Monitoring your telesales associates is a critical factor in ensuring your telesales company's success. By monitoring their performance during customer interactions, centre management can identify strengths and weaknesses and provide telemarketers with additional support and training.

The first step in any quality assurance program is identification and documentation of specific, measurable goals. Clearly stated goals and benchmarks will provide guidelines for associate handling of customer requests. Before setting up telesales training or quality monitoring, define your centers objectives in clearly stated, specific, measurable terms.
"Provide Quality Service" is a value statement, not a performance objective.
Examples of measurable, specific performance measures are: answer an average of two calls per minute and receive 90% or above positive ratings from the consumer. Not only are these goals specific, but they let the associate know exactly what is expected. Set up your performance measures first, and then design telesalestraining programs to support the attainment of those goals.

After providing your telesales staff with the training and guidance needed to attain your stated performance goals, you will need to monitor them to evaluate their performance in a "live" environment. A call monitoring form should be developed to allow management to evaluate each call consistently and objectively. The company's performance measures should be the outline for the form. Monitoring forms should also link the behaviors being monitored to the performance objectives of the telesales team.

Examples of monitoring objectives and some possible performance objectives are:

Observed Behavior
1. Pleasant Greeting, use of Customer's name.
2. Controlling the conversation.
3. Correct use of Software, Data.
4. Asking if there is any other way to help, thanking customer.

Performance Objective
1. Customer satisfaction.
2. Encourage customer confidence.
3. Average talk time required.
4. Accuracy of response.

As you can see, the monitoring form can be directly linked to the stated performance objectives of the telesales and its clients. The form can also list specific training activities available to correct performance deficiencies.

This approach to call interaction monitoring has several benefits: allowing the associate to clearly see the link between customer interactions and performance objectives and the trainings and counseling available to correct these deficiencies. Instead of viewing the feedback punitive, the associates can view the monitoring review as an opportunity to obtain the training necessary to improve performance. Telesales staff can feel empowered to take responsibility for their own development.

Call monitoring is not a performance evaluation, merely a step in the evaluation process. The performance evaluation should be a separate process, with progress toward performance objectives clearly indicated. The purpose of the monitoring form is to document the agent s effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Removing a direct link between the monitoring sessions and the performance evaluation allows the associate to view monitoring as an opportunity to enhance their skills.

By setting the monitoring process up correctly, with clearly defined and measurable objectives, the call monitoring process can be a useful tool in your telesales company's development. Providing your telesellers with useful feedback that they can learn from allows them to develop into the customer service driven agents that your clients will value.

Source: John George Cole link