Introduction

Outsourcing, or BPO, has become increasingly popular, helping businesses free up in-house employees for other strategic tasks. However, when a third party, like a call center, is involved in your company’s operation, we need some standards to control the overall quality. If you are still struggling with this, we’re here to help with the best practices for quality assurance in BPO.

What Is Quality Assurance In BPO? What Are The Benefits?

Businesses should guarantee quality when outsourcing. Source: Flickr

Quality assurance in BPO, especially contact centers, involves monitoring and evaluating the interactions between agents and customers across different channels. In this process, the agent performance is in line with the preset standards. In particular, agents are assessed based on specific criteria such as consistency, customer satisfaction levels, errors, and overall quality of service.

These quality assurance standards benefit businesses in many ways:

• Identify areas for improvement: By constantly monitoring the call center, you can identify agents’ weaknesses and provide tailored training programs. These gaps include service or product knowledge, internal systems protocols, and other essential soft skills like problem-solving or communication.
• Mitigate risks: A strict set of rules or standards helps flag non-compliance behaviors in call centers. This ensures organizations comply with regulations and saves them from lawsuits and costly regulatory fines.
• Maintain accuracy and consistency: The quality assurance standards focus on details, ensuring the data is accurate and consistent through all channels. This can reduce costly mistakes, especially when your company has to deal with a large pool of information.
• Retain customers: The quality assurance processes ensure all customer issues are cared for and addressed appropriately. This boosts customer experience and customer retention.
• Build relationships and reputation: With a high customer loyalty rate comes a better reputation and brand image. So, there is a high chance that your business can attract more new clients through word-of-mouth marketing. 
• Strengthen the workforce: In a well-regulated call center, all agents are motivated to deliver the best service to their customers. Continuous training and a constructive feedback loop also keep them engaged and encourage them to perform better.

4 Components of Quality Assurance in BPO

The quality assurance processes involve four components:

Setting Quality Standards

Measurable and clear standards are the compass in quality assurance, setting the stage for monitoring and evaluation. A common set of standards also keeps everyone on the same page, ensuring consistent service across the BPO. 

Each business will have different quality standards based on its products or services, industry regulations, and client expectations. For example, a contact center should pay attention to customer satisfaction and resolution time. Meanwhile, a financial institute might focus on compliance and accuracy. 

Monitoring and Evaluating

Constantly monitoring and evaluating is essential to keep everything on the right track. First, businesses should track and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness of the service. The data provides valuable insights to identify areas for improvement.

Common KPIs in a call center are customer satisfaction score, resolution time, response time, and error rate. You can monitor agents’ performance through customer feedback, live tracking, call recordings, and data analytics.

If your company is handling various channels of communication, StringeeX can help with an omnichannel contact center. It offers you complete control over all channels in the same place, recording and tracking all agents’ performance for easier assessment and analysis.

Feedback and Training

Once you’ve evaluated employees’ performance, it’s time to give them constructive feedback and proper training. This process helps them pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses so they can perform at their best.

By equipping them with essential skills that they lack, you encourage them to deliver consistent services while in line with the business’ QA standards.

Give constructive feedback and proper training. Source: Flickr

Corrective Actions and Improvements

After identifying the quality problems in BPO, you must analyze them to track the root cause and develop action plans to prevent recurrence. Continuous improvement fosters business growth and minimizes issues, giving your company a competitive edge in the market.

7 Best Practices For Quality Assurance In BPO

Develop A Comprehensive QA Framework & Standards

As mentioned, a QA framework is the cornerstone of quality assurance. So, it’s critical to set up comprehensive standards that regulate the operation of the BPO.

First, you should decide the objectives for service quality. Your expectations must align with the business’ mission and resonate with the client’s needs. Then, measurable metrics, such as resolution time, response time, customer satisfaction score, etc., will be set up to evaluate the BPO’s performance.

The next step is to assign responsibilities to the right person. For example, who will be the team leader, QA manager, and agents? When employees know their exact tasks, they can work more efficiently and effectively.

Utilize Technology And Automation

The use of technology and automation takes QA processes to the next level with greater operational efficiency. AI-powered tools assist you in monitoring agent-customer interactions in real-time for quicker responses. 

Meanwhile, machine learning algorithms revolutionize data analysis. They allow your business to handle a great amount of data and gain actionable insights within a short time. Therefore, automation can save your company a lot of time and money (labor costs) while minimizing errors.

Focus On Continuous Improvement

Continuous learning and improvement is key to steady business growth. Customer expectations, market trends, and technology advancements evolve constantly, requiring regular reviews and adaptation to stay ahead of the curve.

Besides, you should prioritize establishing feedback loops to collect valuable insights into areas for improvement. Pitching your center quality assurance metrics against other competitors in the industry also opens more opportunities and identifies gaps.

Continuous improvements ensure steady business growth. Source: Pxhere

Promote A Quality-Centric Culture

Quality should be the top priority in any BPO, so fostering a quality-centric culture is important to stay relevant in the industry. The first step is to establish a mindset of excellence among center agents. This means you should motivate them to provide excellent customer service in every task. 

Regular training and open communication are keys to promoting this culture among employees. However, you should also recognize their improvements and offer incentives and rewards to encourage them more.

Evaluate The Evaluation Cards

Instead of using a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach, companies should adopt a more flexible and tailored strategy. 

Personalized evaluation forms can be developed to align with the specific needs of each client, taking into account unique factors and agent roles. This allows for more relevant quality metrics and a higher level of customization in the assessment process.

Provide Access And Transparency

Providing immediate access to evaluation forms, scores, and their rationale to both supervisors and agents can significantly improve the quality of feedback and training. When center agents have a clear understanding of their key metrics and the reasons behind their scores, they are more likely to engage in meaningful coaching sessions.

Gamify The Process

Introducing gamification to the quality assurance process can be a game-changer for employee motivation and engagement. By making the evaluation process more interactive and rewarding, companies can encourage quality assurance teams to stay committed and enthusiastic about their roles. 

Conclusion

Companies that are outsourcing need to set proper standards to ensure quality assurance in BPO. These regulations are the compass that guides all agents to perform at their best. Continuous monitoring and evaluation also help identify areas for improvement, encouraging business growth. If you’re still struggling with this, contact StringeeX now!