Years ago, we got fed up tracking our quality assurance call scores in a massive spreadsheet, so we went out searching for a solution. The affordable and simple solution we found at the time was called Scorebuddy. They are an Ireland based software company that focus exclusively on call center quality management. At the time we launched them we didn’t have much sophistication around how we were doing QA, but over the years we’ve found more and more ways to leverage this tool, and it’s been a hugely beneficial to us. I’m sure we’re still underutilizing this tool, but I wanted to share several things it’s allowed us to do very easily.
Grade Calls – The obvious primary use of this tool is to grade calls. We created several templates that allow the call reviewer to answer various questions about the call. Each question has a custom weight and point count that allow us to dial in on exactly what we’re looking for. We also create different templates for each customer facing department. customer service has a far more restrictive template than a sales person for example. We use this tool to grade emails too. All these grades are recorded in their database so you can track them over time, average them, compare them to peers, and also share the results directly with the employee. I’ll cover how in the next bullet.
Employee Dashboard – One excellent feature that was rolled out after we were already a customer is the employee dashboard. Each employee can log and and see their scored calls, how they did, comments left by supervisors, and their trends over time. They can even request a meeting with their supervisor or indicate that they “accept” the score through the dashboard. If you don’t want a particular scorecard to be visible to the employee you can manage that on the backend, so you control what they see. This allows you to have crystal clear feedback & objectives that the employee can review at any time. Another feature they rolled out was the ability to purchase a training class for an employee and assign it to them within this dashboard. The courses are surprisingly good and it tracks their progress.
Objectives Scorecards – As part of a broader performance management effort we decided to use Scorebuddy in an unconventional way. We create 8-9 core objectives for each job type here. For the bulk of the company these are reviewed mid-year and then at the end of the year. These ultimately dictate raises, bonuses, etc. For the customer service team we decided to create an identical scorecard that would have the same objectives but show them where they stood monthly. For this group objectives are things like quality score averages, calls handled relative to the group, attendance, mastery, etc. the grade for every questions is either Meets, Exceeds, or Does Not Meet Objective. Every month the leadership team reviews these for each rep and then meets with the rep to go through it. This way there are no surprises, and it’s clear what is expected and where they stand. Then the 2 primary reviews are just a standard discussion of the aggregate prior 6 months. This also improves remote or hybrid work since the reps know where they stand relative to others.
Custom Levels Calculator – Another thing we rolled out was CSR Levels. These levels indicate tenure, productivity, and basically are driven by the scores on the abovementioned Objectives Scorecards. We also created these as a way to hire in highly experienced CSRs and bring them in at a higher pay bracket if we ever wanted to. Since we’re talking about pay and titles here I did not want any of this to be left to interpretation or guesswork. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, so I built out a “Level Calculator” in Scorebuddy. this scorecard allows me to put in the vital stats for each employee, such as average score on X in the last quarter & tenure, and then it will tell me the percentage grade. Each level requires hitting a certain percentage so there is no uncertainty as to whether one rep could be promoted over the other. Doing this calculation in Scorebuddy also leaves me with a paper trail of where each rep was each quarter.
Custom AI Test – Finally, I thought it would be worth including another use case that was beneficial to us. We experimented with Amazon Contact Lens. An AI driven tool Amazon has that transcribes calls and assigns a sentiment score to the call. In theory this should allow you to pick out calls where customers were happy at the beginning and angry at the end, or vice versa. When we listed to calls though it didn’t seem very accurate. Scorebuddy allowed us to to a large scale comparison where we isolated those calls and graded them separate from the rest for a few months. Afterwards we compared those scores to see if they were any worse than the normal averages. They were not. So we ended up shutting that account down and saving ourselves the cost. I suspect soon it’ll be there, but it’s not there yet. Either way, Scorebuddy allowed us to run a comprehensive comparison in a relatively easy way.
All in all, Scorebuddy has been a robust and surprisingly useful tool for a very good price, I might add. the interface is very user-friendly, and the support is great as long as you’re willing to deal with the USA/Ireland time zone difference. If you’re in the market for a comprehensive solution like this, I’d highly recommend them!
