The Contact Center Quality Assurance Analyst Role

The role of the contact center Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst is a critical component of delivering an excellent e-commerce customer experience. The QA analyst's job is to ensure all customers receive the highest quality of care possible from contact center agents.

QA analysts do this by monitoring calls, emails, and chats between customers and agents, evaluating the agent's performance, providing feedback on areas of improvement, and maintaining a database of best practices. They also work with other departments such as marketing, operations, and training / HR to ensure optimal service levels are being met. Quality assurance analysts provide valuable insights into how the customer experience can be improved and work to ensure that customer satisfaction remains high.

To facilitate and record ongoing feedback, QA analysts typically leverage quality management software, as well as analytics and reporting tools to measure performance. A software platform like Playvox is a good example of a CX quality management tool used in a proper quality assurance program.

Quality management software tools like Playvox and others are designed to provide automated call and email audits of customer service agent conversations. This helps the QA analyst review and ensure customer service agents are providing exceptional service and following company policies. With quality management software, analysts can review calls and emails in real-time using an easy-to-use dashboard. The software also allows QA analysts to set up scoring criteria, custom dashboards, reporting features, analytics tools and more—all to help them get the most out of their customer service agents' conversations. Additionally, the quality management platform will provide feedback and coaching modules so agents can continue to improve their performance over time.

Analysts also use survey creation and analysis software to assess customer satisfaction levels. These metrics often feed into a broader CX Balanced Scorecard as well. In some cases, QA analysts may even use specialized audio analysis software that helps them evaluate the quality of customer service calls.

Driving Excellent CX Results Through Quality Assurance

Results from a successful quality assurance program, led by the QA analyst, include:

• Shorter phone hold times

• Faster email and chat replies. Most chats analyzed are those involving live agents, but this may include chatbot performance as well.

• Improved quality of response, ensuring customers receive direct answers to their questions and requests

• Faster resolutions with less back & forth communication with customers (i.e. higher rate of first call resolution)

• Tighter adherence by CS agents to company policies and business rules

• Improvement in CS agents' soft skills by providing feedback in areas such as empathy, tone, and overall care and control of the interaction.

• Fewer issue escalations to supervisors or management

• Reduced customer frustration and higher overall customer satisfaction levels

How does Rush Order Approach CX Quality Assurance?

At Rush Order, our Quality Assurance analysts work with every team member and client to ensure that our CX operations run efficiently and effectively. Our team focuses on the following areas:

1. Greeting and Introduction - We want to ensure customers are greeted in a friendly and professional manner, commensurate with customers' perceptions or expectations of the brand they are interacting with. We evaluate overall call-handling procedures and provide feedback on how agents can improve. First impressions are critically important to successful customer interactions and our QA analysts closely measure this.

2. Writing Quality / Issue Resolution - Our QA program ensures agents provide accurate written and verbal responses to customers. Our QA analysts are also looking for proper grammar, spelling, and command of the language they are engaging the customer in. In the course of reviewing and providing real time feedback by our QA analysts, we want to see agents a) demonstrate an understanding of the customer, b) quickly identify customer needs, and c) access and use the information provided from their training to quickly and effectively address those customer needs.

3. Process & Procedure Adherence - Our QA analysts also work hard to ensure contact center agents adhere to call / email / chat handling protocols and company procedures. Common examples include when and how to properly issue refunds and exchanges. Upsell and cross sell opportunities are also great examples of where we want to see agents following our brands' guidelines.

4. Going Above & Beyond - Lastly, in addition to the concrete and easily measured categories above, our QA analysts look for CS agents going above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction. The quality assurance program is not intended to create robots out of our agents (although we do highly encourage the use of automated tools and chatbots). While we do want to see strict adherence within the above categories, we want CS agents to do what's right for customers and behave in a manner that is "on brand" with the customer experience our clients are working hard to create. Each of our clients defines their brand and their ideal customer experience a little differently. It's the QA analyst's job to ensure Rush Order agents are delivering support accordingly.

The importance of quality assurance analysts in contact centers cannot be overstated. QA analysts play an essential role in crafting successful customer experiences that agents can predictably and reliably deliver time and time again. They also ensure customers receive a consistent experience, regardless of which live agent or CX technology they interact with on any given day or in response to any particular issue.

At Rush Order, we’re proud of the work our CX Quality Assurance Analysts do to deliver top-notch customer experiences on behalf of the amazing brands we support.

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