Integrating Calibration in Your Call Center

Calibration is standardizing a process by determining its deviation from the standard in order to determine the proper correction factors. In a call center, calibration is a critical factor of improving call-monitoring performance. It is the process by which the deviations in the way performance are interpreted are limited. 

You have to know if your company needs some type of monitoring system, call monitoring system or automated system. Your organization should be committed to improving call quality. Supervisors should put out fires, answer questions, write reports, sign off on timesheets, handles escalated calls and solve the customer service problems to institute a call monitoring program. You have your customer service representatives or CSRs in place and they should know what they need to know. They should work professionally and they have to provide the customers with the correct and sufficient information. They should also have proper speaking and listening skills. 

Monitoring programs in a call center is very important for its success. To design such programs, you have to identify the key performance criteria that result in successful calls. These include product knowledge and listening skills. Listening skills could include not interrupting the caller, not asking the caller to repeat the information, etc. You have to determine the overall weight for each criterion in the total score, select the scoring method for each criterion, define the monitoring process and performance benchmarks, train all call center members about the performance criteria and benchmarks and lastly, conduct calibration sessions to work out any bugs before you begin live monitoring. 

Every step in the process is crucial for the program’s success. Nevertheless, the calibration process is often unnoticed. It is essential to incorporate calibration into the planning, implementation and ongoing maintenance of your monitoring program. Calibration is the best way to prevent assertion of inequity and favoritism. It also eliminates bias by ensuring consistent scoring. In calibration in call center, the result of the monitoring and scoring is always the same so it will not matter who ever did it. CSRs should understand this so that the coaching process can focus on recognizing achievements and identifying opportunities for improvement, instead of whether a particular score is accurate. 

Calibration is not an easy process. It takes a significant obligation. It may take so much time of discussion and practice before your team begins to score a call in a uniform way, while it is complicated, the rewards will be considerable.