The Calibration Session:

What Goes on Behind Closed Doors

By Deelee Freeman, The Call Center School

Sound familiar? “It’s not fair to mark me down on that, I’ve always said it this way and was never told I was doing it wrong.” or “Lori didn’t deduct any points when I forgot to use the callers name.” Or maybe this one rings true for you, “I’d rather have my supervisor monitor my calls, they are not nit-picky like our quality department.”

Agent comments such as these indicate a lack of calibration among call monitors, coaches, and supervisors in your call center.

A Case for Calibration

Calibration is the best way to prevent the perception of inequity and favoritism in your quality program. It eliminates perceived bias by ensuring consistent scoring. Once calibration among all those responsible for quality monitoring and coaching agents is achieved, it will not matter who did the monitoring and scoring, because the outcome will be the same. Once agents experience this level of consistency, the coaching process can focus on recognizing achievements and identifying areas for improvement, rather than disputing whether or not a particular score is fair or accurate.

Call calibration is a standardized scoring process that provides a quantitative measurement of consistency of quality evaluation. This process plays an important part in determining the quality of your agent performance. The time and resources your call center invests to calibrate your quality scores can bring about the following results:

  • Standardized evaluation scores regardless of who does the monitoring
  • Confirmation that the agent behaviors you are measuring are tied to quality customer service
  • Validation of the effectiveness of your agent performance standards and call center procedures
  • Consistency in the service provided to your customers

As many of you know from experience, calibration is not a quick or easy process. It takes a considerable commitment, many hours of discussion and evaluation scoring practice before your team can begin scoring a call in a uniform way. We are going to look at how to run an effective calibration session to help you get the most out of this quality time spent together!

Scoring Call Prior to Calibration Session

Prior to any calibration session, the selected calls should be distributed to all the calibration session participants (supervisors, team leads, training, and quality team). Everyone needs to evaluate and score each call before getting together for
the discussion session. This is important for several reasons. First, getting the evaluation results beforehand allows for the score to be tabulated identifying the standard deviation, which marks progress toward a calibration goal.

Second, scoring the calls beforehand helps to maximize individualized scores. When the monitoring group listens and scores calls together, the score are likely to be influenced by the peer group and come out different than if the individuals had evaluated them on their own.

The number of calls distributed prior to a calibration session largely depends on your center’s average handle time (AHT) and the degree of understanding and agreement with your quality standards. Expect in the beginning that you will spend more time discussing each call, and that your group’s efficiency will improve with more time together in calibration. Typically two to three calls per session is a good starting point until you get some experience under your belt that will help you better gauge time spent in discussion.

First Things First, Designate a Facilitator

The primary role of the facilitator is to lead your calibration sessions. In addition, the facilitator often handles logistics of meeting: times/rooms; creates and distributes the calibration schedule; reserves conference room; and sets up the technology for playing back calls. It is the facilitator who enforces the groups adheres to time allotted for calibration. We recommend you commit to keeping your calibration meeting to one hour.

The facilitator is responsible for the process, not the decision. The most difficult task will be to keep the group focused on the goal, balancing the need for discussion while recognizing when the group needs to move on. Sometimes discussions
will sound more like debates and can be passionate! The goal is to come to an understanding of the performance standard and evaluation criteria for a successful call, and then to apply that understanding to evaluating calls in the future. It is not important to agree on a final score.

Conducting a Calibration Session

Establishing Some Ground Rules

In order for any calibration session to be a positive and productive experience, participants (under the direction of the facilitator) should identify the ground rules and commit to adhering to them for the benefit of the group. Such communication guidelines help create an environment in which everyone can feel comfortable sharing his or her opinion. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

  • Start and end on time.
  • Maintain confidentiality.
  • Listen without reacting.
  • It’s ok to take it back.
  • Focus on how it should be, not on being right.
  • Allow others to have a say (no interrupting).

You may want to ask the participants to suggest others. The point is that everyone agrees to follow these guidelines, understanding that this will improve the overall effectiveness of the calibration sessions.

Deelee Freeman of The Call Center School may be reached at deelee.freeman@thecallcenterschool.com.