Standardized processes provide contact center staff with a standardized environment in which to focus on their jobs and know exactly where their responsibilities lie.
A properly implemented quality management process may also increase customer satisfaction and foster increased loyalty from their customer base.
Doing it right the first time can be daunting, but creating a quality management program does not need to be an uphill struggle! These eight steps will assist your customer support team in building its QA testing from the ground up.
1. Set Standards And Goals For Your Customer Service
Stephen Covey, one of the best-selling leadership and management book authors, always advises his readers to start from the end in mind when setting goals for contact centers and contact management departments.
Create an image in your mind of how the results of these improvements should continue and determine your next steps when creating quality management practices for agents by visualizing what direction your QM should move in.
Imagine what service you would like to provide your customers and use this exercise as a basis for setting quality objectives.
- What outcomes do your customers desire from you?
- What type of service would you like your customers to experience?
- What should be the overall impact of every contact center interaction on customer satisfaction?
- What role can customer service departments play in building customer loyalty?
- What should they feel after our call, live chat session or other digital interaction?
- What actions would you like your participants to take after or during this interaction?
- What would you like your customers to take away from their experience with your service?
Consider how your team can bring these outcomes alive for customers to enhance service quality, when creating your quality management program.
Agents need to demonstrate specific behaviors if you wish for these outcomes to materialize.
Establish clear goals and standards that define your team as a customer-service team over the long haul. What KPIs (Key Performance Indices), like First Contact Resolution or Service level will you measure? Additionally, what results should be expected? These metrics may even be included as performance scorecard metrics!
Once you have established all the specifics of quality in your work, set forth standards and goals with regard to every facet.
Dont be shy about offering constructive criticism to agents working towards meeting these targets!
2. Establish Policies And Procedures For Each Department
To achieve quality in the company, all departments and levels must take part in its implementation of your new quality policy.
Develop procedures tailored for every department or level so everyone can participate and take responsibility in upholding it.
Quality policies must clearly outline how to respond in various scenarios, along with expectations regarding attendance, overtime work hours and behavior on the job.
Procedures should address everything from how agents will interact with customers to when and how feedback should be expected - make sure your quality metrics are included here too!
If your organization doesnt already have one, consider creating a Standard Operating Procedures Manual to store policies and procedures once finalized.
All processes relevant to your team will then be easily accessible via this central repository.
3. Share The News
After creating and outlining an organizational quality plan, communicate to staff the new expectations regarding quality and procedures.
Before making a public announcement, consult each department leader about implementation plans before proceeding further with an announcement.
By speaking with your managers, you can prepare them for any upcoming changes and allow them to better assist employees at the front lines and answer any queries from employees.
A solid start will contribute significantly towards long-term success and quality plans.
Your team should be informed about your quality management plan and ready to answer any questions regarding it. In cases with few modifications being implemented to quality goals, managers may only have to explain this change directly to employees themselves.
You should devote extra time if this is your inaugural formal quality management program, possibly holding an all-hands meeting to review its contents and assess any gaps or potential areas for improvement.
Start off explaining these efforts by discussing quality management (QM). Be sure to emphasize its significance for meeting customer expectations, customer loyalty and satisfaction as well as discussing any major changes that will alter those expectations in the future.
For a successful QM initiative and increasing customer retention its crucial that everyone in the office works together towards building it up together!
4. Follow The Procedures
Join forces with various department heads and implement new policies and procedures; this may involve agent training sessions, one-on-ones with employees or continuous employee feedback.
At first, doubts may surface; though all parties involved share a long-term goal of building customer loyalty, initial questions or voiced concerns from both managers and frontline employees will likely arise about your plan.
Your job is to address them both immediately.
Regular monitoring and reporting will assist with ensuring compliance with new procedures; here, quality management solutions become indispensable.
Create a date and timeline for transitioning from old to new quality management systems, then notify all employees in advance.
On switch day itself, announce to everyone involved that QM starts on shift 1 immediately - to ensure everyone remains on board!
Managers may need to remind agents if theyre having difficulty with implementing the new plan in its initial few weeks; quality management makes a major impactful statement and presents all an opportunity to learn something.
Even after extensive training, employees may lapse back into old ways of operating and need reminding to live up to your standards set out for them.
Although you might wish for instantaneous improvements in customer satisfaction scores, remembering this phase takes time should help your success aspirations.
5. Get Feedback
Organize a meeting and gather feedback from managers soon after youve implemented new standards, then ask them to meet with their teams in order to gain feedback about them.
By encouraging 360-degree feedback you will empower all levels within your organization while decreasing turnover rates while improving service.
As you develop and modify your QM plan, take an approachable and solution-focused approach in your sessions. Dont use meetings as a forum for managers to complain and voice complaints - instead provide them with the space to discuss issues and raise concerns in an atmosphere conducive to productivity and customer service.
Reminding team members about quality management will enable you to meet customer expectations is just as essential!
Focus on long-term goals related to customer satisfaction, high-quality standards and loyalty exhibited by your organizations customers.
Utilize quality scorecards for management to help remind everyone involved in what the goals of the organization should be.
At these sessions, its okay if comments or questions arise that need further investigation, or opportunities exist for developing more clearly defined procedures.
Theyre meant simply to help you gain a greater insight into internal processes; not solve problems directly.
6. Measure Results
Analyze and evaluate an agents performance and customer satisfaction while collecting feedback to gauge progress made through well-defined procedures.
Review customer interactions as part of quality audits in order to monitor KPIs properly.
Before setting out your Quality Management (QM) plan, establish goals and expectations, as well as evaluate whether these have been fulfilled within their expected timelines.
It is also critical to assess results which were in good state before any change took place, to make sure your team has improved its overall quality while not impacting previous positive results. This way you will ensure they improve without impacting existing positive ones.
7. Communication Of Results
Staff motivation can only increase with knowledge that their actions have made an impactful contribution to an organization, so regularly reporting quality management results is an effective way to maintain buy-in that has taken so much work on both your part and theirs.
Frontline employees can directly contribute to increased customer satisfaction levels that in turn enhance loyalty among your customer base.
Tell employees the impact they had on your company, especially how their contributions helped establish new standards of quality and operating procedures.
Empowering and motivating staff will allow them to embrace your vision while meeting even the highest customer expectations.
Reinforcing the message even further is rewarding those who adhere to your plan with exceptional results. Achieving positive outcomes is paramount both to customer service and company profitability; have your team follow and give feedback as required on the plan, rewarding compliance regardless of results achieved.
Verify the understanding of any changes among managers. Discuss and resolve any quality management misunderstandings both among yourself and directly.
8. Just Adjust As Needed
Remember when creating QM policies and procedures they were all theoretical. Once feedback and results from quality processes have been collected its important to assess any gaps or areas for improvement so as to adjust procedures - this could include gathering more feedback, improving training or conducting deeper analyses on customer experiences.
Hold a meeting to explore ways you can increase employee performance and reach service goals, making any necessary modifications in the quality control department such as revising business standards which may not be working effectively; provide information to managers if there are things which you cannot change; however beware if anything remains unchanged; this might cause confusion for managers who might mistake your program details as something different altogether!
Apply changes to the digital or printed document that outlines your policies and procedures - this may include formal SOPs as well as list of new quality control rules - with quality experts reporting back from different departments for any possible concerns that arise.
What is QA Testing?
Quality Assurance Testing ensures the excellence of products and services provided to consumers. A qualified Quality Assurance group reviews specific requirements related to designing, developing and manufacturing reliable products so as to increase a companys credibility with clients while expanding its ability to compete successfully within competitive markets.
Simply stated, quality assurance testing (QA testing) is an invaluable way of detecting problems with your product and creating an enjoyable user experience for customers.
Therefore, organizations must ensure their processes meet quality standards set for software products.
Why Do You Need Third Party QA Testing Services?
No matter whether or not your business already employs its own internal testing team, independent QA testing companies offer many advantages to businesses and software projects alike.
In this article we will give an introduction into independent testing before delving deeper. This serves as an overview for what follows below!
Things It Does Give You The Expertise And Skills You Need.
Business should never feel guilty for seeking high-grade quality assurance services!
To thoroughly and reliably test software to guarantee its highest quality, one needs a certain set of skills. Even with a top-of-the-line in-house QA team that includes experienced members equipped with appropriate testing protocols and experience may not suffice when it comes to quality assurance.
Third party testing services provide the ideal way to ensure the quality, performance and functionality of software is thoroughly assessed.
Their experienced personnel specialize in manual, load, security and automation testing to deliver this level of assurance for any project.
Hire us and benefit from hiring an QA testing provider with industry experience, client certification and innovative testing strategies for quality assurance testing! You will gain access to an in-house team that understands all the latest technological trends as well as testing strategies and quality standards for compliance testing.
By outsourcing quality assurance services to an outside provider, you are shifting responsibility for determining software life cycles onto those with more resources and experience than yourself.
Read More: Benefits & Importance of Quality Assurance in Software Development
The System Reduces The Cost Of Acquisition And Maintenance; It Also Allows For Easy Scaling
Businesses often choose third-party QA testing providers because it saves them both time and money. Businesses can avoid the lengthy hiring, training and advertising processes to find qualified testers; additionally they save both on acquisition costs as well as lifetime costs by outsourcing.
As soon as QA testing of your project has been completed, you may no longer require their services or hire them only before major new builds.
Beginning the software development process by selecting professional, independent third-party testing early can allow you to identify and address any potential problems your product might experience over time.
Fix any product issues before your customers discover and complain about them on review boards - doing this could save both you and your company from losing money! Without proper quality assurance measures in place, companies could risk incurring even greater financial consequences!
You Can Focus More On Your Business
Quality Assurance testing takes up a substantial amount of your time and energy; independent test benefits include outsourcing the heavy lifting for you.
Independent third-party teams will take care in meeting all your testing requirements - software testing, quality assurance testing (QA testing), testing automation testing (TA), etc - so that you can focus on managing and growing your core business processes without worry or distraction from testing needs.
Focus your energies on marketing your product more effectively to the target audience and generating maximum revenues, rather than worrying about QA testing.
Hiring an independent third-party QA team ensures that the quality or performance of software applications you hire meets expectations after being hired.
Do Chefs Certify Their Own Dishes?
Are You Familiar With Software Testing Ethics? A developer should never test his/her own code as certified for testing purposes, though striving for bug-free development.
Testing software against market standards however requires different skills.
One common saying cautions chefs against certifying the dishes they create; theres always the possibility they wont be impartial when reviewing.
Software testers, too, shouldnt certify software they developed together for certification by themselves or with others on their team.
Companies often outsource quality assurance testing to external third-party agencies for many good reasons! You or the team that developed software may have bias when testing it themselves; unbiased approaches will better detect flaws or glitches within software programs than biased perspectives alone can.
So eliminate bias!
Identification of software flow is vitally important to its success; independent test agencies specialize in this endeavor and should have no hesitation doing this task on behalf of their client.
It Helps To Discipline The Whole QA Testing Process
All of us become more alert the moment we realize someone is watching, or when their work will be reviewed, because when this knowledge hits home they tend to increase in carefulness and diligence.
Consider yourself as an example. Your driving will become more prudent once you become aware that there are speed cameras, police or traffic signals along your route.
Once your team understands that its software development project will be independently checked for bugs and flaws, theyll use extra care when creating it.
It Ensures That The Results Are Independent, Unbiased And Uninfluenced
Are your in-house quality assurance (QA) testers reporting directly to the manager of software development?
An unexpected interruption to a software development project is disastrous - in essence it means suicide for it! With no access to testing teams for assistance or feedback from engineers/leads/QA testers who report directly back issues/bugs directly back into development teams for resolution it becomes virtually impossible for your QA engineers and leads/QA leads/QA leads etc to effectively utilize testing resources effectively enough for maximum effectiveness of this QA testers reporting issues/bugs directly back out.
Independent Quality Assurance testers possess a distinctive mindset when compared to in-house testers, being freed of inhibitions that prevent honest analysis - thus justifying why an independent testing team should be established.
Independent quality assurance testers may detect more mistakes than testers working within a software development team.
It Provides An Impartial Report
Do you value impartiality when it comes to software testing results? Independent third-party testing ensures there are no biases present within any work done on it.
Nothing but accurate and honest analysis is used, from data to metrics and reports. Isnt QA testing meant to reveal quality code?
Independent testing offers you a fair, impartial evaluation of the code quality, design, performance and behavior as well as any critical vulnerabilities present.
Third party quality assurance testing providers must accept responsibility for any bugs discovered during testing or any code quality issues identified as being below standard.
It Improves The Final Quality Of Your Product
Third-party testing is essential to producing top quality software. A quality assurance (QA) testing procedure must ensure your program adheres to higher standards, but using an outside team poses no risk of compromise in regards to quality standards.
In-house quality assurance teams may compromise product development by prioritizing requirements from the development firm over customer requirements, while professional QA service providers dont do this.
Furthermore, in-house QA teams tend to set their quality goals with respect to the organization rather than customer, where professional QA firms focus on making goals reflective of audience preferences and needs.
Independent testing teams consistently prioritize customer needs over those of any development company when conducting product and quality requirements testing.
Best Practices for Third-Party QA Testers
A quality assurance process is essential to achieving a high-quality end product. Here are some best practices for 3rd-party QA testing to help you improve your quality assurance.
1. Before Testing, Build A Product Knowledge And Application Knowledge That Is Robust
As part of testing, third-party applications may often be misconstrued as product problems that negatively impact testing efforts and speed to market.
Before embarking upon test scenarios, it is vital that the QA Team gathers in-depth knowledge across all domains.
Before conducting actual scenarios.
2. Plan Your Testing And QA Process In Detail
Software testing should be planned, defined, and documented carefully to achieve successful outcomes.
Good documentation can be an effective means of improving communication and upholding quality within software development teams, while at the same time sharing important documents with clients or stakeholders such as:
Test plan
- Supported platforms
- Release Notes
- Test cases/Checklists
3. Quality Improvement Is The Focus
Quality assurance (QA) is an approach which strives to assure all parties involved of the superior quality of a final product or service.
Quality Assurance testing should focus on optimizing software development processes to achieve maximum quality in their final products.
4. Use Effective Methodologies
An effective software quality assurance testing methodology can significantly lower the overall costs associated with software lifecycle.
By verifying compliance to all requirements and standards, software QA testing methods ensure life-critical products meet them all.
Important to the development process is defining all processes involved with its production. Any deviation should be eliminated as soon as possible to ensure timely development and product completion.
5. Prioritize Risk Management With Quality Assurance
Contrary to popular belief, quality is more than testing alone - it encompasses numerous activities, processes and risk management techniques designed to guarantee product excellence.
Quality monitoring and risk control are the cornerstones of effective quality assurance.
6. Use Testing Strategies Based On The Requirements
As part of performing various types of tests for security, mobile, Agile development processes, Big Data analysis and analytics purposes.
You must adopt various testing approaches.
As part of any testing strategy, using a requirements-driven approach is of critical importance for system/app testing as well as for calculating testing effort estimates.
7. Test Early And Test Often
QA testing aims at integrating testing into each phase of the project life cycle in order to detect problems as early as possible.
Qualified engineers test products during each stage to make sure new features are viable before they identify any issues during the testing process.
Early testing often necessitates ongoing inspection to make sure the agreed upon standards and procedures are being abided by.
8. You Can Also Find Out More About The Automated Vehicles
Searching for new ways to automate repetitive test cases is always beneficial; but that does not necessarily require spending lots of money on automating everything.
Hire a service provider offering test automation and install servers capable of managing automated tests.
9. Get It Right The First Time With Practice
Mistakes happen even with stringent requirements; software testing provides an opportunity to reduce potential errors from occurring by making it right the first time around.
At the outset of any project it is critical that one can accurately define their goals, and create solutions which reflect these.
Bottom Line
Make sure that all products manufactured or distributed by your business undergo stringent quality tests regardless of size or type.
This will enable them to stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
To achieve success with quality assurance testing, it is vital that you use appropriate practices. When setting out to implement best practices in this regard, various processes and risk mitigation tactics must be utilized.
Focusing on continuously monitoring product/software quality throughout its release lifecycle should help maintain top performance standards.
Professional QA testing companies can be invaluable resources to your business.
When conducting quality assurance tests, quality assurance engineers should adhere to industry practices and fundamentals while taking into consideration end user perspectives when performing quality tests.
