The Quality team has been known as a separate group in call centers but still very much into operations. But, is it really autonomous?
A typical organizational chart would show HR, Finance, Admin, and Training being detached from the rest. But looking at QA, it may or may not be under operations. Depending on the center’s mission statement and objective, it could also be removed altogether.
The quality personnel’s main objective is to monitor, evaluate transactions and coach agents. These are simple tasks that could become obsolete in an evaluator’s list and moved to a Team Manager . Analysis can be included to streamline the process. One other option would be to have QA evaluators just recommend action plans to the team, thus moving them under an operation’s supervisor.
But, the difference lies in determining real data that is accurate and unbiased.
The quality group is not directly accountable for the agent’s performance, which now makes sense to separate them. Think of it as a “check and balance” group. I call them the “show and tell” team. Whatever they hear and see, they report it to all departments, most especially to operations. They guide and strategize with the all groups to improve metrics. If you have unreliable data, then issues and obstacles will not be determined in order to fix them.
So, is it really autonomous? It should be. It may streamline some processes but remember, by knowing what’s out there sooner, we can improve everybody to drive change and make customers happy faster.
Jul 24, 2005Hello
I think you have a real great site. I always search for this kind of information online and i am glad to have cross your site. I look forward to all the updates. I have found a great web site, go to
http://ibcnews.blogspot.com“>http://ibcnews.blogspot.com
Thanks again.
Sep 8, 2005I’ve been in the call center quality business for 5 years now and this question still strikes me with on whether we should continue advocating an autonomous QA structure.
By experience, i have seen Team Leaders from the Operations group who solely rely on their QA for monitoring. A separate Quality group dedicated to just monitoring, immediate feedback and calibration creates this tendency: lack of team leader ownership into agent performance. Some call centers distinctly separate that monitoring be done by the QA and coaching has to be done by the Ops team. Here in the Philippines, this has led to agent confusion, misalignment of monitoring to coaching feedback, scoring disputes for the mere sake of dispute and calibration breakdown.
Although i must agree that the Quality organization within the company should be independent, it nevertheless helps to ensure seamless between Ops and QA.
As head of quality, what the team and i did on order to bridge this gap was to ensure that the Team Leads do more side-by-side monitoring while QA’s do random remote monitors. Frequent and intensive calibration sessions are held in order to ensure consistency and guideline treatment especially in coaching opportunities for the agent.
At the end of the day, what matters is that the agents are supported by meaningful coaching and feedback for their improvement and ultimately helping CSAT and brand loyalty.
4:49 PM
This is fascinating–read through your whole blog–used to work for Social Security when they just began their call centers–can’t be out sourced! Watched it a few times–was very stressful!