Is Your BPO’s Quality Declining? Here’s How to Fix It | BPO Health Check
The rising demand for business process outsourcing means that BPOs must maintain high-quality services to stay competitive in the industry.
If the quality of your BPO drops, it may lead to unhappy customers and lost businesses. Many BPOs experience declining efficiency, customer satisfaction, or compliance over time.
But what happens when quality starts to drop? Let’s identify the signs of declining quality and offer practical solutions to get your BPO on track.
Signs your BPO Quality is Declining
Some signs impact your BPO. To make your BPO shine, you should work on these signs and get yourself on top.
Reduced Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) means how well a product or service meets customer expectations. If CSAT decreases, more customers are unhappy with their experiences.
A higher CSAT score means that your agents are passionate enough to consistently meet expectations, build loyalty, and protect the reputation of the client and the BPO.
To maintain the best customer service scores, you should:
- Train on soft skills in areas like active listening and empathy.
- Use real-time insights to monitor service quality and intervene when it drops.
- Give regular feedback so they can adapt quickly and deliver positive experiences.
Average Handle Time (AHT)
Your AHT tracks how much time an agent spends resolving customer issues, including initial contact and after-call work. You can calculate your AHT once you have some data points. AHT includes your talk time, hold time, and after-call tasks.
To reduce AHT (without compromising on quality), encourage your agents with simplified workflows—it doesn’t matter if it is done through AI tools, automated processes, or access to a centralized knowledge base.
First Call Resolution (FCR)
A company’s first call resolution rate, sometimes called its first contact resolution rate, shows its ability to respond to a customer’s query, issue, or need the first time they contact them about that specific issue. If the first call resolution (FCR) were successful, follow-up would not be required.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer effort scores indicate how easy or difficult it is for customers to resolve their issues when interacting with BPO services. A high CES means customers may struggle due to long wait times, complicated processes, or unhelpful agents.
A low CES means customers find it easy to get help and resolve their issues quickly. To improve CES, reduce wait times, streamline processes, and train agents to handle queries efficiently. The easier the experience, the happier the customer.
To accelerate this metric, agents need:
- Focused training that enhances skills to lower customer friction.
- Integrated tools like your CRM and quick and easy access to knowledge bases.
- Better support from self-service tools like virtual agents, chatbots, and interactive voice response (IVR).
How to Fix Declining BPO Quality: A BPO Health Check
The most crucial factor is fixing your BPO health check, which will help businesses stand out and bravely face the industry’s competition.
Upgrade Technology & Automation
Using the outdated system in BPO can slow down operations and lead to errors. Upgrading technology helps streamline processes and improve efficiency.
- AI & Chatbots: Automate repetitive tasks like answering FAQs and routing calls to reduce agents’ workload, which is the crucial benefit of deploying AI-powered chatbots.
- Cloud-Based Solutions: Enable remote work and easy data access, improving flexibility and security.
- CRM & Analytics Tools: Track customer interactions, predict trends, and offer personalised service.
Strengthen BPO by Quality Assurance & Compliance
In the context of business process outsourcing (BPO), quality assurance (QA) involves monitoring, evaluating, and maintaining the quality standards of services or products while ensuring that the customer is fulfilled according to its requirements.
Key Components of Quality Assurance
BPO and contact center quality assurance consist of some key components that could positively affect their businesses.
- Quality Monitoring: Involves a QA team member monitoring interactions. This includes quality planning, quality improvement, and an overall analysis of the required quality processes.
- Performance Evaluation: It reflects adherence to predetermined interaction criteria and will vary depending on the interaction type. For calls, criteria include greetings, hold times, sticking to the script, and professionalism.
- Data analysis: Involves examining raw data to find important information that can help increase business performance. It also helps identify areas for improvement and informs targeted training and coaching initiatives.
- Training Programs: Training programs and coaching initiatives are an enormous component of the BPO quality assurance process. They enable agents to fill knowledge gaps, and guided and targeted training can help guarantee a successful program.
Conclusion
To stay competitive, BPOs must continuously monitor quality. They should regularly assess CSAT, AHT, FCR, and CES to spot issues early. They should invest in technology, training, and quality assurance to maintain efficiency. A proactive BPO health check ensures long-term success because quality isn’t an option in BPOs; it’s a necessity.