Quality Monitoring for Tech Support, why not?
by Kristin Robertson

Quality monitoring programs are consistently employed in most call centers, but are less common in tech support centers. The reason for this has nothing to do with a lack of commitment to provide customers with quality interactions; it has to do with factors that are unique to technical support centers. It’s important to examine these factors to see if they really hold up under scrutiny, and to decide what to do if they don’t. In this article, we’ll examine the reasons most support centers don’t do quality monitoring; in subsequent articles, we’ll discuss how to start such a program and how to coach your representatives.

Quality monitoring, for this article, is a program in which a supervisor listens to, records, and evaluates telephone interactions between representatives and customers. It can also have a component to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of a case entry.

Why would you implement such a program? A quality monitoring program is designed to:
• Ensure consistent and professional service
• Enforce customer service skills learned in training
• Demonstrate to representatives how important customer service is
• Mimic what your customers think of your service

Quality monitoring is an imitation of the real thing – the customers’ satisfaction with your service is what, in the end, really counts. Quality monitoring should therefore always be an adjunct to a customer survey program, which truly represents the customer’s satisfaction.

Why is quality monitoring relatively rare in support centers, when it’s so common in call centers? There are several reasons, with some of the most common including:
1. We don’t have time -- Quality monitoring is a discipline that takes time, and for many support centers operating on a tight budget (likely with over-worked managers), it may seem like a non-essential or luxury program.
2. We’re too small -- Small centers may not feel the need for monitoring because the perception is that anyone sitting in the support center can hear everyone else’s phone conversations.
3. Big Brother -- Quality programs can be perceived by agents as a demeaning micro-management program that tracks the employee’s every move. This perception is common in complex support environments that typically employ highly-skilled engineers who may be resistant to scrutiny .
4. Non-technical manager -- In complex support environments, the supervisors or managers are often less technically up-to-date than the analysts they manage. This creates an awkward situation because the manager isn’t able to assess the technical accuracy of the representatives they supervise.

Although these are legitimate concerns, the benefits of a quality monitoring program are still strong. There are many ways to counter the objections listed.
1. Counter to “We don’t have time” -- Quality Monitoring is an investment of time and effort that realizes a return in the form of consistent, professional service habits and adherence to procedures. Even the busiest managers have time to invest in activities that are important .
2. Counter to “We’re too small” -- Quality monitoring helps managers avoid the common syndrome in which everyone in the support center – except the manager – is aware of the poor performance of one or more representatives. A manager’s lack of awareness of a performance problem contributes to poor morale in the group, as those who are doing a good job are dragged down by those who aren’t pulling their weight. This scenario is often observed in very small support centers.
3. Counter to “Big Brother” -- You can implement a self-evaluation program for engineers who resist a more traditional approach. The manager and engineer sit together and review a recorded call while the engineer evaluates his/her performance on the call. This gives the manager the opportunity to encourage the engineer who might actually grade his/her performance more harshly than necessary.
4. Counter to “Non-technical manager” -- A dual program including call reviews and case reviews can be used by managers who are less technically sophisticated than their employees. In this system, the senior technical engineers review the technical detail of the case record, while the manager or supervisor evaluates the engineer’s phone interactions and customer service skills. Both evaluation results are tracked and given a pre-determined weighting.

If any of these reasons for not conducting a quality monitoring program are true for your support center, it’s time to consider the overwhelmingly positive benefits such a program can bring . With the knowledge of how to counter common objections, it’s time you created one.

Kristin Robertson, President of KR Consulting, Inc., is a consultant to the Help Desk and Technical Support profession. She helps companies increase the efficiency of their support center, save money, and increase their customer loyalty. As both a consultant and trainer, she has worked with companies such as 7-Eleven, Southwest Airlines, Hewlett Packard, Washington Mutual, and Check Point Software Technologies. Kristin can be reached at 817-577-7030, or krisrob@krconsulting.com

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