Overview

A strategically-designed quality management program is a powerful driver of high-performance operations, capable of reducing talk time, hold time, after contact work, customer wait time (ASA), abandonment rate, and agent attrition. A well-designed quality management program is far more than call monitoring and computing agent scores. Quality management techniques streamline the operation, analyzing and reducing transfers, escalations, errors, and email turnaround times, while increasing documentation rates, customer satisfaction and net promoter scores. Quality management activities can even reduce the time callers spend in touch-tone menus and conversing with front-end bots and AI agents.  Is your center's quality function achieving all of this? Is the QA function accountable for analysis, measurable continuous quality improvements, and a financial return on investment in quality monitoring time? If not, it can be. And, it should be.

In this hands-on boot camp, attendees will learn how to execute their quality management responsibilities, from strategic planning tasks like setting quality policy, performing stakeholder analyses, identifying goals, drafting standard operating procedures, designing quality form components and scoring methodologies; to operational tasks like monitoring agents' calls, emails and documentation, establishing coaching best practices and appeal processes, informing trainers of quality findings, conducting agent coaching, calibrating QA consistency, and using metrics to improve contact center procedure. Attendees in this hands-on boot camp will work on all of these activities during the course, establishing valuable new material and catapulting quality professionals to new levels of contribution and accountability.

Quality expectations of the most critical stakeholder, the caller, will be discussed in depth. Attendees will be introduced to scientific research results that reveal exactly how quality is assessed in the mind of a caller. Participants will draft, in class, monitoring criteria to help contact center professionals fulfill and exceed preconceived caller expectations for quality.

Psychological drivers of employee commitment to the contact center will also be presented. Participants will learn which forms of agent commitment are scientifically correlated with high quality of service and how to cultivate the right kind of organizational commitment to raise quality, customer satisfaction, first contact resolution, employee satisfaction and agent retention.

Who Should Participate

The Certified Quality Management Professional certification boot camp is for managers and supervisors, executives, quality analysts and monitors, trainers, coaches and others responsible for continuous quality improvement.

Concepts, definitions, job roles and responsibilities described in this course may be more expansive than your organization's current QA function. For this reason, it is recommended that cross-functional resources attend CQMP boot camp together, from QA, training, management, coaching, and analytics.  Collaborating professionals will then be familiar with concepts, terminology, processes and responsibilities of a broader Quality Management function.

The CQMP certification process includes completion of a real-world performance improvement project that requires an executive business case justifying the proposed project. Such projects are more likely to be well received when reviewers are familiar with the new goals and procedures being presented.

In-House Group Training Option

On-site instructor-led delivery of the CQMP boot camp becomes more economical as the size of the group increases. If a number of professionals would benefit from  attending the CQMP course, consider scheduling a private session at your location. More information on arranging on-site private training is provided below.

Prerequisites

Attendees should possess a basic understanding of what a call center is, basic call center terminology, and fundamental call center quality monitoring concepts. Course materials are in English, and attendees must possess a high level of English fluency.

Learning Objectives

Attendees will learn how to:

• Draft the organization's quality policy and communicate commitments to various stakeholders.
• Identify procedures and standards that encourage agent actions and behaviors that fulfill stakeholders' quality expectations.
• Assess quality maturity and capabilities across seven contact center's process areas.
• Perform a SWOT analysis to identify internal quality strengths and weaknesses, external quality opportunities and threats, strategies and contingency plans for each.
• Review the top six caller quality expectations.
• Understand when and how agent efforts impact customer wait times (speed of answer).
• Use quality analyses to direct improvements to new hire training, coaching, internal process efficiencies, ACD call routing schemes, and agent reference materials and scripts.
• Correlate internal quality data and external customer satisfaction data for insight into customer expectations, needs and preferences.
• Assess employee job satisfaction in the call center and leverage correlations between call quality, customer satisfaction, first contact resolution, employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
• Conduct stakeholder analyses to determine quality expectations of upper management, callers, agents, funders, partners, product development and other parties to contact center success.
• Develop quality program launch communications and plans for stakeholders, agents, coaches, trainers, and supervisors.
• Anticipate and address the top 10 agent concerns about new quality monitoring processes.
• Format quality reports that keep upper management informed.
• Compute the costs of quality monitoring and agent coaching, and document financial returns on investment.
• Correlate quality efforts and actual service benefits to customers and callers
• Calibrate customer satisfaction and monitoring scores
• Capitalize on scientific research results that explain exactly how customers perceive quality.
• Cultivate front-line behaviors that are scientifically proven to increase trust and caller satisfaction.
• Launch an incremental skill development process that’s guaranteed to improve front-line quality.
• Institute best practices for what to monitor, who should monitor, how much  to monitor, and how frequently.
• Develop quality monitoring definition documents that spell-out objective criteria for scoring performance, for use by quality monitors and staff alike.
• Discover how collaboration between quality professionals, trainers, coaches and SOP authors can produce astonishing performance efficiencies.
• Accumulate monitoring data that will propel tomorrow’s most powerful performance improvement information.
• Overhaul quality assessment practices across the contact center business, from monitoring IVR, chat, and text interactions to measuring standard operating procedures, quality of documentation, and training results.
• Generate performance metrics and a balanced scorecard that quantifies and tracks the impact of your quality management program.
• Experience what quality coaching is (and is not) and exactly what to do to plan and execute effective post-monitoring coaching sessions.
• Build a coaching culture with quality data that motivates, builds confidence, and strengthens employee commitment.
• Implement a cost-efficient quality improvement cycle that’s fast, targeted, frequent and regular.
• Unleash an infectious, motivating and supportive quality-managed culture that raises morale, reduces turnover, and dispels the "big brother" image
• Harness quality and performance results to refine training programs, focus mentoring activities, and fine-tune hiring criteria.

Deliverables and Take-Home Tools

In-class materials and take-home tools include:

• Comprehensive course manual (an excellent post-training reference tool)
• DiSC communication style assessment tool
• Template for creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• Template for creating quality definitions
• Coaching discussion planner for post-monitoring coaching discussion
• Quality monitoring form examples
• Employee job satisfaction and commitment assessment tools
• Adaptive communication cheat sheet for coaching
• Real-time communication style profiling tool

Detailed Course Outline

Chapter 1 – Quality Policy, Assessment and Strategy

• Quality Management (QM) and Quality Assurance (QA) differentiated
• Establish the organization's Quality Policy
  • Identify stakeholder groups
  • Document the organization's quality commitments to each stakeholder group
• QM critical success factors
  • Quality monitoring volumes and frequency
  • Repeating Continuous Quality Improvement cycle
    • Observation, evaluation, rating and scoring
    • Providing feedback, guidance, and setting goals
    • Regular  scheduled one-on-one coaching sessions
    • Individual training, refresher training aids, and self-study tools
  • Organizational commitments
    • Upper management commitment to fund and support
    • Workforce management commitment to schedule post-monitoring coaching and  agent refresher training time
• The quality management process, in brief
  • Establish quality policy
  • Determine quality goals and objectives of stakeholders
  • Define, document and communicate quality standards
  • Evaluate front-line professionals' compliance with quality standards
  • Objectively measure quality and report trends and progress
  • Initiate and coordinate activities that drive quality improvement
  • Monitor and increase efficiencies of the quality management function
• Quality, Quality Assurance, Quality Score, and Standard Operating Procedures defined
• Complete a Quality Capability Maturity Assessment
  • Identify contact center process areas ripe for improvement
• Complete a Quality SWOT
  • Document strategies to
    • Protect and enhance quality management strengths
    • Standardize processes to overcome quality weaknesses
    • Identify opportunities superior quality presents and strategies to pursue them
    • Identify threats poor quality creates, strategize ways to guard against negative outcomes, and brainstorm contingency plans
• Document the quality vision statement
• Document the quality mission statement

Chapter 2 – Call Center Metrics Review

• Define and review front-line performance metrics that impact quality  that can be influences by quality standards
  • Efficiency metrics
    • Talk Time
    • Hold Time
    • After Contact Work / Wrap-up
    • Average Handle Time
  • Capacity metrics
    • Speed of Answer
    • Service Level
    • Attrition Rate
    • Cost of Attrition
    • Employee Job Satisfaction
  • Effectiveness metrics
    • Quality Score
    • Customer Satisfaction Score
    • Employee Satisfaction Scores
    • Error Rate
    • First Contact Resolution Rate
    • Conversion Rate
  • Productivity metrics
    • Transfer Rate
    • Escalation Rate

Chapter 3– Stakeholder Analyses

• Determine stakeholder groups
  • Internal contact center stakeholders
  • Internal organizational stakeholders
  • External stakeholders impacted by contact center's quality and success
  • External indirect stakeholders with an interest in the quality the contact center provides
• How to conduct a stakeholder analysis for each stakeholder group:
  • Evaluating stakeholder strategies, goals, and/or interests
  • Determining contact contributions to stakeholder goals and interests
  • Identifying specific contact center outcomes that support stakeholder goals
  • Quantitatively measuring outcomes
  • Elevating CSR actions, characteristics and behaviors supportive of stakeholder goals
  • Setting standards for actions and behaviors
  • Developing SOPs and specific tools and materials for CSRs
• How to select and prioritize stakeholder-targeted quality components
• Prepare the Quality Stakeholder Development Plan documents, identify/assess/determine
  • Stakeholder influence
  • Relationship to the Quality Management program
  • Potential financial and staffing contributions
  • Specific objectives
  • Proposed quality attribute
  • Call center impact classification: strategic, tactical or operational
  • Relative priority: mandatory, business critical, important or beneficial
  • Appropriate quality scoring scale: compliance or performance
  • Weighting factor recommendation
  • Implementation planning tasks
    • SOP authoring, authorization, posting
    • Inclusion in new hire training and availability /development of self-study refresher training
    • Announcement and distribution of the SOP and supporting materials to staff
  • Determining when stakeholder re-analysis is necessary
  • Quality Management communication tasks
    • Quality benefits to executive management
    • Quantifying corporate/organizational contributions/costs
    • Raising stakeholder and customer awareness
    • Communicating QM program benefits to agents
    • Communicating QM-driven benefits to customers/callers
  • Anticipate and address staff misgivings
    • QA process transparency
    • Potential for analyst bias
    • Objective vs. subjective scoring
    • Freedom from analyst preconceptions
    • Consistency in scoring
    • Elimination of favoritism
    • Value to CSRs
    • Impacts on agent stress
    • QA data sample representative of performance
  • Calculate quality monitoring cost per call
  • Calculate financial savings to be realized from each proposed quality management strategy proposed

Chapter 4– Customer Perceptions of Quality

• Differentiate contact center quality and customer satisfaction
• Quality defined, from the caller perspective
• Differentiate and describe factors influencing customer satisfaction
  • General expectations
  • Caller characteristics
  • Service characteristics
  • Agent characteristics
• Define quality monitoring criterion that encourage 18 critical agent characteristics and behaviors
  • Adaptability
  • Pace
  • Adaptive Communication
  • Attitude
  • Knowing and understanding the caller
  • Self-efficacy
  • Reliability
  • Commitment to quality and customer satisfaction
  • Explanation
  • Empathy
  • Empowerment
  • Competence
• Draft the contact center's "Quality Culture" mission statement

Chapter 5 – Affective Commitment & Quality

• Occupational psychology research in the call center industry - what the science tells us about create a quality culture
• How agent job satisfaction and customer satisfaction are correlated
• How agent job satisfaction and quality are correlated
• Management practices that increase agent job satisfaction but decrease quality
• Incentives that unwittingly decrease agents' commitment to callers
• Understanding the meaning of organizational commitment
• Types of organizational commitment
  • Affective commitment
  • Normative commitment
  • Continuous commitment
• Drivers of affective commitment correlated with high-quality agent performance
• Assessing/Surveying team members’ affective commitment
• What science says about money as a motivator
• When standardization and management control can negatively impact quality
• Management models impact quality, absenteeism and attrition
• Impact of contact center culture on service quality
• How to nurture a supportive contact center culture
• Establish quality metric reward programs
  • Popular contact center awards and rewards
  • Benefits and pitfalls

Chapter 6 – Quality Assurance (QA) Processes

• Establish the quality requirements for your contact center
  • Establish current goals and improvement priorities
    • Customer focus
    • Compliance focus
    • Strategic focus
    • Efficiency focus
    • High impact focus
  • How to define quality monitoring standards
    • Standard operating procedures
    • Quality monitoring definitions document
    • Guidelines to be used in evaluating call quality
    • Level of monitoring detail
  • How to communicate quality monitoring goals and value to agents, customers, and management
• Designing a quality monitoring form
  • Anatomy of a quality monitoring form
    • Capturing the most important identifying data attributes for future quality analyses
  • How to determine and categorize characteristics of a call that lead to quality
  • Defining categories, components and guidelines
  • Monitoring forms that incorporate the key service categories and call components
  • Creating a quality monitoring scoring system
  • Compliance scoring vs. performance scoring
    • Evaluating yes/no checklist vs. sliding scale scoring methods
  • Creating a weighted scoring system
  • How and when to make and communicate changes to the weighting system.
  • Setting quality score targets that motivate everyone.
  • When to use auto-fail
• Establishing quality team responsibilities and parameters
  • Who monitors
  • 3 approaches for determining the volume of calls to be monitored
  • 7 monitoring methods, for all sizes and levels of technology
    • Advantages and caution points for each
  • 4 means of selecting calls to be monitored
  • Determining the timing of call monitoring activities
• Quality metrics and performance evaluation standards
  • Measuring performance of the quality monitoring process
  • Measuring the performance of the quality monitoring team
• Implementing a coaching and feedback loop for continuous improvement
  • The who, how, and when of providing effective monitoring feedback
• The calibration process
  • Choosing calibration team members
  • Determining the frequency of calibration meetings
  • Critical tools for conducting calibration sessions
  • Calibration mathematics
  • Standard deviation targets
  • Processes for updating quality standards and guidelines
  • Reporting results and guidance
• Quality monitoring software and capabilities
• How to document the quality program and manage changes in the process
• How to use quality scores as a marketing tool with key stakeholders

Chapter 7 - Communicating Continuous Quality Improvement

• Benefits of communication style assessment
• Assess your own DiSC communication style
• Asses others’ communication profiles by evaluating
  • Pace, volume and tonality
  • Formal or casual approach
  • Humor style
  • Conflict style
  • Need for detail or quality
  • Mental organization
  • Body language
• Adaptive communication techniques
  • How to profile a team member’s preferred communication style in real time
  • Maximizing understanding by adapting your communication style to a team member’s
    • Adjusting your tone
    • How to open the conversation
    • Interacting
    • Responding to concerns
    • Getting a commitment
  • Avoiding conflicts due to communication style differences

Chapter 8 – Coaching for Continuous Quality Improvement

• Fundamentals of coaching
  • Performance coaching vs. career coaching
  • Your coaching role within the call center
  • Differences between coaching, critiquing, feedback and performance reviews
  • How to create a coaching culture
  • Qualities of an effective coach
  • Perform a coaching self-assessment
  • Assess your coaching fears and learn how to overcome them
  • Common coaching mistakes and strategies for avoiding mistakes
• How to define and prepare for a coaching session
  • Pre-coaching phase preparation
  • Data you must bring to the coaching session
  • Preparing the coaching situation statement
  • Determining a disposition toward coaching based on motivation and performance levels
    • The four dispositions
    • Choosing a coaching strategy
    • Determining an appropriate investment in coaching time
  • Selecting a coaching method and preparing for responses
    • Different types of coaching conversations and how to correctly conduct each for maximum effect
      • Performance Improvement
      • Counseling
      • Teaching
      • Motivating
      • Investigative
    • The five types of employee responses and how to address them
  • Establishing a coaching plan
    • The coaching session Action Checklist
    • The 10-step coaching discussion planner
  • Practice coaching sessions
• Conducting the coaching session
  • Coaching techniques; how and when to utilize them
    • Addressing opinions and push-back
    • Positive tone, words and body language
  • Notes, review, and good summarization technique
• Post-coaching follow-up action planning
• Post-coaching self-evaluation

Chapter 9 – Quality Management Project Planning

• Selecting and prioritizing Quality Management projects
• How to identify high-impact, affordable, worthwhile quality projects
  • Current capabilities
  • Financing criteria
  • Staffing requirements
  • Potential impact
• Creating a business plan
• Proposing plans to management for approval
• Selecting, planning, and implementing your CQMP certification project

Certification Process

The Certified Quality Management Professional (CQMP) certification is officially recognized by the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance and its members. This is an internationally-recognized certification.

The certification process consists of three parts:

• Participation in a 5-day competency-based CQMP preparatory training course
• A passing score on the online CQMP certification exam
• Completion of a certification project

Class Attendance: Participants will complete a five-day instructor-led course, where they will participate in hands-on learning and group exercises under the observation of a Certified RCCSP instructor. Upon successful completion of the course, an online login and password will be sent by email with instructions for accessing the certification exam.

Certification Exam: After the course, participants will have four weeks in which to take the online certification exam. The certification exam is comprised of 75 questions and candidates are given 90 minutes to complete the exam. Candidates must achieve at least an 80% score in order to obtain certification.

Certification Project: To be completed within 6 months of completing the course.

Participants will be given a list of project topics and will submit their topic within two weeks of completing the certification exam.

Topics will include items covered in the certification class such as creating and implementing:

• Quality monitoring process plan
• Quality management operating level agreement
• Quality definitions document
• Quality monitoring form and scoring system
• Quality team metric scorecard
• Calibration process plan and standard operating procedures
• Standard operating procedure authoring process, update and distribution procedures
• New hire training module on quality monitoring
• And many other options

To increase the likelihood of every participant successfully completing the certification project, a certification project review team member will be available by phone and email to provide feedback during the work project portion of the process. The Certified Quality Management Professional CQMP certification will be awarded upon approval and acceptance of the candidate's business plan and documents evidencing project completion. Those certified will receive a custom-engraved crystalline CQMP award and use of the CQMP moniker.

Course Instructors

RCCSP faculty instructors have both call center management and training delivery expertise.  They are certified at  the “Master Trainer” level for delivery of this course and will adapt the course delivery to meet the needs of participants' varying levels of experience and differing call center environments. RCCSP's faculty includes instructors experienced in non-profit and government contact center environments, in addition to large and small for-profit environments.  Instructors are located throughout the USA.

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for this training and certification program is $4,995 and includes:

• 5-day instructor-led training
• All training materials
• Course certificate of completion
• Certification exam fees
• Morning and afternoon coffee each day

To register, follow the "Book Now" link below or call (708) 246-0320. 

Seminar Schedule

Nov 18-22, 2024	Orlando, FL	Embassy Suites International Drive Convention Center
Feb 24-28, 2025	Atlanta, GA	Embassy Suites Atlanta Buckhead
Apr 14-18, 2025	Seattle, WA	Double Tree Seattle Airport Southcenter
Aug 11-15, 2025	Chicago, IL	Centennial Center, Schaumburg
Nov 10-14, 2025	Chicago, IL	Centennial Center, Schaumburg

Class Start and Stop Times & Dress Code

Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day. Morning coffee service begins at 8:30 AM. Business casual attire is appropriate. No jeans or sneakers please.

In-House Training Option

In-house, on-site training offers the added benefits of facilitated team interaction and a confidential environment where plans, processes, and policies can be openly discussed. For contact centers with a number of quality, coaching, and training development professionals, on-site training can maximize your training investment.

All-inclusive pricing for an on-site course delivered at your location is determined based on a "base fee" for up to four attendees, and a per person fee for each attendee thereafter.

• Base fee for up to 4 participants - $19,995 includes:
  • 5-day instructor-led training course
  • All training materials
  • Materials shipping costs
  • Forms, templates, surveys, checklists and other tools to jump-start quality improvement initiatives
  • Instructor's travel and lodging expenses (for course deliveries in the continental US)
  • Certificates of completion
  • CQMP certification exam
  • Consulting support for certification projects the boot camp and by email and phone thereafter
  • Engraved, crystalline certification awards for candidates earning certification.
• Additional participants - $1,595 each

Additional travel surcharges apply to travel outside of the continental USA and for seminars scheduled within three weeks, or paid for within three weeks, of the course delivery date.

The training site should provide suitable meeting space, any desired meals or refreshments, and the following presentation supplies:

• Two easels with self-stick flip chart paper and markers
• Projection screen for instructor's power point presentation

For more training course options, see the entire Contact Center Training Calendar of dates and locations.

For more IT, technical and field support training course options, see the Help Desk, ITIL, and Support Center Calendar.