Post Show: Exhibitor Report

The Evolution of Real-Time Digital QA

 

Quality assurance is everything in the contact center. From agent training and customer satisfaction to brand protection and fraud prevention, QA affects key performance indicators across the board. Traditionally, QA has been mostly reactive, with coaching and correction happening after errors are discovered. Wouldn’t it be nice to prevent more mistakes before they happen? Enter: Real-time digital QA. 

 

Nextgen technology, including agent assist tools and real-time AI oversight, can help contact centers take a proactive approach to quality assurance. This technology has the power to shorten classroom training time while simultaneously increasing agents’ confidence on the floor, and coaching and development can focus on more complex skills or concepts rather than reviewing workflows. Plus, with the rise of work-from-home and remote employees, proactive digital QA supports agents while providing brands with oversight and fraud protection.

 

How Digital QA Delivers Proactive Solutions

 

Nextgen technology, such as Laivly’s platform-agnostic agent assist tool, takes QA out of arrears and puts it onto the agent’s desktop in real time. Digital QA delivers notable improvements across virtually all KPIs and metrics, including:

 

    • Average handle time (AHT)

    • Appeasement and concession accuracy

    • Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)

    • Speed-to-green and average training time

    • Policy enforcement and escalations

 

Just as self-service can’t replace a live customer service agent for everything, digital QA works best when paired with empathetic human coaching and nuanced resolutions. But together, this evolution of proactive quality assurance stands to truly change the game.

 

More Time for True Coaching and Development

 

How does your contact center currently approach QA? If you’re like most, team leaders review calls after the fact and coach agents on what went right and what could be improved. At this point, the damage has already been done, and coaching is an attempt to prevent the same mistake from happening again.

 

Coaching and development serve an important purpose for agents, leaders, and brands. However, as a means of QA—especially as the only means—this reactive approach is inefficient. Attended automation tools allow for real-time course correction, which can be reinforced through in-person coaching. Time that would have otherwise been spent going over mistakes can now focus on soft skills and more nuanced concepts to enhance the customer service experience.

 

Ongoing Training via Proactive Digital QA 

 

Depending on the program, newly hired agents face weeks of classroom training, often followed by a period of highly supported, extensively coached live training on the floor. Some programs follow this “nesting” period with even more classroom training. In any case, the transition from trainee to live agent is uncomfortable. Attrition rates reflect this, as agents find themselves struggling to remember everything they learned—not just the complex policies or product knowledge, but where to find this information and how to navigate the CRM and other programs.

 

Even seasoned agents forget key elements of their training or develop bad habits to boost productivity. Attended AI can provide ongoing training for all agents by guiding them through workflows, suggesting knowledge base articles or appropriate next steps, and automating repetitive or low-value tasks. 

 

So much of an agent’s training is simply learning workflows. When attended AI guides and supports them through workflows in real time, agents regain the cognitive bandwidth to provide more attentive, empathetic customer interactions.

 

Remote and Work-From-Home QA Challenges

 

If in-person training and coaching are already challenging, how do you set up agents for success when they are working remotely? Agents may feel isolated, amplifying the discomfort of transitioning out of training. Remote work also removes a level of oversight, which opens the door to more unintentional—or intentional—errors. In plain terms, there is a greater risk for mistakes or fraud.

 

With the right attended automation technology, brands can protect themselves from fraud without encroaching on an agent’s sense of autonomy. On the contrary, an attended automation platform can help a WFH agent feel supported and empowered while providing noninvasive yet ironclad oversight. The outcome? Happier agents and dramatically lower invalid expenses.

 

Laivly transforms the customer experience by transforming the agent experience. Visit laivly.com to learn more about attended AI and automation or request a demo.