This morning Kathryn our SCAN Manager initiated a call calibration session. SCAN (Sales Call Analysis) is a service where we score customer experiences by analysing client call recordings. We hold calibration sessions regularly. In those sessions all our analysts, known as Scanners, get together and are invited in to jointly score calls in order to ensure that we are consistent in our approach.
Invariably there is broad agreement on the scoring of technical skills. These are straightforward: “Did they or didn’t they, yes or no”. Where the meetings get really interesting is in the measurement and interpretation of interpersonal skills. Our analysts are experienced customer service experts who are passionate about customer telephone experience and that really comes out in the debates over the grading of interpersonal skills.
These sessions not only help us to ensure consistency, they also help us to enhance our definitions of what constitutes good, average or poor performance. What specifically do we mean when we ask whether the salesperson was ‘friendly or knowledgeable’? What do we mean by ‘clear and concise communication’? How do we measure whether the salesperson demonstrated ‘listening or questioning skills’?
These calibration workshops are a key tool in creating those definitions which all analysts use to score calls. They ensure that we deliver accurate and consistent call scoring and can justify those scores against a formal and specific set of criteria which are constantly questioned, analysed and updated. Not only that, but they are pretty entertaining!