Customer service quality assurance checklist

You should start by preparing a scorecard, which is a great tool for seeing how your customer service is doing. It gives you an overall view of your efforts and shows you areas that need more of your attention.

Why is a quality assurance scorecard important?

Scorecards are a performance management tool for comparing strategic goals with results. Knowing that your customer service is constantly monitored can not only help you improve it but also motivates the customer support team to improve overall agent performance.

How to handle preparing a quality assurance scorecard?

To build a scorecard you should gather all of the important information about your customer service. This can include aspects such as:

• customer satisfaction reports
• feedback from clients
• satisfaction surveys after every client interaction

The goal is to find out where your strengths and weaknesses are in terms of providing a great customer experience. You need this data in order to set goals and measure your progress – so don’t forget to analyze both a positive and bad review.

It’s up to you which factors you want to focus on first or if any changes have been made. However, you should always keep track of how the scorecard is affecting your customer service.

Which tools to use for preparing a quality assurance scorecard?

• Excel or Google Sheets to gather the data needed for your scorecard
• Survey Monkey or youengage to get feedback from the customers

Once you have the data and some feedback from your customers, it’s time to create a scorecard. The categories should be relevant to your goals and quality standards, but also show how they influence one another.

This will give you a better overview of your performance and what needs to be improved.

Why are scorecard categories important?

When it comes to scorecards, categories are helpful for organizing content and seeing the big picture. By having different categories, you can easily compare data and see which areas need most attention.

How to handle scorecard categories?

The elements that coincide with your priorities are the most important categories. For example, if your goal is to improve customer satisfaction rates, then this category should be at the top of the list.

For example, you can use the following categories for your scorecard:

• responsiveness
• knowledge
• attitude
• alignment with company culture
• problem resolution
• follow-up service

Which tools to use for categorizing scorecards?

• spreadsheets such as Excel or Google Sheet

The next step is ranking the categories. You need to know which areas have more weight when it comes to building a successful CS strategy.

This information will help you prioritize what needs immediate attention and where you can make changes later on.

Why is ranking categories important?

Rating is important because it gives you a way to measure your progress. You can track the results and see if they improve over time or not. Having this data will help you stay on track with your goals.

How to handle ranking categories?

The easiest way to rate your scorecard categories is to use numbers between one and five, where one is the lowest score possible and five means excellent performance in this category. The higher your score, the better for your company.

Nevertheless, the way you decide to rate categories is up to you, so choose the method that suits you best.

Which tools to use for ranking categories?

• Use the same tool you use to develop a scorecard, i.e. a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets

Now it’s time to use your scorecard to start reviewing your data. This is a step-by-step process that starts with evaluating each category individually, then comparing them all together, and finally seeing how they affect other categories on the list.

Remember that this isn’t an overnight process, so take as much time as you need to go through each step.

Why is reviewing performance with your scorecard important?

Reviewing the scorecard is important because it gives you a clear view of your progress. Without reviewing the performance of your scorecard, you simply cannot judge if you provide the best customer experience possible. That’s why it is critical to devote more attention to this tool and use it for your business.

How to handle reviewing performance with your scorecard?

There are two ways that you can review performance with a scorecard:

• comparison of each category against the goal
• analysis of how each category affects one another

Scorecards should be reviewed on a periodic basis, at least quarterly. This will help you track progress and make necessary changes in order to achieve the desired results.

Which tools to use for reviewing performance with your scorecard?

• spreadsheets such as Excel or Google Sheets
• Asana or another basic task management tool to stay on top of jobs

During every analysis, you should look at all of your support channels. This means not just looking at phone calls, but also chats, emails, and social media messages to see how they influence each other.

Why is looking at all of your support channels important?

Reviewing all support channels will give you an even better overview of your customer service performance. This is because it allows you to see how different channels work together and where the most complaints are coming from. With this data, you can then focus on those areas and make the necessary changes.

How to handle looking at all of your support channels?

The first step is to gather all of the necessary data and then analyze it so you can see which areas need improvement. After that, you need to create a plan on how to improve these aspects of customer service.

It might be extremely time-consuming to review all your support channels, one by one.

Tip: LiveAgent takes care of that and lets you manage all of your support channels in one place: mails, messages on Slack, forums, feedback, social media, and many more. Thanks to that, gathering all of the necessary data is fast and simple.

Which tools to use for looking at all of your support channels?

• social media
• LiveAgent
• email tracking software

When you’re done reviewing all of your support channels, it’s time to group the results. This means that you will need to put together a few areas with similar scores and compare their relative strengths.

Why is grouping the results important?

Grouping can reveal some interesting data because if certain aspects of customer service have lower ratings than others, it might be time to focus on them. Additionally, grouping can also show you which areas are doing well and therefore need no improvement currently.

How to group the results?

There are a few ways that you can group the results:

• complaints
• ratings
• resolution average time
• channel used

Once you have grouped the results, it’s time to start analyzing them. The next step is to take all of this data and create a report, which should include all the information that you gathered from reviewing your support channels as well as what you discovered from grouping the results. With this data, you can then make decisions on what to do next.

Which tools to use for grouping the results?

• data visualization tools for grouping the results by different criteria
• spreadsheet software to create management reports based on your data
• statistics programs for further analysis

This will depend on the results of your review and how much needs to be done in order to improve your customer service and communication between employees.

Why is planning how to conduct QA sessions important?

Determining how often you will hold quality assurance sessions is important because it allows you to be proactive. This means that it helps you to keep on track and conduct such sessions regularly.

How to conduct a quality assurance session?

There are many different ways that you can conduct QA sessions:

• hire a third party to come in and conduct sessions for you
• hold sessions with your team members so they can help each other out

Test different methods and see which one gives you the best results in order to know which way will work best for you long term.

To ensure that your QA sessions are productive, define the goals of the meeting and create an agenda. Make sure that all attendees are aware of the agenda before the meeting and prepare reports in advance.

Which tools to use for conducting quality assurance sessions?

• conference call software
• project management software such as Asana
• video conferencing software

Tip: if you’re not sure which tools to use, ask your team members for their input. They might have some great suggestions for making sessions more productive.

This is something that should be done in order to make sure everyone is aware of the standards and procedures that need to be followed when it comes to customer service.

Why is creating a QA policy important?

Company policies make it clear for everyone what is expected of them and how to act in certain situations.

How to create a customer service quality assurance policy?

• Create a plan of action for all aspects that need improvement.
• Identify how you will measure customer service quality.
• Determine the frequency and duration of QA sessions.

Once you have created a customer service quality assurance policy, it’s important to make sure that everyone follows it. This can be done by using tracking software to monitor employee performance and see if they are following protocols correctly.

Which tools to use for creating a QA policy?

• compliance tracking software such as ComplyAssistant, etc.
• customer service quality assurance policy template
• project management software such as Asana

A quality manager will ensure that all standards are met and the quality assurance process runs smoothly through regular QA sessions.

Why is hiring someone responsible for quality assurance important?

Hiring someone specifically for quality management will ensure that all aspects of customer service are being looked at and that any issues are addressed quickly.

How to handle hiring someone responsible for quality assurance?

Ask yourself first what soft skills the candidate must possess. You may want to look internally and see if there is someone who would be a good fit for the role. If you don’t have anyone in-house, you should start looking at outside agencies or freelancers.

Which tools to use to hire someone responsible for quality assurance?

• job posting platforms
• freelance marketplaces such as Upwork, etc.

Once you have created a customer service quality assurance policy and hired someone to monitor it, use tools to streamline the entire process.

Why is using tools to streamline the process important?

Tools will help you automate day-to-day tasks and make the process easier for everyone involved.

How to handle using tools to streamline the process?

There are many tools out there that can help you with customer service quality assurance. You need to find the ones that will work best for your organization and make sure they are compatible with the other software you are already using.

By using tools, you’ll be able to improve communication among different teams, guarantee customer service meets the required standards, and identify any areas that are lacking in quality much quicker than you would without tools.

Which tools to use for streamlining the process?

• all of the aforementioned tools
• quality assurance dashboard software
• survey tool
• center quality assurance form

Tip: If you want to streamline your customer support representative workflow, consider using help desk software and ticketing systems such as LiveAgent. As a result, your customer service representatives will be able to improve the quality of your services and address your clients’ problems much more quickly and efficiently.

One of the first things you need to do is determine what success looks like to you. What are your goals and how will you know when your customer service meets your client requirements?

There are many factors that contribute to customer service quality. You might want to focus on areas such as:

• customer satisfaction
• meeting required response time
• resolution rate

Anticipate issues and develop a plan to overcome them before they escalate into major problems. If you’re having some difficulties, consider hiring someone who has more experience in this area or appointing a QA manager for your staff.

Communication skills should be a basic call center quality. Feedback is the best way to find out if the service you provide to your customers meets their expectations. You need to find out exactly what clients are thinking and ask them directly about their satisfaction levels.

This will help you understand which aspects of customer interactions definitely need improvement, as well as prevent unexpected issues in the future. Therefore, it is critical that your customers give you feedback on regular basis.

This will help you keep track of all the areas that need improvement and make sure your customer service is meeting the required standards. A quality assurance dashboard is a tool that helps you track different aspects of customer service, such as:

• response rates
• customer satisfaction levels
• number of issues that need to be resolved or improved upon in a given period of time

Keeping track of customer service quality is essential for ensuring better communication between departments. This will ensure that your team is on the same page when it comes to delivering great services at all times.

LiveAgent is one example of a quality assurance dashboard software solution. It allows you to track all the important aspects of customer service and make sure everything is meeting the required standards.

The best thing about LiveAgent is that it’s easy for your employees to use since no special training programs or knowledge is required. This will help everyone to join the process and feel more involved in their jobs.

Your sales agents are on the front line and know best what customers are looking for. They can help with identifying issues and developing solutions that will make your customer service better.

Encouraging them to be open about their ideas and suggestions is a great way to get new perspectives and improve your quality of service.

Also, pay attention to your agent training process and wide range of their soft skills. Make sure that experienced agents share their basic product knowledge with inexperienced agents. This will help improve the overall performance of your team and avoid future customer service issues.

This is also a chance for an individual agent to get a clearer picture of how the whole concept of quality assurance works so that they can be better at the day-to-day processes.

One of the best ways to make sure that your customer service is providing quality assurance is to collect feedback from different areas. This can help you identify any gaps in your service and ensure that all aspects are being covered.

Artificial intelligence, analytics, and monitoring center metrics can help you take your customer service to the next level. By tracking customer interactions, you can identify trends and patterns that will help you improve your service.

And by using AI, and advanced features, you can automate some of the more tedious tasks so that your team has more time to focus on providing quality assurance practices, focus on other additional tasks, and meet the quality criteria. Have we mentioned before that LiveAgent can help with that as well?