Call center quality assurance (QA) is traditionally a labor-intensive process. QA managers review call recordings and complete a checklist or scorecard confirming whether each call meets the business’s quality standards. Because this process is so time-consuming, most call centers can only evaluate about 1-3% of their recordings. One of our customers, Thrasio, estimated that it would take an army of 528 analysts to manually review all their interactions.
Hiring hundreds of QA analysts isn’t a viable solution for the average call center. But businesses shouldn’t settle for evaluating only a small percentage of their calls, either. This can cause several issues, including:
- Agent dissatisfaction–agents may feel like the handful of calls their manager reviewed aren’t representative of their performance.
- Lack of coachable insights–if managers only review a few calls per agent each month, they may struggle to find patterns in agent behavior, making it difficult for them to provide objective feedback.
- Missed opportunities–contact centers may miss out on customer experience trends and opportunities for improving processes, products, or agent performance if they’re only reviewing 1% of their calls.
Fortunately, it’s now possible to audit 100% of customer calls through QA automation.
Let’s look at:
What is call center QA automation and how does it work?
Call center QA automation refers to the use of technology to streamline and optimize the quality assurance process. It involves leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and speech analytics software to analyze customer interactions, identify trends, and flag areas for improvement.
For example, Creovai can automatically transcribe and analyze calls, detecting sentiment, topics, and behaviors. The conversation intelligence platform uses AI and machine learning to evaluate calls based on criteria you set, such as the proper agent greeting or compliance protocols. This automates the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of call center QA.
By using QA automation software to monitor 100% of calls, you gain visibility into the true customer service experience. You can identify opportunities for coaching and process improvement–and make data-driven decisions about which opportunities to prioritize. Automated QA also frees up managers to focus on more strategic initiatives that improve operations.
Supplementing automated QA with Evaluations
While automation handles high-volume QA tasks, some quality assurance and CX items can be subjective or need supervisor verification. One of our customers, a Senior Manager of Quality at Noom, describes why his organization blends manual and automated QA:
“Manual QA helps us to use the experience of people who have taken calls before and apply their knowledge to reviewing transcripts, but the power of a tool like Creovai is that it allows you to look at all of your transcripts to look for opportunities at a higher scale.”
Creovai addresses this need for a hybrid QA approach with our Evaluations feature.
The Evaluations feature allows you to create custom forms to evaluate calls in Creovai. You can build forms for compliance checks, customer experience scoring, agent performance reviews, or any other manual evaluation. Additionally, you can assign custom points to each question and answer, allowing you to bring Evaluation scores into Creovai.
After completing the forms, Creovai compiles the data into reports. You gain insights like:
- Trends in evaluation scoring
- Individual agent coaching needs
- Whether evaluations are being completed
By combining automated and manual QA in Creovai, you get a complete view of the customer experience. The platform eliminates tedious tasks while still allowing evaluations with a human touch when needed.
What's the future of call center QA?
Creovai’s QA automation dramatically reduces the time it takes to complete scorecard items with objective criteria. We are now looking into using generative AI for automatic evaluations, further reducing the time required for manual call center QA.
Auto-evaluations would generate responses to nuanced questions like, “Was the agent polite during the call?” Creovai would not only answer the question but also show the language used in the call to determine the answer, giving QA managers confidence in the accuracy.
Automated evaluations are the next step forward for QA automation. Call centers will increasingly be able to automate more of the QA process without sacrificing accuracy. This will give them greater insight into the customer experience and free up more time for their people to make CX improvements.
The bottom line: Automated QA improves operations and CX
Automating call center quality assurance delivers quantifiable benefits, including:
- Increased compliance from evaluating 100% of calls
- Reduced overhead by eliminating manual monitoring
- Better visibility into the true customer experience (and opportunities for improvement)
- Increased bandwidth for strategic initiatives for the QA team
Ready to take your call center QA program to the next level with automation?
Request a demo of Creovai today.
FAQs
How much time can I save with automated QA?
Creovai customers have reported reducing manual QA time by 80% or more after implementing our conversation intelligence software.
How do I get my QA team to embrace automation instead of seeing it as a threat to their jobs?
Frame QA automation as a tool that elevates your team's role rather than replaces it. Automation handles routine, repetitive tasks, freeing your QA analysts to focus on strategic coaching, trend analysis, and complex evaluations that require human insight. Involve your team in setting up automation criteria and interpretation of results. This positions them as QA strategists rather than data processors, making their roles more valuable and engaging.
How do I ensure automated QA results are accurate and trustworthy?
Start by running automated QA parallel to your existing manual process for 2-4 weeks to validate accuracy. Focus on objective, measurable criteria first (script adherence, verification process completion, etc.) before expanding to more complex evaluations. Regularly audit automated results against manual reviews and continuously refine your automation criteria based on feedback. Transparency is key—always show the specific language or behaviors that triggered automated scores.
Should I completely eliminate manual QA once automation is in place?
No—the most effective approach combines both automated and manual QA. Use automation for high-volume, objective criteria like compliance checks and script adherence, while reserving manual evaluation for subjective areas like customer rapport, creative problem-solving, and complex situations. This hybrid model gives you comprehensive coverage while maintaining the nuanced human judgment that's essential for quality customer experiences.
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