BONUS: Call Center Audit Checklist

2. Agent Efficiency

When it comes to analyzing individual call center agent efficiency, the following metrics might be helpful:

• Adherence to Schedule: a high rate indicates that an agent is sticking to their schedule and offering customer service when expected.  
• Maximum Occupancy Rate: determines how busy agents are, and whether a call center is overstaffed or understaffed.
• First Call Resolution: high FCR means high productivity since an agent takes less number of interactions to resolve issues.
• Quality Assurance Scoring: demonstrates the quality of calls and how good an agent is in call handling, problem solving, script adherence, following protocols and using proper call center etiquette.

3. Processes and Procedures

When assessing call center operations, verify that all procedures, policies and customer service processes are well-defined, well-documented, understandable and easily accessible to everyone in your call center team. For a more in-depth analysis, evaluate if all the steps in processes and procedures are necessary and relevant, and whether any of them can be combined or eliminated altogether.

4. Call Center Scripts 

Review your call center scripts to ensure they provide customers with accurate information, leaving no room for ambiguity, and that your agents are able to use them correctly and effectively to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. The following questions might be helpful in your evaluation:

• Are your call scripts well-crafted and worded in a simple language understandable by your target audience?
• Do you refresh your scripts whenever something changes within your company?
• Do you encourage agents to go off-script when they feel it’s more appropriate to the situation?

5. Call Center Recruiting

To ensure a steady stream of qualified applicants, your recruiting strategy should be robust, efficient and cater to the needs of your organization. When reviewing your recruitment process, evaluate the effectiveness, accuracy and relevance of the following:

• Your hiring criteria including the customer service skill set and qualifications required for every position.
• Job descriptions for the roles and whether they match with actual agent duties and responsibilities.
• Your pre-hire assessments, candidate background checks, interview structure and questions.

6. Agent Onboarding and Training

To fully leverage your call center resources, you need to have a solid agent onboarding and training program. Review your employee onboarding procedure to analyze its effectiveness in introducing policies, practices, software and helpful information to your new hires. When it comes to agent training, the audit should be able to identify whether your training program is addressing the right training needs and how effectively it can be tailored to individual agents’ requirements and skills gaps.

7. Employee Engagement

Audit employee engagement and internal communications in your call center by answering the following basic questions: 

• Do you recognize and reward the best agents? 
• Do agent rewards drive performance? 
• Do you identify poor performers? Are there processes in place to improve their skills?
• Do you provide the opportunity for agents to learn, develop and grow?
• Do agents feel that their opinions matter and count?
• Are agents faced with any pressure in the workplace?

8. Workforce Management

Conduct a workforce management review to ensure the right number of agents with the right skill sets are staffed at the right time. Apart from analyzing forecast accuracy, review how schedules are created, whether agent preferences are taken into account, and determine any issues that may be affecting the efficiency of the process of scheduling and assigning agents to shifts.

9. Agent Turnover

Calculate agent attrition (employee turnover) rate - a high number usually means higher costs of re-recruitment and re-training of replacements as well as lower productivity of new, inexperienced hires that can also have a negative impact on the level of service provided. If your turnover is excessive, you may need to conduct a more in-depth audit to determine the reasons. 

10. Customer Satisfaction

Measure customer satisfaction in your call center, which comes down to measuring the following most used metrics:

• Customer Satisfaction Score: considering that satisfaction scores can vary widely based on the type of CSAT question asked, the closer the number to 100%, the better.

• Net Promoter Score: though NPS scores can range between -100 and +100 – a score closer to +100 is considered good whereas a negative score means more customers are not likely to recommend you.

• Customer Effort Score: while the average score would be somewhere between 1-5, the lower the number, the better, meaning that customers have a low-effort experience.