Everything you need to know about agent scorecards

Every team has an Emma, and every team has a Dave. Emma is great at her job, is super engaged, and always hits her numbers. Dave – not so much. He’s not productive, never hits his numbers, is unhappy, and has one eye on the door.

Thing is – your agents are the voice of your company, so you need to give them everything they need to deliver customer experiences that go above and beyond. But, when you have a large team and you’re dealing with high call volumes, how can you effectively track and improve the performance of agents in your contact centre?

Ideally, you want a team of Emmas. To do that, you need to know what ‘good’ performance looks like and use that to inform training. It’s a case of bottling the magic and using it to plug skills gaps. But it’s impossible to pinpoint the good, the bad, and the downright ugly if you’re only listening to a small sample of calls. But what if we told you this doesn’t have to be the case? What if you could automatically monitor all calls – not just the select few you get a chance to listen to – to paint a full picture of what’s happening on every call.

Enter Agent Scorecards powered by Conversation Analytics. Agent Scorecards give you a lens into what’s happening on every call – at scale. Even better, this is broken down to an individual agent level, so you quickly and easily gain actionable insights into performance to tailor training and build a team of superstars like Emma.

In this blog, we’ll talk about why Agent Scorecards are important and how they can be used to totally transform employee (and customer) experiences.

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Why is agent scoring important?

In an ever-competitive environment, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re delivering the best possible customer experiences. If that isn’t the case, customers will vote with their feet and go to your competitors.

Did you know the same applies to your agents? If they’re not getting the training and support they need to do their job well (and around 58% of call centre agents don’t feel they do), they’ll always have one eye on the door. This is an expensive and time-consuming problem to have, especially when call centre staff turnover generally sits around 46% (eek!) and it can take up to 6 months to ramp an agent.

Agent scoring presents the perfect opportunity to nip these key issues in the bud and build a team of high-performing superstars – like Emma. By drilling into individual performance, you can pinpoint specific areas of improvement and tailor training programmes to get each of your agents performing like pros. And when they’re performing like pros, they’ll get the job satisfaction they need and want, they’ll no longer have one eye on the door, and they’ll be delivering customer experiences that set you apart from the competition.

What is an Agent Scorecard?

An Agent Scorecard does what it says on the tin – gives agents an overall performance score based on different call metrics. In other words, Agent Scorecards act as a feedback tool that helps you keep track of the specific agent performance metrics that matter most to you.

They’re going to vary from department to department, but they’ll always need to marry up with your company’s visions and values. All sorts of different factors make up a ‘good call’ –some of them are listed in the image below:

All these factors are automatically monitored and tracked with Agent Scorecards, and all insights are aggregated in a simple view.

The beauty of Agent Scorecards is that they can be constantly revised, and they’ll evolve with time. So, whether there’s a new trend you want to hop on or a new regulation like Consumer Duty coming into force, you can make sure you’re always on the front foot.

How to improve call centre agent performance with Agent Scorecards

If you’re looking to improve call centre agent performance, you need to understand what ‘good’ looks like and what leads to positive outcomes. This is where you can use your superstar Emma as a basis for helping Dave improve and do more of the good stuff that leaves customers feeling all warm and fuzzy.

On the flip side, you also need to get to grips with what Dave is doing which leaves customers feeling frustrated. Pinpointing specific aspects of a call that led to a negative outcome means you can make sure your agents aren’t making the same mistakes as Dave.

If you’re in a regulated industry, you’ll also want to track compliance and make sure agents are sticking to the script every time, all the time. More importantly, if there are compliance issues, you want to be able to spot and resolve them right away.

Because call monitoring is automated with Agent Scorecards, you gain a full understanding of what’s happening on every single call – not just a small sample. You’ll be saving a ton of time and you’ll easily be able to get your hands on invaluable insights so you can act quickly and nip issues in the bud.

Heard something Emma’s saying that your customers love? Get all your agents on board! Noticed Dave’s using a certain phrase that’s rubbing customers up the wrong way? Make sure none of your other agents are using it. Spotted someone not sticking to scripts? Flag it straight away.

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What are the benefits of implementing agent scorecards?

When you think of traditional call monitoring methods, long and manual processes will likely come to mind. When this is the case, there’s no way you can listen to every single call. On average, around 6 calls per agent per month are monitored. This means you’re not getting the full picture of how agents are performing, what’s working, and what isn’t working.

Agent Scorecards make this a thing of the past. The results in the Agent Scorecards present an aggregated view of what’s happened on every call – not just the ones you have time to listen to. As a result, you can make better use of your time, better track individual performance, and quickly take action to get all agents performing like absolute superstars.

Here's a recap of what you’ll gain from using Agent Scorecards

• Automated process: Say goodbye to the days of manually listening to calls. Spend less time trawling through calls that don’t offer any insights and more quality time listening to calls that help you make a real difference to agent performance and implementing training.
• More engaged and productive employees: Agents want to know how well they’re performing, but around 58% of them don’t feel they get adequate training and support. Tailoring training programmes to help agents perform at their best is going to result in a much more productive and engaged team.
• Lower staff turnover: Staff turnover is notoriously high in contact centres (44%) and it can cost businesses up to 16% of gross annual earnings. To add to that, it takes about 6 months to ramp agents up which is long and costly. More engaged agents who get continued support and tailored training are a lot less likely to leave, and it can also act as a strong differentiator in a highly competitive and candidate-led market.
• Deliver better customer experiences and conversion rates: When agent performance is at its peak, the service they deliver will be, too. They’ll be sticking to scripts, asking the right questions, and getting more sales over the line. Moreover, you can actively reduce common friction points to make sure customers always get the best possible level of service.

Ready to build a team of Emmas and nail every sale? Start a conversation with us today to find out how to get started.