Creating and implementing a quality assurance (QA) program as it relates to the customer experience is a major undertaking for any company.

Having said that, a QA program is what will thoroughly appraise how internal processes and procedures are serving your customers, as well as how employees are handling communications with your customers.

A quality assurance program helps create company standards that apply to all customer interactions and sets clear goals to track and evaluate. This approach reduces non-compliance, poor customer experiences, and internal errors, which can help decrease customer turnover.

Key Takeaways: Building a Succesful QA Program

  1. Establish Clear Standards and Criteria: Begin by setting comprehensive standards for all customer interactions, incorporating relevant regulations and accreditation standards to serve as the foundation of your QA program.
  2. Implement Department-Specific Policies: Tailor policies and procedures to meet the unique needs of each department (e.g., customer service, sales), ensuring consistency and a unified approach across the company.
  3. Ensure Company-Wide Communication and Training: Communicate the QA program’s objectives and standards across the organization. Invest in thorough training sessions to empower employees to meet these standards and apply the program effectively in their interactions with customers.
  4. Monitor, Measure, and Report: Develop tracking mechanisms to monitor compliance and effectiveness. Use metrics such as customer retention rates, service efficiency, and cost savings to measure success and identify areas for improvement.
  5. Review and Update Objectives Annually: Continuously refine the QA program by reviewing its objectives at least once a year, allowing for adjustments that reflect changes in company goals, customer needs, and market dynamics.
  6. Create a Quality Committee: Form a committee representing all departments to foster a sense of ownership and accountability, encourage the sharing of ideas, and facilitate the implementation of program adjustments based on employee feedback.
  7. Implement Change Based on Insights: Use technology and data analytics to gather insights on customer experiences, then apply these insights to refine standards and practices, ensuring the QA program remains dynamic and effective.
  8. Leverage Technology for Insight Collection: Adopt tools like call recording and speech analytics to capture direct feedback from customers, providing a rich source of data for ongoing program refinement.

The Step-By-Step Process for Creating a QA Program

Here are a few steps to get started on building a QA program that aims to improve the overall processes within a company that ultimately makeup the experience that is encountered by the customer:
Step 1. The first step in creating a quality assurance program for your customer service, sales, or contact center departments is to set clear standards for your business overall, and criteria to meet those standards.
Be sure to include any relevant federal and state regulations that may apply to your industry as a starting point, including any applicable accreditation standards. The standards, as you define them, will become the basis of your company’s QA program.
Step 2. Next, set policies and procedures in conjunction with your standards, and that are department-specific (customer service, sales, service department, etc.), and then share those standards with all employees in the company so there is a sense of a cohesive front.
If it’s not possible to all meet together – either in person or via web conference – task each department or location head with rolling out the new QA program, using a 30,000 foot overview. Then, work with the various department heads and group supervisors to develop standard operating procedures to adhere to while interfacing with your customers that support your quality assurance programs.
Be sure to follow through with workforce training, broken into department meetings to meet individual nuances, so that employees are fully informed of the program, and are educated and empowered on the ways to implement the program while speaking with customers so that they can excel at meeting the standards and complying with the QA program.
Step 3. Create a description of the quality assurance program that is easy to understand and include it as the opening point of your company-wide training program. This document should include the objectives of the quality assurance program, the top-level criteria necessary to meet to adhere to the standards.
Develop tracking reports to measure and validate the progress and success of your company’s adherence to the program, using metrics like the decrease in monthly customer cancellations, reduction in time spent on the phone with customers, and factor in any cost savings as a result. Money talks – to all members of a company, no matter what department or job junction.
Review and add objectives to the quality assurance program at least once a year.
After you start ticking off all of the standards you are adhering to, you can find ones that need refinement, and new ones to introduce as the company and marketplace shifts to meet customer needs.
Step 4. Establish a quality committee that includes employees from every department. This will make them feel empowered to implement change and take action, and they can be the voice of their employees as well. For any employee, nothing is more empowering that sharing ideas or getting recognition for good work.
The committee should meet on a monthly basis at first, if possible, to share how the roll-out and acceptance of the quality assurance program is going, how it’s being perceived by employees, and then make changes if it makes sense.
At the same time, you can continue finessing the tracking reports to capture relevant data, and keep a pulse on the initial success of the program.

Step 5 is the most important! Implement change – company wide and in individual departments – based on insights learned. A QA program is only as good as the implementation of actionable insights.

Technology exists to capture the knowledge necessary to create a quality assurance program based on the current state of customer experience you are delivering. Using a call recording and speech analytic solution is an effective and affordable way to capture the voice of your customers to start analyzing their experiences in order to define the standards that will make up your quality assurance program.

What Makes a Great QA Program

A stellar QA program transcends mere oversight; it embodies the heart and backbone of exceptional customer experience. Its greatness lies in a comprehensive approach that meticulously evaluates and refines every customer interaction and internal process. Here’s the essence of what sets apart a high-caliber QA program:

  1. Holistic Standards: It doesn’t just patch problems; it redefines excellence across all customer touchpoints, weaving in regulatory compliance and industry benchmarks.
  2. Actionable Policies and Procedures: Beyond setting high-level standards, it breaks them down into actionable strategies tailored to each department, ensuring that every team member, regardless of their role, contributes to the overarching goal of unparalleled customer service.
  3. Dynamic Training and Communication: Recognizing that knowledge is power, the program invests in thorough training and open communication channels, ensuring every employee not only understands the QA objectives but also feels empowered to contribute to their achievement.
  4. Continuous Improvement Mechanism: It thrives on feedback, using data-driven insights to refine processes, address gaps, and adapt to evolving customer needs and market dynamics. This includes leveraging technology like call recording and speech analytics to capture the genuine voice of the customer.
  5. Inclusive Culture of Quality: By involving employees from various departments in a quality committee, it fosters a culture where quality is everyone’s business. This inclusion sparks innovation and ensures that the QA program benefits from a diverse range of perspectives.
  6. Implementation of Insights: The crux of its effectiveness lies in its ability to translate insights into action. It’s not just about identifying areas for improvement but actively pursuing excellence by implementing changes that resonate across the entire organization.