Generalidades

Creating an effective programme to monitor quality can be broken down into four steps: 1.set expectations – determine behaviours you want your employees to demonstrate; 2.create evaluation tools – organize expectations into functional call review categories;

3.establish an evaluation process – determine how frequently to review and if calibration is needed; 4.utilize technology to record calls and create a database for call evaluations.

Each of these steps will be explored in some detail. Examples will focus on individual counselling quality, but the same principles can be applied to other programme elements such as call centre metrics (i.e. average speed to answer, live response rate and abandonment rate). These metrics may be easier to measure because your telephone system provides you with automated data. You will want to set quality targets at the system-level as well as the individual-level. The general approach around improving quality is to focus on how to improve the various systems that impact quality, such as training, computer and telephone support, supervision and workflow.

1. Set expectations

Defining what meets expectations gives you the ability to reward employees for demonstrating behaviours consistent with what you want to see in your programme. Defining behaviours that are below expectations can help you identify employees who are not well suited for the job. By defining the areas that need improvement, you allow employees to improve and succeed.

First, clearly define baseline expectations for staff. Decide which behaviours and skills you want demonstrated in every call. Your training programme should prepare employees to reach this skill level. These can be listed as “meeting expectations” on a call evaluation tool.

Next, determine which behaviours or skills are unacceptable. These can be listed as “below expectations” on your call evaluation tool.

Finally, determine intermediate skills that fall between unacceptable and meeting expectations. These will be listed as “needs improvement” on your call evaluation tool.

2. Create evaluation tools

The evaluation tool is a performance assessment of the employee’s skill level, and is a way of measuring skills and behaviours demonstrated during the call against your baseline expectations (Table 7).

Table 7. Example of how baseline expectations/behaviours can be broken down

Organize your list of baseline expectations/behaviours into related categories.

For example, if one baseline behaviour is that the employee says, “Thank you for calling today”, and another baseline behaviour is that the employee says, “This call will take about 15 minutes”, these can be organized into one category called “Call Introduction” (Table 8).

Table 8. Example of how a “Call Introduction” category can be broken down into expectations

After you have created your evaluation tool, determine a scoring system and set performance standards. One way to evaluate employees is a pass/fail scoring system. This type of scoring system can help you determine the employees who are meeting expectations and those who are falling below expectations. Another way to evaluate employees is to develop a point-based system. For example, scoring “below expectations” might give 0 points for that category, while scoring “needs improvement” gives 1 point, and scoring “meets expectations” gives 2 points. This type of scoring system gives you a way of assigning an overall score to the evaluation based on a percentage of points earned compared to points possible, and can help you determine where employees fall on a continuum. For example, it may be helpful to your programme to know how many employees are scoring 0-50%, 51-75% and 76-100% each month.

3. Establish a process

First, you need to decide who will be responsible for quality monitoring. Options include the supervisory staff, a position focusing specifically on quality, or someone in another area. There are simplicity benefits to having monitoring carried out by supervisors but, as your quit line grows, there are benefits to separating quality monitoring from direct supervision. You also need to determine how frequently to evaluate calls. You want to have quality monitoring occur frequently enough to be able to identify concerns early and not have to rely on a single call for a given counsellor if you want to be able to give feedback to individual counsellors. However, too frequent monitoring can add significant costs without adding much value. Determine whether you want employees to be able to predict when a call evaluation will happen, or not. You can also bring transparency to the process by making the evaluation tools available to staff for review and reference; performance standards should not be hidden.

Category Meeting expectations Below expectations Needs improvement

Call Introduction Says “thank you for calling today” and states amount of time call will take.

Does not say “thank you for calling today” and does not state amount of time call will take.

Says “thank you for calling today” but does not state amount of time call will take.

Meeting expectations Below expectations Needs improvement

Employee says “please” and “thank you”.

Employee is rude. Employee does not say “please” or “thank you”, but is not rude.

Calibration

If you will have more than one person evaluating calls, it is a good idea to establish a process so that all evaluators are calibrated. This means ensuring that evaluators are scoring calls similarly. This can be accomplished by periodically evaluating calls as a group. If the group evaluates categories the same way, this means that the group is well calibrated. If the group evaluates categories and/or behaviours differently, the group will need to determine why and come to agreement regarding what the standard should be. Having closely calibrated evaluators will increase staff acceptance of the process.

4. Utilize technology

You can take advantage of software to record and store calls. As you consider using technology options on the market, consider if you want to record all calls or just a random selection of calls. Recording all calls allows the ability to review every interaction with callers, but also requires a large data storage solution. Another consideration is if you want to be able to see the employee’s screen at the time the recording is made. Capturing the movements employees make on their computer screens as they interact with callers can provide valuable information that can aid in coaching messages and in troubleshooting technical problems. Often, call recording technology can also provide a central location for entering and storing call evaluations for all employees. This allows the ability to analyse quality trends and potential training needs. If your circumstances do not allow for call recording, quality monitoring can be done simply by listening in on live calls.