What Is Call Calibration? It’s Benefits and Best Practices

Excellent customer service is a must in today’s competitive landscape.😟 Customers have high expectations from call center agents, and failing to meet these expectations can lead to frustration and lost loyalty. 

Here comes call calibration for you. 💪 Aligning agents with quality standards fosters collaboration, boosts communication, improves call center performance, and elevates the quality of customer service.

In this blog, we’ll explore what call calibration is, its pros, and some best practices to ensure productive sessions. Let’s unlock the potential of effective call calibration for your business! 🚀

What is Call Calibration?

Call calibration is a joint process in which the customer support team reviews the recorded customer calls to ensure that every agent scores them similarly. Stakeholders, agents, supervisors, and Quality Assurance (QA) evaluators are involved in this process. 

During the process, the participating members review the customer calls to find out whether each call is scored based on the evaluation criteria. This meeting can either be a checkpoint to set new guidelines or a periodic check-in to ensure that current standards are being met consistently. 

The main purpose of call calibration sessions is to improve the interaction between the team, reduce misunderstandings, and create a joint approach to handling customer calls. It is crucial for boosting agent confidence and enhancing customer satisfaction.

What are the Benefits of Call Calibration?

Call calibration is essential for maintaining high-quality customer service. It brings together the team members by establishing clear standards for assessing calls.

Let’s see some of the key benefits of call calibration:

1. Consistency in Call Evaluations

The main advantage of call calibration is that it helps ensure that all the calls are evaluated consistently. During the meeting, the team comes together to set the call quality standard by reviewing the recorded calls. 

This ensures that each call is scored using the same benchmarks. Consistent evaluation helps agents trust the feedback they receive, motivating them to meet the desired expectations. 

2. Better Training and Coaching

The calibration sessions help analyze how the calls are handled. The QA teams and supervisors can pinpoint areas where the call center agents need to improve. These areas can be problem-solving, communication skills, and handling difficult customers. 

This thorough review helps the supervisor plan focused training and coaching programs to address these issues. Instead of general advice, the agents receive personalized training that improves their performance. 

3. Improved Customer Satisfaction

When call quality is evaluated fairly and agents are trained properly, the chances of them providing consistent, high-quality customer interactions increase. Customers are also satisfied with fast problem resolution, clear communication, and strong support. 

Customer satisfaction helps improve the QA score consistency, and o enhances customer loyalty as customers are more likely to connect with businesses through great customer response. 

4. Stronger Team Collaboration

Calibration session enhances team collaboration by bringing the stakeholders, supervisors, QA evaluators, and agents together in a single place for a conversation. In such sessions, everyone is free to share their thoughts. It helps in building transparency and trust among team members. 

Calibration establishes an engaging environment for knowledge sharing, mutual respect, and problem-solving, helping to improve the team dynamic.

5. Continuous Improvement

Call calibration is not done once; it’s an ongoing process that helps enhance continuous improvement. Regular calibration sessions keep the team informed about changing customer expectations and new quality standards.

This helps the entire team to maintain a focus on delivering excellent service. Additionally, the process also ensures that teams can adapt to any changes in the company goals or industry trends.

Best Practices for Implementing Call Calibration

Successful implementation of calibration sessions is crucial to provide excellent support to the customer. Here are some some best practices to implement them:

1. Establish Clear Standards

Setting quality standards before starting a call calibration session is a must. These clear standards serve as the base for consistently evaluating the calls. A clear quality standard should meet specific criteria, such as problem-solving skills, tone of voice, and overall customer experience. 

These standards give clarity to the team regarding a successful call. When the agents have a clear idea of what the company is looking for from them, they can implement it to meet the goals. 

2. Involve All Team Members

A call calibration can only be effective if it involves all the team members. All members, including stakeholders, QA evaluators, agents, and supervisors, must participate. Involving everyone in the meeting creates a collaborative environment where each member can share their insights.

For example, supervisors and QA evaluators can give guidance and standards. At the same time, agents can receive the guidelines and provide valuable feedback about their experiences while handling customers. 

3. Regular Calibration Sessions

To achieve a predefined goal, it is crucial to perform call calibration regularly. These sessions should be held at defined intervals (weekly or monthly). Regular sessions help discuss the most recent calls, review the new standards, and address ongoing and emerging challenges. 

4. Utilize Technology Tools

Modern and enhanced technology tools work as session facilitators to help enhance the calibration process. Businesses can make use of leveraging call center tools such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or Quality Assurance QA softwares. They can simplify the monitoring and evaluation processes. 

These call center softwares are often embedded with features allowing the team members to record calls, score performance, and more, saving time and minimizing human error. 

5. Document and Track Progress

Implementing a call calibration process only is not enough. Outcomes from such sessions should be properly tracked for best practice. Businesses must track if the session is helping to progress. 

Tracking progress is important for team members to understand how call quality evolves and identify gaps for improvement. 

Actionable Steps for Effective Call Calibration

Regular call calibration sessions are important for your business to ensure that the team delivers outstanding and consistent customer experience. Whether you are a part of the customer interaction team, sales force, or any support team, these sessions align everyone to the same standards. 

Let’s see some simple yet compelling steps to make your call calibration session more effective:

1. Preparing for a Calibration Session

Preparation is the major step for an effective calibration session. Dont start in a hurry; make yourself prepared and make sure that everything is ready to make the process productive. Here are some tips:

• Set Clear Goals: Figure out the session’s main goals. Some major goals can be to score metrics, improve tone, or standardize responses.
• Choose the Right Calls: Choose the right calls for reviewing. It should be a mix of calls representing various scenarios, such as easy, challenging, and typical. This is crucial to provide an aggregate and well-rounded discussion. 
• Share in Advance: Share the important documents, like the selected calls for review, with the participants so that they can come prepared for the session. 
• Invite the Right People: The session should include the right set of people. Encourage a mix of participants, such as agents, supervisors, stakeholders, and QA evaluators. 
• Create a Checklist: Before starting the session, make a checklist of what things to focus on during the session. It can be scores, tone, accuracy, or adherence to the process. 

2. Conducting the Calibration Session

After everything is prepared, now conduct call calibration sessions, keeping in mind that collaboration and focus are the main keys. The main goal of conducting call calibrations is the coordination between all team members. Here are some tips for conducting calibration sessions:

• Start with Objectives: Start the session by repeating the core goals and setting clear expectations for open communication. 
• Review Calls Together: Review the selected calls together. Play them and pause them at the places where discussion is needed. Encourage all the participating members to share their opinions. 
• Allow Open Discussion: Allow the members for constructive debate. If the thoughts differ, go for the standards rather than personal choices. 
• Document Insights: Take notes of every action in the session, such as agreements, points of debate, differences, and more. Highlight the excellent practices and also the things to improve. 

3. Post-Session Analysis

Only conducting the session and wrapping it up are not enough. The outcomes need to be analyzed properly and check if it has improved the performance. Here are some tips:

• Summarize Findings: Create a summary of the session, including the major findings, such as mutually agreed standards, best practices, and improvement areas. 
• Update Guidelines: Update any guidelines, if necessary, based on the session’s decision. 
• Share Feedback: Share this summary and updated guidelines with the team members. Focus on the major areas and encourage the team members for their contributions. 
• Train and Coach: If needed, train and coach the agents by sharing examples of aligned calls and encouraging them to learn from best practices. 
• Monitor Progress: Track the progress after the session. Also conduct a follow-up session to check if the standards discussed are met. 

Common Challenges in Call Calibration

Businesses can face some potential challenges while implementing call calibration. Knowing these challenges and having the knowledge to fix them is necessary. Here are some common challenges and how to deal with them: 

1. Resistance from Agents

One of the major challenges during the calibration session is agents’ resistance. Agents may get offended by the session if they think their performance is being undervalued. Agents can resist the session for various reasons, such as a lack of understanding of the evaluation criteria or worries about job security. 

Follow these steps to prevent and solve such challenges:

• Stakeholders and supervisors should make sure to create a supportive environment for all agents and understand their points of view as well. 
• Agents should also be clearly trained on the importance and purpose of call calibration. They should understand that the main point of the session is to improve, not penalize. 
• Involve agents in the process so that they feel more invested than offended.
• Provide both strong and weak points of agents equally to make a balanced environment. 

2. Maintaining Objectivity

Another challenge that can arise during calibration is ensuring that the evaluation and decision are objective and equitable. Evaluators and decision-makers can be biased and have subjective opinions, which can lead to inconsistent scoring.

To maintain objectivity  during calibration, the following steps can be implemented:

• Before starting the meeting, clearly define the criteria and guidelines for evaluations.
• Evaluators can be regularly trained and coached to help them understand the importance of objective assessments and encourage them to ignore their personal biases. 
• Involving multiple evaluators for a single call can offer a wider result, reducing individual biases. 

Conclusion

Call calibration is crucial for businesses looking to enhance their customer service quality. It helps bring all team members in one place and creates a culture of fairness and ongoing learning. 

Businesses can achieve excellent customer service and maintain high customer satisfaction by integrating the call calibration session the the company’s regular workflow. 

In addition, also integrate practices such as using bulk SMS for communication to streamline your approach. This ensures that all agents are engaged excellently. Let’s make every call count!  🎉

FAQs

What is a calibration session?

A calibration session is a meeting of call center agents, supervisors, stakeholders, and QA evaluators to review the recorded calls. The goal is to ensure consistent scores based on predefined standards. 

What is the purpose of the calibration?

The main purpose of the calibration is to bring the team members together, enhance call quality, improve agents’ performance, and ensure outstanding customer interactions. 

What do you mean by Call Calibration in BPO?

Call Calibration in BPO ensures that the outsourcing provider and clients agree on quality standards and expectations. It includes assessing team performance, addressing any gaps, and resolving issues.

Is Call Calibration necessary in BPO?

Yes, call calibration in BPO is essential for ensuring quality, maintaining consistency, training, performance measurement, and employee engagement.

How often should call calibration sessions be conducted in a call center?

The frequency of call calibration sessions depends on the specific needs of the organization, the performance levels of agencies, and the type of calls. 

It can be conducted weekly (for new agents and significant change), biweekly (for established teams), monthly (to focus on broader trends), and quarterly (to review overall performance).