Scorecard Template: Improve CX With a Call Center Scorecard

If you work in a call center, you know that providing the best customer service and support is vital. You already know that bad customer service can cost your company money. In fact, according to Accenture, poor customer service has resulted in company losses of $1.6 trillion in the United States alone.

Tracking and grading customer interactions in your call center can go a long way toward keeping your customers happy with you instead of encouraging them to jump ship to one of your competitors.

That’s why we’ve put together this scorecard template (with examples) for you!

In this article, we’ll share why call center scorecards are important, what to include in your call center quality scorecard, and how to use customer service scorecards to track your KPIs.

Before we get too far into how to create your own scorecard template, let’s make sure that we’re all on the same page by defining what a call center scorecard is.

What Is a Call Center Scorecard?

Call center scorecards are referred to by many names: quality assurance scorecard, customer service scorecard, quality scorecard, call center quality scorecard, and probably a few others.

But they all boil down to the same thing:

scorecard template definition

A call center scorecard is an evaluation system that’s built to measure your contact center’s performance to help you get feedback about your call center agents, how they’re performing, how customers are responding, and how those agents are following or deviating from your company’s standard processes and procedures.

Whew. That’s a mouthful. To simplify, a call center scorecard lets you know how your agents are doing and whether or not your customers are happy.

They’re entirely customizable depending on what’s important for you to track. They should make it easy to track and measure sometimes objective actions in an objective manner as well as identify trends and gaps in learning. This gives you a much better understanding of where your training process may be lacking so you can make improvements.

Why You Need a Scorecard

We’ve already talked about the impact that poor customer service can have on your company, but you may still be wondering why you need a call center scorecard — much less why you need to create your own scorecard template that’s specific to your call center. But call center scorecards give agents the opportunity to understand and reflect on their performance.

Why does that matter?

Well, according to a study published in the Journal of Business Research, agents who were able to track, understand, and reflect on their performance were able to maintain control of calls with customers, provide better interactions, and modify the language they used to better connect and communicate with callers.

Oh, and they increased first response time by 4.4%.

In addition to those benefits, having a scorecard template can help you review interactions from an objective standpoint. This makes it a lot easier to establish training guidelines and get your call center agents on the same page.

Scorecard Templates: How to Build a Scorecard + Examples

Building an effective scorecard template for your call center starts with goals and objectives. Document all of your goals and objectives, detail how they align with the needs of your customers, and create a rubric that shows what success looks like for each of those goals and objectives.

While you can do this manually using a spreadsheet tool, it’s a whole lot easier to complete with a call center QA software like Voxjar.

With Voxjar, you’ll be able to aggregate, analyze, and audit calls in a single place. Plus, you’ll have a central location with all of the information you need to coach your call center reps.

Regardless of the method you use, there are a few things you’ll want to make sure to include on your own scorecard template.

What to Include on Your Scorecard

call center qa template items

All businesses are different. You’ll probably have a different vision of success than your competitors (and definitely different from companies outside of your industry). Of course, there are still a few things that your customer service scorecard template will need to include if you want to get a comprehensive overview of how your agents are performing.

Customer Service Category

The type of service provided will depend on the type of help callers need and the level of knowledge needed to solve their requests. That makes it important to track the customer service category for each call you’re scoring. This involves a couple of steps.

First, you’ll need to track the type of help that’s needed. This could fall into one of several service categories:

  • Sales/marketing
  • Tech help
  • Development
  • Online store/shopping

From there, you’ll want to establish the level of knowledge and experience required to solve the inquiry:

  • Common questions that any agent should be able to answer
  • Difficult questions that more experienced agents should be able to answer
  • Expert questions that specialists or managers need to answer

If you use multiple channels (phone, live chat, email), you’ll also want to track how the interaction is taking place. Each of those channels will have different scoring criteria

Phone

  • Tone
  • Active listening and mirroring
  • Relationship building
  • Cadence/speed of speech
  • Language used
  • Asking explorative questions
  • Greeting/closing the call

Email

  • Response time
  • Links to relevant information
  • Correct grammar and spelling
  • Positive and upbeat language

Live Chat

  • Response time
  • Information provided (accurate, concise, effective)
  • Greeting/closing the chat
  • Correct grammar and spelling

Social Media

  • Response time
  • Public vs private problem resolution
  • Relationship building
  • Positive and upbeat language
  • Correct grammar and spelling

Call Center Agent Skills

The skills your call center reps bring to the table are a strong indicator of the experience your customers are going to get. At a minimum, call center reps should be able to communicate effectively, maintain a professional and friendly demeanor, learn, solve problems, gain the trust of customers, demonstrate emotional intelligence.

You can monitor and track these skills with scorecard questions like:

  • Did the rep use active listening skills?
  • Did the rep work to build a relationship with the customer and show understanding?
  • Was the agent professional?
  • Was the tone and language appropriate to the nature of the inquiry?
  • Did the rep summarize the conversation and set a plan for follow-up?

Here’s an example of a scorecard template with soft skills highlighted right at the top:

call center qa scorecard

Image Source: https://www.sampleforms.com/

Key Product Competencies

It goes without saying that your call center reps should understand your products inside and out. To ensure that they do, include a section on your scorecard template that asks important questions about product competencies:

  • Was the rep able to troubleshoot the product issue?
  • Did the rep provide accurate information about the product?
  • Was the rep able to get to the core issue of the problem?
  • Did the rep provide the best solution to the problem?

Call Center Processes

One of the most important tools you have to help you monitor, track, and manage your call center is your own call center processes. Your processes should be objective and well-defined and your call center reps should be trained on those processes.

And adherence to your processes should be included on your scorecard template. This might include questions like:

  • Did the rep follow the call center processes?
  • Was the interaction handled in a timely manner?
  • Was the call ended appropriately?
  • Was the inquiry escalated? If yes, were the correct processes followed?
  • Did the rep update client notes in the CRM as appropriate?

Compliance

While some industries like healthcare and financial services have strict guidelines they have to follow, all industries should take compliance, consent, and security seriously. We recommend including a section in your scorecard template about compliance that includes:

  • Details about breaches in compliance
  • Pass/fail questions about compliance
  • Details related to why and when compliance standards weren’t met

Outcomes & KPIs

Outcomes and KPIs are important for giving you an overall view of how well a call went. For your scorecard template, this will likely include questions like:

  • How many/which skills did the rep demonstrate?
  • Did the rep demonstrate problem-solving?
  • Were your call center processes followed? How well?
  • Did the rep follow compliance procedures?

For KPIs, the information is much more data-driven and includes statistics like:

  • Average time in queue: how long inquiries sit before being handled.
  • Average abandonment rate: the rate at which a customer gives up on connecting.
  • Average handle time: how quickly reps resolve inquiries. A high handle time usually means you’re having trouble resolving inquires while a low handle time might mean you’re not providing adequate service.
  • First call resolution: percentage of calls that reps address without escalating, transferring, or calling back.
  • Average speed of answer: average time it takes for an inquiry to be answered in a specific period.
  • CSat: how satisfied customers are with your company and service.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): measure of customer loyalty based on how likely a customer is to recommend you to others.

Here’s an example of a scorecard template using KPIs:

call center kpi scorecard template

Image Source: https://cs-directory.com/

Customer Experience

And here we are at the most important part of any scorecard template: customer experience. Everything hinges on how happy your customers are with the support they’re getting from call center reps. There are a handful of things to consider for customer experience:

  • How quickly did the rep respond and how long did it take to resolve the inquiry?
  • Was the customer satisfied with the response?
  • Did the rep provide accurate and relevant information?
  • If cost was part of the inquiry, what concerns did the customer share?

How to Track Call Center KPIs With a Customer Service Scorecard

Once you’ve created your scorecard template, you’ll need to spend time thinking about scoring. There are several ways you can do this. Many call center teams will use yes/no questions, numbered rating scales (1–5, 1–10, etc), and verbal rating scales (poor, fair, good, excellent). The important thing to remember is that no matter which scoring method you use, you’ll need to assign a value to each potential score.

Here’s what a scorecard with a verbal rating scale might look like:

Sales call evaluation form

Image Source: https://www.sampleforms.com/

We also recommend that you assign different weights to your rating scale so the measurements that are most important to you are the ones that have the most impact on the overall score. Here’s an example of a scorecard template that includes weighting:

Image Source: https://www.sampleforms.com/ 

For help building an objective and effective scoring process, check out our guide to call center call calibration.

Use Your Call Center Scorecard to Improve Customer Experience

Call center reps are at the epicenter of customer experience. When customers reach out for support, they expect a high standard of service. And, as we mentioned earlier, not meeting those standards can cost your company money.

With a scorecard template, you’ll be able to look at how your call center reps are performing and identify areas for improvement. From there, you’ll be better equipped to create training programs for your reps that address the trends you’re seeing.

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