In order to maintain the productivity of agents in your call center in the Philippines, there’s a need for effective quality assurance strategy, which primarily involves performance evaluation. The first step in this task is usually to set target goals that can give your agents a better estimate of how much work is still needed in any particular day at work. Setting expectations can also let you identify which of your agents are performing well and which ones need further coaching.
Establishing daily goals or quotas can indeed help you keep things in check. But, it can also give you disadvantages, especially when you set unrealistic quotas. If set too high, your agents will be overworked and feel unproductive because they are unable to meet them. If set too low, they won’t be able to show their maximum potential at work.
To make you more strategic in establishing agent performance expectations or quotas, here are some factors that you should consider:
1. Working hours
If you set a quota or a target goal, always ask yourself if this quota is achievable within the time frame that your agents will be working on it. Start by studying the metrics of your customer service department. Pay particular attention to the number of inquiries, sales calls, or service requests your team is getting every hour, day, and week. If your service requests only start to peak in the later part of the week, you can’t expect your agents to meet high numbers on the first few days.
2. Number of agents
Your workforce can only handle a certain amount of workload in a span of time. The size of your team must be considered when setting quotas. If you give your team a quota that far exceeds what they can only handle, you still won’t be able to meet your targets. On the other hand, imposing extremely low quotas can also prove to be impractical in the long run, since you are paying many people whose tasks can be done by a smaller group.
3. Request rate
Tally and get the average number of requests that your call center agents receive on a regular basis. This information can be combined with the head count in establishing the ideal performance expectations. In doing so, you will realize that there are days when the rate of inbound requests will be low and days when it will be unusually high. This will help you adjust your quotas and make them more sensitive to the actual workload changes happening every day.
4. Difficulty of tasks
Each service request is unique. Not all customer inquiries or concerns will be easy to process so some will take longer time than the others. Agents who are handling more difficult tasks must therefore have a relatively lower quota than the agents who have simpler tasks. Rather than focusing on the number of cases resolved, focusing your quota on average handling time will be a more appropriate quality assurance strategy if you have a team that handles a diverse workload.
Setting performance expectations effectively can boost the productivity of your call center agents. It also allows you to identify members who are underperforming and those who are excelling. Considering the above factors in establishing your quota system can make your expectations both attainable and highly motivational for your agents.