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What is “Call Scoring”?
Call scoring is the process of assigning scores to business phone calls to determine their potential value as a lead. Call scoring ranks agents calls based on defined criteria to help you deliver the best experience possible to your customers.
The scores are based on specific indicators. These may include:
- Automated call rating systems
- Agent politeness
- Assessing customer needs
- Set an appointment or clear the next steps
- Industry benchmarks
- Company Metrics
- And more!
Call scoring evaluates the quality of customer interactions with an agent or representative. It involves grading the call based on factors such as:
- tone of voice
- communication skills
- department specific-criteria
- Helpfulness
- Contact information of the caller
- Following company guidelines
Calls can also be categorized. This can help better understand how valuable a lead is. Factors include:
- Length of the call
- The caller’s location
- The day and time of the call
- Keywords spoken during the call
- Outcome of the call
What are the benefits of Scoring Calls?
1 Answer Return On Investment (ROI)
The goal of call scoring is to help businesses prioritize and follow up on the most promising leads, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts.
2 Measure Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
By implementing call scoring specific to your business, you can measure your representatives following standard operating procedures.
For example, you may focus your customer service efforts on building customer rapport. Using metrics such as:
- Call Politeness
- Determining Needs
- Building credibility
- Asking for the callers name
- Sentiment Analysis
Call Scoring vs Lead Scoring
Call scoring should not be confused with lead scoring, which focuses on scoring potential customers based on their online behavior and demographic information.
The goal of call scoring is to provide insights into customer experience and to improve customer service quality being provided by call center representatives.
Call scoring is an essential tool for businesses to evaluate the performance of their call center representatives. It’s a process that involves grading the quality of customer interactions based on predefined criteria.
Lead scoring is the practice of ranking leads based on set criteria. This can include how likely they are to purchase, past history, age, demographics, interests, and other data which can be collected. This helps companies prioritize the most valuable leads, and maximize their revenue.
How does Call Scoring benefit call centers and enterprises?
Call scoring benefits call centers and enterprises by:
- Making it easier for agents to handle calls efficiently.
- Higher rates of customer satisfaction
- Increased Customer Retention
- Faster Ticket-resolved times
- Increase in close rates from representatives
- Legal protection
- Compliance regulations
- Better privacy for customers
- Maximize ROI by pinpointing campaigns that produce the best results
- Provide agents and representative with progress reports and evaluations.
- More accurate training and onboarding materials.
- Integrate call scoring with other systems and software (Such as Call Monitoring or Vanity Numbers)
Call Scoring Advancements
As technology and automation improve, call scoring is poised to play an even more critical role in the future. In this article, we’ll look at five reasons why call scoring is important, five facts about its future, and what businesses can learn from it.
Understanding Customer Experience: Call scoring helps businesses understand your customer’s experience. It provides valuable insights into what customers like and dislike when talking with your company. You can use this data to improve the overall customer experience.
This data, using tools such as Convirza, can be integrated into reports and dashboards. This helps you to know exactly what Customers are looking for, guiding you to deliver the best experience.
Improving Quality of Service: By evaluating representatives’ performance, businesses can identify areas for improvement. This helps to increase the quality of service that customers receive, reducing the number of complaints and increasing customer satisfaction.
These can be personalized by department (sales, other customer service agents, marketing, etc), industry, company, and more. This allows even the largest companies to receive the exact metrics an individual agent needs.
Employee Development: Call scoring can help employees develop their skills and improve performance. By providing regular feedback, businesses can help their representatives improve their communication skills and develop new techniques to better handle customer interactions.
Take a look at how this company implemented call scoring (Video)
Compliance Monitoring: Call centers are often subject to regulations, and call scoring can help ensure that comply with these regulations. It can be used to monitor calls for things like privacy concerns and compliance with company policies.
Common compliance includes:
- HIPPA
- Credit Card Information over the phone
- PCA Compliance
Data-Driven Decisions: Call scoring provides valuable data that can be used to make informed decisions. Businesses can use this data to analyze their call center operations, identify trends, and make changes to improve their performance.
Best Practices for Scoring Calls
You want your scored calls to be as accurate and precise as possible. You want every agent to be scored consistently.
Call scoring criteria help ensure your agents are evaluated fairly. Scoring every call provides an objective assessment on achievements. It wil also allow you to compare agents against one another. Game-i-fying sales and call scoring customer service agents has been shown to significantly increase employee satisfaction.
Here are best practices on scoring your representatives to help them boost their performance:
#1 Implement customer feedback
“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” – Henry Ford
There is nothing more valuable than feedback from customers! Call scoring provides means to implement those changes into your business.
It will also give you valuable insights into your customers experience.
#2 Help under-performers
Call scoring allows you to identify employees who may be struggling. This also provides managers a roadmap for exactly what needs to be done to get them back on track.
Accountability, combined agent training with measured performance, helps under-performers improve.
#3 Use real-time statistics
Statistics in real-time help your agents track their growth. It is motivating to see how other team members are doing. Seeing how you are performing and areas you can improve leads to increased output over time.
#4 Continuously train all your representatives
”Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them yourself.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
It is unrealistic to expect your teams to improve without telling them what they can improve on! Consistent training helps your teams recognize and develop the skills necessary for success.
Scoring calls gives the data to back up these decisions. It helps give real examples of things that were done well or poorly. It gives actions to learn from and measurable outcomes.
#5 Necessary feedback for every agent
Agents need to know when they are doing something good. This helps reinforce actions that help your company and clients have a good experience.
At the same time, poor actions such as slow reply times, rude tone of voice, and unfriendliness can be a huge turn-off. Timely feedback helps low, medium, and high performers get the constructive feedback they need to improve.
#6 Tools for high-performers to continue succeeding
As the famous saying goes, 80% of your revenue comes from just 20% of your sales force. The same goes with output from customer service and other phone-based teams. Call scoring gives unique and specific information so they can keep producing value for customers.
Tips on how to make the best use of call scoring benefits
#1 Provide the most value to your callers
In addition to improving your customer experience, monitoring calls will help you have insight into your callers’ needs.
By using real-time call monitoring, you can see how customers are responding to different agents and different communication techniques.
You can monitor and score calls in real-time. Based on their reaction, you can tell which communication technique works best for your caller.
Simple things, such as matching the caller’s tone or keyphrases they may have missed. This can be picked up by AI analysis, and the related information in the employee’s scorecard can give them material relevant to their needs.
Call monitoring software allows you to listen to calls without interrupting your agents or callers. This is especially valuable for call and contact centers with large numbers of agents.
You can, in real time, listen to the call recordings your representatives and give them feedback on how to improve. You can record these calls as examples to share with others. If you have a suggestion to make to your agent, there is also an option that allows you to whisper information to him without notifying the caller.
Additionally, you can also join calls where you can interact with both the agent and the caller, should they require your assistance.
Call scoring can be used for brainstorming, too. With your agents, you can review calls step-by-step and see what can be done to improve these conversations and, by extension, customer experience.
Another benefit is that by listening to agents’ morning, afternoon, and evening calls, you can also see how fatigue affects the quality of their interactions. You can work together to find the best solutions.
#2 Encourage healthy competition between your agents
Call scoring encourages healthy competition between your representatives. Benchmarking agent performance is key to knowing when it is increasing or decreasing. When you reward agents that perform the best, companies tend to see an all-around improvement in their teams.
This will help boost your agents’ confidence and keep them motivated to improve their performance. Those who are not high-performing, can see scores and examples from employees so they can repeat their successful actions.
This can help boost their creativity as they think of additional ways to provide better customer service.
This way, call monitoring and scoring will become a competition where everybody wins. It’s a great way to keep your customers happy and satisfied with your services.
The future of call scoring:
Five facts about the future of call scoring:
Increased Use of AI: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are already playing a big role in call scoring, and this trend is set to continue. AI can automate the call-scoring process, making it faster and more accurate.
Hybrid Scorecards
A hybrid scoring system mixes human and machine call scoring. The AI learns how humans score calls, which it incorporates into its algorithm. This allows companies to make highly-specific scoring decisions.
Expansion to Other Channels: Call scoring is currently mainly used for voice calls, but it is expected to expand to other channels, such as email and chat, in the future.
Integration with CRM Systems: Call scoring will be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, providing a complete view of customer interactions across all channels.
Improved Accuracy: With AI, the accuracy of call scoring will continue to improve, providing businesses with even more accurate insights into their call center operations.
Increased Personalization: Call scoring will become more personalized, taking into account the specific needs and requirements of each business. This will allow businesses to get even more value from the data they collect.
Call Center Scoring Scorecard
A scorecard is a tool that measures and evaluates performance based on a set of predefined criteria.
Scorecards are used to track and analyze progress towards business objectives. This is done by using a set of metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). These evaluate performance and track progress over time.
Examples of metrics used in scorecards may include:
- Agent Politeness
- Stating their name
- Empathizing with the customer
- Getting Contact Information
- Legal disclaimers (Such as medical disclaimers)
- Following Company Policy (Such as a script)
- Tone of Voice
- Hold Time
- Call Abandonment rate
- Customer Resolution
In the context of call centers, a scorecard is used to measure and evaluate the performance of call center and agents performance. This means assessing the quality of a call based on a set of predefined criteria.
These benchmarks can be used for training, setting bonuses or quotas. This provides a standard for every representative to follow, promoting consistency and easy onboarding.
Call scoring is an essential tool for businesses to evaluate the performance of their call center representatives. With the rise of technology and automation, it is poised to play an even more critical role in the future. By understanding the customer experience, improving the quality of service, helping employees develop their skills, monitoring compliance, and making data-driven decisions, call scoring will continue to be a valuable tool for businesses.
3 Ways Sales and Marketing Benefit from Call Scoring
Lead scoring is commonly used by marketers, but call scoring provides unique insights about customers that can’t be obtained elsewhere. By leveraging this information, sales and marketing teams can make data-backed decisions on advertising spend, content creation, and channel selection. Let’s explore three ways call scoring can help increase quality leads, drive conversions, and boost ROI.
Understanding the Customer’s Journey Stage:
To reach your audience with the right message at the right time, it’s crucial to know the stage of the customer’s journey when they make a call. This insight helps determine the appropriate follow-up process and increases the chances of connecting with them at the right moment with the relevant information. For instance, if call scoring reveals that a caller is in the early stages of the customer’s journey, your team can send follow-up emails containing resources to help them learn more about your company and products. Providing valuable content after the call can make a significant impact on converting prospects into future customers.
To identify the customer’s journey stage, consider the following:
Type of content viewed: Blog posts, webinars, or pricing and integration pages.
Conversation analysis: Pay attention to the prospect’s questions, inquiries about specific products, mentions of previously read content, and their overall understanding of your offerings.
Choice of words: Certain words indicate the customer’s position in the funnel. Words like demo, prices, sale, and trial suggest they are further along, while words like learning, researching, and curious indicate the beginning stages.
Knowing the customer’s stage allows for more personalized interactions, demonstrating that you’re attentive and eager to assist. Continued nurturing of the relationship is essential since research shows that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls, yet 44% of sales reps give up after just one. By appropriately following up with callers based on their journey stage, you can nurture the relationship and increase the likelihood of converting them into satisfied and loyal customers.
Quantifying the Customer Journey:
In today’s customer journey, there are multiple paths to purchase, and not everyone enters at the awareness stage. Movement back and forth between stages is also common. Call scoring helps quantify the caller’s stage, eliminating assumptions. Without call scoring, a first-time caller might receive follow-up assuming they are at the top of the funnel, providing basic company and product information. However, if the same caller inquired about pricing, came from a targeted paid ad, and asked about technical specifications, it indicates they are further down the funnel and possibly ready to make a purchase. Assigning a higher call score or using scoring tags communicates to the organization that this is a serious prospect, leading to different follow-up actions such as providing demo sign-up links or sharing information about current promotions.
According to HubSpot, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales due to a lack of lead nurturing. Effective follow-up and nurturing are critical, and call scoring brings you closer to achieving this.
Data-Driven Decision Making:
Call scoring empowers sales and marketing teams to make data-driven decisions regarding advertising spend and content creation. By analyzing call data, such as call duration, call outcomes, and customer sentiment, sales teams’ can identify patterns and trends that inform marketing strategies. This valuable information helps optimize advertising campaigns, allocate resources effectively, and create content tailored to the preferences and needs of your target audience. With call scoring, you can ensure that your efforts are focused on the most promising opportunities and yield better results.
Question and Answer
How do you score a quality call?
How do you score a quality call? A quality call means a call that hits all desired metrics to a high-enough level. Using this evaluation method, a “quality score” can be given. These metrics can be different for each business and department. Using a call scoring tool such as Convirza, you can personalize the metrics and data you want to extract.
Once the scorecard is ready to go, AI analysis scores and gives feedback on every individual call. As more calls are made, more data allows for more accurate and specific scoring of calls. This guides all representatives towards high performance by giving them actionable items to improve after every call.
What is call scoring for a call center?
What is call scoring for a call center?As a call center, call scoring is an important part of ensuring high-quality customer service. The process of scoring calls involves evaluating the performance of call center representatives during customer interactions based on a predefined set of criteria.
The criteria can include factors such as:
- call handling time
- Accuracy
- customer satisfaction
- Following to company protocol.
Call scoring is performed by a supervisor/trained evaluator who listens to recorded calls. They observe live calls and assigns a numerical score to each representative based on their performance. After initial human input AI produces incredibly accurate scored calls.
To ensure consistent scoring call centers can use a standardized scoring form. This provides a template for scoring, which can be adapted as per the call center’s needs.The representative’s overall score is calculated by adding up the scores for each criterion and dividing by the number of criteria.
Call scoring helps to identify areas for improvement and provides feedback to representatives on their performance, enabling them to provide even better customer service in the future.
How can I improve my call center score?
How can i improve my call center score? Improving call scores in a call center requires a multi-faceted approach that focuses on the representatives and the call center itself. Here are some ways to improve call scores:
Provide comprehensive training and resources to call center representatives to equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to handle customer interactions effectively.
Regularly evaluate and monitor the call center’s processes and procedures to identify areas for improvement and ensure that representatives have the necessary tools and resources to provide high-quality customer service.
Encourage open communication between representatives, center managers and supervisors to identify areas for improvement and provide regular feedback on performance.
Implement quality assurance programs that regularly evaluate representative performance and provide feedback and coaching to improve their skills.
Encourage a positive work environment that fosters teamwork and a shared responsibility for delivering high-quality customer service.
By implementing these strategies and continuously seeking opportunities for improving inbound lead quality, a call center can improve its call scores and deliver even better customer service to its customers.
What is call evaluation?
Call evaluation is a structured process that assesses the quality of customer service in call centers. It involves reviewing recorded or live calls and scoring representatives based on criteria like call handling time, accuracy, customer satisfaction, and policy adherence. The goal is to monitor and enhance customer service by providing feedback and identifying areas for improvement.
By conducting call evaluations, call centers can:
- Improve Agent Performance: Evaluating representative performance helps identify strengths and weaknesses, enabling targeted training and coaching to enhance skills and knowledge. This ultimately leads to better customer interactions and increased satisfaction.
- Enhance Customer Experience: Call evaluation provides valuable insights into the customer experience by assessing how well representatives meet their needs. This information allows call centers to identify pain points, make necessary improvements, and ensure customers receive accurate information and excellent service.
- Ensure Policy Compliance: Evaluating calls helps ensure that representatives adhere to company policies and procedures. It ensures that accurate information is provided to customers, mitigating potential errors or misunderstandings.
Can I get a custom scorecard for my call center?
Can I get a custom scorecard for my call center? Yes! With high call volume, your scorecards are both created and refined. This may include things specific to your industry, such as asking about previous cars owned if you are a car dealerships.
Using thousands of calls as data, you can train an AI Call scoring system to deliver instant, custom results for every employee, every call they make.
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