The thought of conducting a call center audit may seem like a daunting task, but audits are a great way to determine how best to enhance your customer service operations. Through a methodical examination, audits allow you to identify areas of improvement and opportunity and take the necessary steps to put strategies and structural changes in place to reach your desired business objectives.

Reasons for conducting an audit

There are many good reasons to conduct an audit within your contact center. They generate awareness of improvements that can be made and help to drive necessary accountability and, ultimately, positive changes by providing an honest look into your organization’s weaknesses and strengths. The goal of an audit is to identify gaps within an organization and, using the data gathered, make recommendations to correct these gaps. Gaps can come from various areas of your organization, so conducting an audit will allow you to collect information on all areas. Each area can be evaluated separately, but this is not necessary. Audits can also:

• Highlight organizational interdependencies and how to leverage to optimize operations
• Evaluate management and staff performance ]
• Increase revenue opportunities and reducing costs
• Establish initiatives to improve effectiveness and efficiencies of current operations
• Enable contact center reporting and metrics setting system
• Show deficiencies in strategy and structure
• Suggest new opportunities to improve technology and configuration
• Suggest new opportunities to improve quality and compliance
• Help ensure successful implementation of new business initiatives
• Help identify risk factors and develop initiatives to offset them

Depending on your needs, your organization can decide to conduct a “general” audit, which looks at the entirety of the organization, or a “specific” audit, meaning that just one factor, department, or program of your organization can be audited. For example, a performance enhancement-focused audit would look at service objectives and their performances or the effectiveness, efficiencies, or maximization of existing services. These precisely focused audits can look for new opportunities or preexisting weaknesses/gaps. An audit can also be conducted as a review on the performance of management and their staff, identifying weaknesses or potential capabilities. Other options include:

• Status reporting including an assessment of the metrics and data used by the call center
• Evaluation of strategy and structure changes that impact decision-making
• Configuration and technology
• Quality and compliance
• New business initiatives
• Risk factors

Before launching an audit it’s imperative to have a well-defined plan. Without one, the data collected will be meaningless. Your audit needs a defined purpose: What are you looking for (objective) and what do you hope to gain from the audit (insight, suggestions, feedback)? These two pieces will be the foundation for your audit and help focus your questions as you go throughout the process. As part of your audit you should also:

• Set deadlines, milestones and progress reviews
• Consider the ROI from conducting an audit
• Decide if you will conduct a general or specific audit
• Identify stakeholders, gain buy-in, assign ownership
• Align audit outcomes with business objectives

Evaluating Audit Findings

A successful contact center audit means that findings can be translated into actionable solutions that contribute to the success of your organization.

A good audit report should include a “Gap Analysis,” which compares potential/desired performance with actual performance. This comparison can help you set realistic goals to make your actual performance grow and meet your goals. You’ll also want to make sure that your company meets or exceeds industry standards and best practices. Your audit can also help you determine if you are.

The audit will provide you data that you can analyze and, based on this information, create detailed recommendations for improving one or multiple areas of your organization, from departmental policies to overall procedures. Ensure that these recommendations include measurable outcomes and goals to reach.

At Kova Corporation our team of contact center solution experts can help you identify your organizations areas of opportunities to better manage customer retention and maximize your customer satisfaction. Contact us for a needs assessment and introduction to our proven contact center solutions.