If your company is going to outsource its call center, make sure you find one that really knows how to evaluate customer service.
Ask These 4 Questions
1. How do you evaluate customer service? What’s your criteria?
When you look at the call center’s rules for scoring chats, calls, and emails, remember that specificity is your best friend. Put specific scoring rules in place so that customer service evaluations leave little room for subjective interpretation.
These rules also need to be customized to your company goals and brand. Remember, this call center will be part of your company’s brand voice—generic criteria won’t cut it.
2. How do you score customer service?
You can’t have a call center that takes a one-dimensional approach to customer service evaluations. The call center’s customer service evaluations should involve independent research intelligence that performs verbatim analysis.
Verbatim analysis uncovers the root causes of common issues. It also provides call center metrics, like Customer Service Branding and Competitive Edge scores. These are the most useful numbers, and software can’t calculate them.
3. How do your reports show me the quality of the interactions?
Any call center worth its salt will have detailed reports that illustrate how associates connect with and inform customers. If a call center’s reports only track the time-to-answer and the abandon rate, there’s no guarantee they’re demonstrating your brand.
4. How do scorecards motivate better CSR performance?
Your ideal call center will ensure customer service representatives understand how they’re evaluated. Scorecards should include: audio clips, quotes, drill-downs, and any other tools that can help align staff to your brand.
Above all, scorecards should include actual re-do examples. CSRs are the face of your company, so they should be as solid on your brand as you are.
Interview a number of call centers thoroughly. And as part of your interview process, consider having a customer experience audit company mystery shop each of your final candidates so that you have data to back up your decision.
Find out what our customer service evaluations can do for you!
