The modern customer experience has evolved, and with it, so has the need for contact center leaders to uncover actionable insights across all contact channels, leverage automation and link quality metrics to business objectives.
Yet contact centers face significant challenges in enacting modern quality management programs. NICE and ICMI have released a new benchmark report that identifies the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for service organizations committed to delivering a quality experience.
Among the findings of the report, "Modern Standards for Managing Contact Center Quality," are five key challenges:
- Quality management practices are lacking in newer, nonphone channels. In fact, the second most utilized channel – email – is monitored by about half of contact centers. Chat, social media and other channels are monitored even less frequently. Including these channels in the quality process empowers organizations to ensure a positive customer experience no matter where an interaction takes place.
- Many QM measurements involve manual tools or processes. The report found that most contact centers spend considerable time on manual evaluations – 42 percent of contact centers monitor for quality manually. Automation can help reduce inefficiency and human error in QM reporting.
- More than half of contact centers aren't using available analytics. There's a marked opportunity for greater use of voice, desktop and text analytics to help businesses identify trends and customer trigger points, evaluate interaction quality and enable a better service experience.
- Frequency of Quality Assurance evaluations varies widely. On average, contact centers are striving to complete seven Quality Assurance evaluations per period, but the time required can be a challenge. Analytics classifies 100 percent of interactions to streamline the evaluation process. Auto-answers on the evaluation based on analytics further improves efficiencies.
- Agents are often not engaged in the quality process. Just 6 percent of contact center leaders said their agents feel their QA program can help them be successful. Including agents when setting QA guidelines can increase buy-in.
The benchmark report also includes in-depth examination of best practices and KPIs for quality management. To see how your programs, challenges and initiatives compare, download the infographic.