Quality assurance (QA) is an essential part of any call center. It helps ensure service quality and brand reputation, and a consistent, positive experience for every customer.

However, maintaining these high quality standards is growing increasingly difficult, especially with more customers reaching out now than ever—and with higher expectations.

Adding a call center quality assurance checklist gives your agents and evaluators a structured tool to guide them through interactions and keep evaluations consistent and fair. They’re a great addition to your QA process to streamline processes, improve compliance, and give you deeper insights into agent performance.

In this blog post, we’ll cover what a call center QA checklist is (including a template you can use), how to customize and build one to suit your business needs, and how to get the most out of it.

What is a call center quality assurance checklist?

A call center QA checklist is essential to any quality assurance process, helping ensure that your agents are operating at peak performance. It’s a standardized document that lists all the criteria and standards they need to meet during customer interactions.

A solid quality assurance checklist covers different aspects, including:

• Call handling
• Communication skills
• Compliance
• Customer satisfaction
• And more

By implementing a contact center QA checklist, you can:

• Ensure consistent evaluations: A checklist helps ensure that every agent is evaluated using the same criteria, so you can eliminate biases and personal discrepancies in assessments.

• Identify areas where agents can improve: Pinpointing specific areas for improvement allows you to provide targeted feedback and tailored training sessions.

• Find weak spots in your customer experience: Regular assessments highlight patterns and recurring issues, so you can address them to improve customer satisfaction scores.

• Comply with regulations: Contact centers must adhere to specific regulations and standards no matter what industry you're in. A call center QA checklist helps you stay compliant, reducing the risk of costly fines, legal issues, and reputational damage.

Using a quality assurance checklist allows you to streamline your evaluation process, and improve both efficiency and customer experience within your call center. But what does one look like?

Call center quality assurance checklist template

The template below is by no means comprehensive—different organizations will, of course, have different needs—but it’s a solid, foundational QA checklist to get you started.

Let’s explore the key elements of a call center QA checklist.

#1. Call opening and greeting

This ensures that agents start each interaction on the right foot. Agents should greet the caller in a friendly, professional manner, introduce themselves, and set a positive tone for the call.

#2. Verified the caller

An agent should follow company procedures to verify the caller. These procedures can be company-specific (like verifying account information) and should be explained to the caller before verifying.

#3. Communication skills

Effective communication is the core of the customer experience. Agents should speak clearly and at an appropriate pace and use active listening skills. Additionally, they should avoid technical terms or jargon that the customer may not understand, keeping things simple.

#4. Product (or service) knowledge

Agents should be well-versed in the products or services they’re discussing and able to convey that knowledge in an easily digestible way. That means answering questions accurately and confidently and providing helpful and relevant information.

#5. Problem-solving and resolution

Call center agents should be able to identify customers’ needs and concerns quickly and effectively. Then, they should provide appropriate and timely solutions to their problems and follow through as necessary (such as taking action or following up).

#6. Professionalism

Maintaining a professional demeanor is essential, which often means staying calm and patient (even with frustrated customers). Agents should demonstrate courtesy, patience, and empathy while adhering to company policy and procedures—regardless of the call's context.

#7. Customer satisfaction

Agents should be able to gauge whether they met the caller’s needs and address all of their questions and concerns. Checking in with the customer is a great way to ensure a positive and memorable experience without overlooking other concerns.

#8. Compliance

Your agents should adhere to all relevant company policies and industry regulations for each interaction. This includes script adherence, legal disclaimers, obtaining customer consent and authorization, and documenting when necessary.

#9. Call closing and follow-up

A strong finish leaves a lasting impression. Agents should summarize key points, thank the customer, outline any additional steps if needed, and follow up with the customer if necessary.

Want to save a copy for yourself? Download a PDF of our call center QA checklist template here.

 

Different QA checklists for different interaction types

Sales calls

A sales QA checklist should evaluate the agent’s ability to build rapport, present product benefits, handle objections, and close the sale successfully. Metrics might include upsell success rates and adherence to sales scripts.

Customer service calls

Since these focus more on resolving custom issues and improving satisfaction, agents should use customer-focused skills. This includes a greater focus on call center soft skills like empathy, active listening, reassuring the customer, and maintaining a polite, friendly tone.

Technical support calls

Your call center QA checklist should cover diagnostic accuracy, clear articulation of steps, and technical expertise. This may also include ensuring the agent documented the issue for further reference or creating support tickets for outstanding issues.

Inbound calls

Since these are initiated by customers, your checklist should include agent understanding of why they’re reaching out and ability to address needs. It should also prioritize promptness, issue resolution efficiency, and the ability to handle unexpected questions and escalations.

Outbound calls

Outbound calls are typically proactive and might fall under sales, follow-ups, or surveys. A QA checklist should focus on the agent’s opening approach and ability to capture callers' attention and keep them focused on the outcome (like handling objections).

How to use a call center quality assurance checklist

A call center QA checklist is essential to delivering excellent customer service and ensuring consistent performance across all your agents. Let’s break down how to use one to make the biggest impact on your contact center.

• Call monitoring and recording: Start by monitoring and recording calls to provide a comprehensive view of your interactions. Without access to the calls, you’ll never be able to evaluate agent performance.
• Checklist evaluation: Use your checklist to assess different aspects of the call, such as script adherence, problem resolution, communication skills, and compliance. A detailed checklist ensures that nothing crucial gets overlooked.
• Give your agents regular feedback and coaching: Regular sessions with objective, constructive feedback based on these checklist evaluations help them understand their strengths and areas for improvement.
• Track and analyze performance: Keep records of QA evaluations to track individual agent feedback and performance over time. Analyzing this helps measure the impact of your coaching efforts and lets you make informed decisions.
• Integrate with QA software for efficiency: Your QA platform is your best tool to help improve your QA process, so why not use it? Integrated QA tools help you save time and money, simplify the evaluation process, and improve overall accuracy.

Creating your own call center QA checklist

Tailor to your business and industry

Every contact center is unique, so it's essential to design a call center QA checklist that reflects your business goals and industry standards. Ensure it aligns with your top key performance indicators (KPIs) and other business targets, and update it as your business needs change.

These KPIs can also change based on your industry. Tech contact centers might value first call resolution (FCR) and average handle time (AHT), while BPOs would want to track quality scores and service level agreement (SLA) adherence.

Additionally, you should factor in different compliance requirements for your industry. If you need to comply with regulations like HIPAA, PCI, CCPA, and GDPR, your checklists must include them.

Maintain and update regularly

A call center QA checklist isn’t a one-and-done list. Your aims might change over time, and your checklists should reflect that. Regularly review and revise your checklists alongside business goals to incorporate other KPIs or additional steps as processes change and evolve.

Collect feedback and data from your QA program and evaluators to update the checklists as your needs change. You can also tap into how your agents feel about the checklists and get their feedback, too, which can engage them in the process and give them a sense of ownership.

How to know if your checklist is working: metrics to measure

Using a call center quality assurance checklist is one thing—but how do you know if it’s making a difference? By tracking specific KPIs (whether through your QA platform or other means), you can get a deeper look at your checklists' impact and overall QA process.

Here are a few important call center metrics that you might want to track:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score: Measure how satisfied your customers are from interacting with your agents. High scores mean agents are meeting (or exceeding) customer expectations.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): This assesses customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend your company to others. A high NPS suggests that your service quality is good enough for customers to recommend you to others.
• First call resolution rate (FCR): FCR gauges the percentage of customers whose issues are resolved in the first call. Higher rates imply that agents handle calls effectively and minimize the need for follow-ups.
• Response time: The speed at which your agents respond to calls can significantly impact customer satisfaction. Tracking response times helps ensure that your team is providing timely support.
• Average handle time (AHT): This measures how long an agent spends on a call, from start to finish, including post-call work. Finding the sweet spot is key to balancing efficiency with thorough support.
• Agent adherence to scripts and processes: You’ll want to verify that your agents follow established processes and the scripts provided. Consistent adherence means that your agents deliver a consistent customer experience and comply with regulations and company policies.
• Escalations: Unfortunately, not all calls are positive. A lower number of escalations usually means your agents are well-equipped to handle tough interactions independently.

Evolve your call center quality assurance checklist

A QA checklist is an ideal way to help improve agent performance, enhancing service quality and customer experience. It gives call center managers, agents, and evaluators clear guidelines to follow, ultimately contributing to the overall success of your business.

Using a template is a great way to hit the ground running, with a basic outline of how your agents should perform. But if you want to get the most out of your call center QA checklist, build on it and make it your own with the tips provided.

And, if you want to take it to the next level, get in touch with Scorebuddy. We offer market-leading, purpose-built QA software that helps you save time, cut costs, and get a better ROI from your QA program.

Contact us today for a demo and try it yourself.