Contact centers are at the front lines of customer service, where every interaction with a customer represents an opportunity to delight or disappoint. Quality assurance (QA) teams work hard to review these interactions for quality by using a QA scorecard with call scoring guidelines.
Call scoring is a QA practice that uses predetermined criteria to measure and score customer interactions. It’s most often used with phone calls but is sometimes used with other service channels like live chat, email, and cases or tickets. The resulting scores help in assessing how well an agent adheres to customer service standards and achieves desired outcomes.
This allows contact center leaders to meticulously evaluate quality through a thorough rubric-based assessment and provides a means to measure and improve agent performance. But are you maximizing the potential of call scoring for truly effective coaching, or is it just another routine checkbox exercise?
Below, we cover:
Why do contact centers use call scoring?
Call scoring helps contact centers evaluate agents using consistent criteria and lets them measure performance based on what matters most to the business (note: different QA items may be weighted differently and combined to get the total call score). Supervisors use agent scorecards to inform their coaching sessions, giving them targeted areas of improvement to focus on with each agent. Working with agents on these areas can improve overall service quality and the customer experience.
Where do most contact centers go wrong with call scoring?
It’s easy for call scoring to become a “check-the-box” activity, and contact centers often end up focusing on criteria that are easy to observe in every interaction (e.g., “Did the agent use the proper greeting?”) rather than criteria that help them uncover meaningful coaching opportunities.
It can be challenging for contact center leaders to ensure call scoring doesn’t devolve into just a box-ticking exercise. Having the basics covered is important, but informing call scoring with insights from customer conversations allows for more consideration of the agent behaviors that positively influence the customer experience. Your system should evaluate factors like expectation setting, advocacy or use of proactive language, and actual problem resolution, while also evaluating basic script inclusions like, "Did the agent mention the promotional sale?" Contact center leaders should focus on using call scoring as a dynamic tool that reflects the impact of agent behavior on customer sentiment and a way to provide meaningful coaching to their teams.
5 best practices for effective call scoring
What's the secret to turning call scoring from a rudimentary checklist exercise into a transformative coaching tool? Here are the top five best practices that are essential for contact center and QA leaders to know.
1. Establish clear evaluation criteria and relevant KPIs
It’s important to first establish clear and relevant evaluation criteria for scoring tied to your business goals and customer experience outcomes. When evaluating and scoring calls, consider key performance indicators (KPIs) like average handle time, customer satisfaction, and first call resolution rate, and incorporate any agent behaviors that impact these KPIs into your scorecard. A set of clear criteria ensures your team is focusing on the aspects of a call that truly matter to your contact center and the organization’s mission.
2. Weight your QA items to reflect business priorities
Once you’ve decided on your evaluation criteria, you’ll need to decide what weight these items carry within the QA scorecard. Consider the impact each item has on business objectives and outcomes. For example, adding a QA scorecard item for “Did the agent disconnect the call before the customer?” is not as impactful to first call resolution in comparison to a statement like “Did the agent ask the customer if there was anything else they could assist with before closing?” Therefore, the latter should carry a higher weight in the overall scorecard, as it would more heavily impact overall business objectives and priorities.
3. Hold call calibration sessions
Once your QA scorecard is in place, it’s important to regularly calibrate and evaluate the effectiveness of your call scoring. A good cadence for call calibration is once a month or any time there are changes made to QA metrics or call center KPIs. This involves meeting with contact center and quality assurance leaders to review and discuss the results of call evaluations and ensure they align with business goals. Call calibration sessions allow for open communication and transparency, helping to identify any discrepancies or areas for improvement in the QA framework.
During these sessions, it’s also important to gather feedback from agents on their experience with the QA process. Agents are on the front lines interacting with customers daily, so their input can be valuable in identifying any gaps or pain points in the evaluation criteria. This feedback can then be used to make adjustments to the call scoring criteria as needed.
4. Automate objective QA criteria to score 100% of interactions
A huge advantage of automated call scoring is its potential to automate objective QA criteria on your scorecard. This enables you to score 100% of your calls and uncover deeper insights into agent performance and improvement. Use the data you collect during evaluations not just to pat great performers on the back, but to construct targeted training that will improve the performance of your whole team.
Don’t let call scoring become a set-it-and-forget-it activity. Integrate it into your call center's overall quality assurance efforts, and keep updating it to reflect any changes in your business's goals or operating environment. Remember, a well-evaluated call touches on not only the customer experience but also your call center's adherence to compliance and regulatory standards.
Going beyond basic call scoring
Call scoring becomes truly powerful when it helps contact center and QA leaders harness insights that can make a lasting business impact. This is best exemplified through the use of AI-powered QA platforms like Creovai, which allow you to automate quality and call scoring by delving into the words used in customer conversations. These platforms not only increase the accuracy and reach of your call scoring efforts but also broaden the scope of insights into each interaction.
Using a conversation intelligence platform like Creovai, you can gather a comprehensive and continuous flow of data about your contact center performance directly from all of the interactions taking place. With custom QA scoring, the Customer Effort Index, and CSATai (Creovai’s proprietary predictive CSAT scoring model), you no longer find yourself at the mercy of limited data samples or manual analysis. CSATai and Creovai’s other customizable scoring models can complement your existing scoring criteria, giving another perspective on performance and quality. This gives you a 360-degree view of your contact center’s performance at scale. Integrating platforms like Creovai into your call scoring process can help you provide efficient agent training that isn’t just about scorecard checkboxes but about measurable positive performance and growth.
Call scoring should support the agent and customer experience
Ultimately, successful call scoring is about more than the numbers on a spreadsheet; it's about your agents and the customers they serve. By implementing these best practices and leveraging QA automation technology, your contact center can transform call scoring into an invaluable process that nurtures a culture of excellence and continuous improvement for agents.
It’s time call center and QA leaders take call scoring to the next level. Dive deeper, transform more conversations, and watch as your agents step up their customer service delivery. Call scoring informed by interaction insights doesn’t just make successful calls, but enables meaningful and memorable customer experiences that support organizational growth.
FAQs
How often should we conduct call calibration sessions?
Call calibration sessions should be held at least once per month to ensure consistency in scoring across your QA team. Additionally, schedule calibration sessions whenever you make changes to QA metrics, update scorecards, or modify contact center KPIs. These sessions help maintain scoring accuracy, align evaluators on criteria interpretation, and identify areas where your scoring framework may need adjustment. Regular calibration prevents scoring drift and ensures your evaluation standards remain consistent and fair.
How do we determine what to have human evaluators score and what to automate?
Focus manual scoring efforts on complex, subjective elements that require human judgment, such as empathy, problem-solving, creativity, or nuanced compliance situations. Use automation to handle clear-cut criteria like script adherence, compliance process completion, or specific phrase usage, then layer manual evaluation on top for comprehensive quality assessment.
How do we prevent call scoring from becoming a “check-the-box" exercise?
Move beyond basic compliance items by incorporating criteria that measure customer impact and business outcomes. Weight your scorecard items based on their influence on key metrics like first call resolution, customer satisfaction, and retention. Include evaluation criteria that assess problem resolution effectiveness, expectation setting, and proactive communication rather than just script compliance. Regularly review and update your criteria to ensure they align with evolving business goals and customer expectations.
What’s the best way to get agent buy-in for call scoring initiatives?
Involve agents in the scorecard development process by gathering their feedback on evaluation criteria and pain points in current processes. Clearly communicate how scoring results will be used for coaching and development rather than punitive measures. Share aggregate performance trends and celebrate improvements to demonstrate the program's value. Ensure supervisors use scoring results as coaching opportunities rather than just performance reviews, focusing on specific, actionable feedback that helps agents improve their customer interactions.
What metrics should we track to measure the success of our call scoring program?
Monitor both operational and outcome metrics to assess program effectiveness. Track scoring consistency (inter-rater reliability), coverage rates (percentage of calls scored), and time-to-feedback delivery. More importantly, measure business impact through improvements in customer satisfaction scores, first call resolution rates, average handle time optimization, and agent performance trends over time. Look for correlations between scoring results and customer outcomes to validate that your criteria are truly predictive of customer experience quality.
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