

How good is your Training: Take the Quiz
By: John Cockerill
Understatement of the day -Training is important. Just about everyone says so. But like the weather everyone talks about but few do anything about it.
Here is a quick test to gauge the health and effectiveness of the training in your center.
1. Is there a formal and documented training plan (a curriculum)? If yes, does it cover or contain:
a. Induction and take-on of new agents?
b. Ongoing training and upgrade path for agents after induction training?
c. A list of quizzes and tests?
d. Training tied to processes and employing process maps?
e. Employ actual call recordings and screen shots?
f. Criteria for graduating from training or becoming qualified to complete assignments with new skills?
g. Is there a list of all systems used by agents and associated practice or transactions to prove proficiency?
2. Are all training materials up-to-date?
Here’s a quick method for checking. Is there an electronic copy of all materials used? Does the last date review, version number, and by whom appear on all documents in the binder or given to the agents? If no, then they are likely out of date or at best need to be review by someone knowledgeable. Call centers are a high change environment. If there is no date on the material assume it is out of date and get it verified.
3. Are frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) used in the center?
If so, check how many have been added or updated in the last 3 months. Can the existing agents answer 20% accurately without referencing the material? Are these posted on the organizations website for callers to self serve?
4. Is the training designed for adult learners?
Adults need to have practice close to the subject delivery. Quick and accurate feedback to adjust performance is critical so errors don’t accumulate. Design sessions into 40 minute delivery blocks with 20 to 30 minutes of immediate practice, role play and feedback. Provide summary sheets for review of key points to aid memory.
5. Are all the subjects reviewed with and by the agents in an optimum cycle?
Best practices suggest a simple review cycle of: immediate, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days will increase retention of material by over 80%. Repetition of practice is important, just like mommy said. Practice does make perfect.
6. Do all systems have a training module or sandbox?
If not, the agents will have to work with live data. Not a good idea if quality of data is valued in the organization. If they are working with live data, is that done in a manner that enables each transaction to be held for review and approval by someone who is expert in the work?
7. What is the drop out rate during training and how does that compare to the center turnover rate?
A turnover rate that is high and where there is no drop out rate the training simply passing out problems to the floor where dealing with them is more expensive and troublesome to the organization. This is also an indicator that the training is not really equipping the agents to meet minimum position expectations. Where you experience drop outs in the training is also important. Watch the number that drop out just before or after tests. This is fear of failure, for those who drop out to avoid the test and fear of reality for those who fail the test and then drop out.
8. How many sample calls and transactions are in the training library? Do they cover all transactions, most transactions or only some? Are there both good and bad examples? Can you see screen shots as well as the audio? How many practice responses are expected during the training?

Using samples in class sessions means less time on the floor when doing side by side training. It also means being able to show good and bad calls of similar transactions to demonstrate the behaviours and practices wanted in the organization.
9. Is there an analysis of recruiting and training quality done recently?
Turnover and agent quality scores from monitoring by date provides insight to any center as to the effectiveness of the recruiting and how well training is doing by cohort of new agents.
10. How much time is allocated for training of existing agents?
QA/QM coaching doesn’t count. Real training in one on one session, groups or classes of new material, tests etc. Is it accounted for in the annual budget? Is there any provisioning for training in the forecast and scheduling?
11. What linkages exist between the training, new learning and compensation?
As agents move along the continuum of learning, gaining experience in the work and center there needs to be recognition for the effort and acquisition of expertise. Changes to compensation is one method along with public credit of that expertise.
12. Finally and this is the litmus test. Do other departments want the call center staff?
If yes, something is right. If not, there is likely a lot of work to do. Many organizations today require staff to spend their initial time in their center(s). Other departments often find that they don’t have to spend as much on training money and time when they steal staff from the call center. This ‘poaching’ is a compliment to the expertise and systematic approach to grooming new and existing people for roles in any organization. Don’t fight it. Rejoice. And consider charging the departments back for that training and lost productivity. Some firms do with good success.
This list of a dozen questions won’t give a complete audit of the training process but will provide a quick insight into whether or not it needs your attention.
Remember it is difficult to hold an agent, supervisor or manager accountable for success if the measures of success and how to achieve them are not presented in a clear and simple manner. That is what a good training program provides.
Yes training is important. An effective training program is imperative.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys for Contact Centers

I was recently asked about considerations and best practices for customer satisfaction surveys and I realized that customer satisfaction surveys are one of the most challenging activities for contact center management to sell to the rest of the organization. Often other executives rely on omnibus corporate satisfaction surveys, which can be great for assessing brand satisfaction, but do little to tell you how the contact center is impacting on the overall brand and customer experience.



To be effective within a contact center assessment environment, customer satisfaction surveys must focus on a specific interaction with the contact center rather than be generic opinion poll on the organization. A survey completed within 48 hours of a contact is ideal. The key elements that generally the survey should address will generally include three areas:

1-Access,

2-Professionalism,

3-Satisfaction,



Access will deal with timeliness of answer, service hours, hold times, transfers etc. Professionalism will relate directly to the agent...were they professional, courteous, did you feel they were genuinely trying to assist you. Satisfaction should surface satisfaction on a few different levels: were they satisfied with the call outcome ( some people we simply cannot help, due to policies, procedures or their expectations), with the agents effort and with the overall experience. This latter segment can easily be addressed through a top-box and/or net promoter style impact on intentions to refer type of question. All of this can be developed in a 10-14 questions survey and can even be shorted with some of the content being rotated based upon the calendar month or period.



You should also look at the channel(s) you employ to deliver of complete the survey. Web and email surveys can be the most cost effective and post call automated phone surveys can be very appealing, but both suffer from an increased percentage of self selection than occurs in phone surveys. This self selection can skew the survey results.



We generally recommend establishing a baseline with live voice surveys and the move to an automated format once the variance between the two channels is established. Phone surveys are generally repeated once annually thereafter. It is valuable to align your internal and external satisfaction measure (QA and CSAT) as they both strive to measure how well we are doing meeting our customers needs. A study we conducted found up to a 30% variance between internal and external sat measures. Let me know if you would like a copy of this document.