Blog Post

Customer service QA basics: all you need to know + customer service quality assurance checklist

Customer service is an integral part of every business. Quality and professional assistance can contribute to overall customer satisfaction, create a positive brand image, help retain customers, and attract a broad audience to a company. It also shows that the focus of your enterprise is on customers rather than just on revenue. Besides, high-level interaction with clients can ensure their return to your services. Customer service quality assurance can help businesses ensure they provide top-notch client assistance. It can also improve their business practices to treat customers in the best way possible, increasing the satisfaction rate and making them happy with products and services and the whole brand. Customer assistance is one of those processes that companies can’t take lightly.

What Is QA Customer Service?

Customer quality assurance is a process of delivering and maintaining the best customer service standards, along with evaluating agents and resolution practices. This process can help a team identify malfunctions and areas for growth, improve customer experience and provide even better assistance. Support agent’s interactions also play a vital part in forming customer loyalty. Therefore, companies need to measure customer service quality correctly to understand whether there’s a low score in the clients’ assistance process.

How Is QA Customer Service Assessed?

Customer service has to be monitored and assessed by a QA specialist who can distribute QA scores to customer support representatives based on their performance. When monitoring quality assurance, it’s crucial to consider customer metrics such as average response time, satisfaction rate, handling time, etc. In addition, a QA specialist can evaluate some samples of customer interactions to measure overall professionalism (helpfulness, communication skills, grammar, emotional intelligence) according to a scorecard. The main appeal of a quality assurance process is that it benefits the stimulus of the general customer experience.

How To Measure Customer Service Quality To Supercharge Customer Satisfaction: Step-By-Step Guideline

Quality assurance is not a simple process. It takes time and skill to ensure the proper evaluation. That’s why it’s advisable to create a quality assurance checklist that would help keep track of all the essential steps while qualifying customer services:

Start by looking closely at the customer satisfaction score. It’s one of the most trusted indicators regarding self-reported customer experience. Even though the scales and questions used to acquire this metric can vary, it’s still a reliable source for the company’s progress measurement.
The net promoter score should be next on the checklist. It is used to analyze the levels of customer loyalty. NPS is also usually presented as one question regarding the likelihood of a client recommending the business/service/product to others. It can also give a perspective on the possible expansion of the customer base.
After the first two, looking at the first call resolution is helpful. FCR represents the number of issues addressed by the customer service agents during the first interaction. The ability to identify areas of improvement for customer services is heavily dependent on the proper measurement of the FCR. It is also helpful to track the knowledge gaps of the support team members.
The next step is to focus on tracking productivity metrics. It can be done by team leaders or an outside QA manager. Undeniably, support teams are the ones who keep clients satisfied. QA scorecards are one of the ways to evaluate the service agents’ performance and, therefore, improve customer experience.

Following this step by step process will make it easier to do support quality tests on a regular basis. Besides, with the help of the mentioned metrics, businesses can ensure their customers are provided with the best experience possible. The quality assurance process should be thoroughly thought through and carried out with great care, as businesses need it to define success.

Tips For Quality Assurance Customer Service

1. How Many Tickets to Review?

There is no need to review all tickets, as it will take way too much time. A contact center can receive up to 100-200 inquiries daily, if not more. Therefore, reviewing only 10% of all tickets will be more than enough to evaluate the customer support team’s performance and quickly identify weaknesses to eliminate them in the future. It is integral for support center quality assurance to pay attention to complex and critical cases. If not resolved, they are more likely to cause problematic situations between the support team and clients. However, it’s possible to check out more tickets from the main customers to make sure they receive impeccable assistance, as they can provide a better review of customer service quality.

2. How Often to Review Tickets?

Each company can define the frequency of QA reviews that align with business goals and the idea of good customer service. However, monitoring agent performance as frequent as possible isn’t advisable. The QA process takes time, and you are more likely to waste it on minor inconveniences rather than see the big picture. Besides, there won’t be enough data from the contact center. On average, reviewing customer service will be recommended at the end of each month to maintain the high quality of support teams.

3. Analyze Data

To guarantee quality service, collecting data about customer service experience is essential. When all the review data is gathered, analyze it thoroughly. After distributing scores, it will be possible to see and evaluate the performance of a particular agent during customer interactions, as well as the overall team score. It’s also helpful to analyze the accomplishments of the customer service teams not generally but through separate distribution channels. It can be social media, like Instagram or Facebook, or other channels, like email or chatbots. Improving the ways of interaction depending on a platform is also essential for meeting higher customer expectations.

4. Hire a Professional From an outsourced call center

Hiring a QA manager will ensure the best quality assurance practices, resulting in impeccable customer service. One common practice is letting a manager work as a customer support representative for some time to understand clients better. This way, they will better understand the customer experience and how to meet their expectations. Before hiring a professional, the primary skills to consider are language and communication skills, empathy, emotional intelligence, analytical skills, logical thinking, and outstanding leadership and managerial skills. In addition, the QA manager should know where to concentrate attention during customer interaction and how to measure agent performance. Quality management of the support team will surely help improve the services and set proper standards.

5. Use a Specialized Software

Using specialized software and automation tools will help a team save time and effort. For example, it’s hard to analyze phone calls, let alone evaluate the center quality as a whole. And even more significant efforts are needed to go past the surface evaluation into further analysis. Thus, QA automation will be a beneficial and cost-effective solution for a team that only wants to introduce QA practices. In addition, it can help a QA specialist facilitate the workflow and assessment process of customer service quality. Some tools are powered by artificial intelligence, others aren’t, but it doesn’t matter as long as they work to ensure an excellent customer service experience.

Customer Service QA Checklist

The main thing to do is to develop a unified script and tone of voice, define a score scale, review frequency and ticket quantity, and create weekly and monthly reports. To make the process even more productive, here is the primary customer service quality assurance checklist that will help evaluate the core aspects of a support team’s performance.

Customer service quality assurance:

1. Grammar and spelling

2. Communication skills

3. Emotional intelligence

4. Product knowledge

5. Effectiveness:

Resolution of a customer’s issue
Helpfulness of explanation
Accuracy of explanations

6. Productivity:

The number of tickets solved
First response time
First call resolution
Average response time
Average resolution time
The highest number of simultaneous conversations handled

7. Tonality:

Personalized approach
Positive welcome of a customer
Addressing customers by their name
Offering assistance and support right away
Using positive and direct language
Clear and concise explanations
Explanation of all actions taken to resolve the issue
Thanking a customer at the end of a conversation
Offering additional support

Summing It Up

Customer service QA is essential to take client support to the next level, boost customer satisfaction, and build loyal and trustful relationships with clients. Businesses that want to achieve growth and enhance quality should implement these practices.

With the customer service email QA checklist provided, it will be easy to evaluate and maintain the highest support quality daily. Remember, customer service quality assurance is an ongoing process, and for a business to see progress, it needs to be done regularly and under close management.