It’s interesting to know that despite the consistent rise in customer expectations, organisations are struggling to measure and maintain service quality. A report found that 89.4% of contact centres score their telephonic interactions, down from 91.1% in the previous year. Less than half measure quality on digital interactions, again down from 61.4%.
To address this problem, contact centres must adopt call scoring practices to assign a tangible performance metric to interactions.
What is Call Scoring?
Call scoring can be defined as the practice of scoring a call on a scale of 1-10 or a scale of 1-5 in real-time or based on recorded interactions as per preset quality parameters and checklist items. The objective of call scoring is two-fold:
- The average score for a set of randomised samples for an agent gives you a snapshot of how well that agent is performing in the contact centre
- The average score for a particular parameter (let’s say, the quality of greeting at the initiation of the interaction) tells you how well the contact centre is performing in that specific area
Call scoring is an essential part of quality assurance (QA), making sure that agents stick to service standards and processes as determined by the organisation.
Best Practices for Scoring Contact Centre Calls
To start with, you need a detailed scoring evaluation form (also called a scorecard or a feedback form), that lists the different parameters you’ll be scoring against.
Break down each item on the form (e.g., greeting) into a checklist of processes (e.g., did the agent identify themselves, did the agent mention the company’s name, did the agent obtain consent for recording, and other steps in the greeting process). Based on the completion of this checklist, the agent is assigned a fair and objective score for that parameter.
Once you have the scorecard in place, here are some of the best practices to follow:
- Encourage self-scoring among agents: The call can be scored by a variety of stakeholders, including a supervisor who listens to the interaction in real-time, the contact centre manager playing back the interaction, and the agent themselves. Self-scoring drives a sense of empowerment and ownership so that the agent is self-motivated to achieve a better score next time around
- Don’t automate script adherence scoring: Certain technology tools will check the recording for the mention of specific keywords and phrases, scoring the call based on script adherence. But this can be ineffective if followed blindly – automated tools cannot always capture the conversation’s context, and must be complemented by live call scoring
- Distinguish between call scoring and agent scoring: Employees – particularly, newly hired agents – should not feel demotivated due to poor scores. That’s why it’s important to make it very clear that it is a call or a single interaction that is being scored, not the agent, their talent, or their performance potential
- Use gamification: Real-time call scores can be converted into a gamified leader board so that agents can participate in some healthy competition and meet/exceed targets, without feeling a sense of individual pressure
