Quality Assurance (QA) offers contact centers the chance to motivate agents, support their development, and monitor customer service delivery.
As such, it’s a cornerstone contact center initiative. Yet, there are significant opportunities to bolster QA strategies in 2025.
Recognizing this, Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst at Metric Sherpa, pinpointed contact center QA as the ideal focus topic for the first episode of Contact Center Talk.
Contact Center Talk is a six-part video miniseries hosted by Robbins, with the first featuring Charlie Mitchell, Senior Editor of CX Today.
In the following video, they discuss everything QA, developing a list of ten best practices for 2025.
A written rundown of each best practice is also available below.
1. Create a Connected Learning Strategy
The best contact centers treat QA as a team effort. QA analysts, coaches, and supervisors collaborate to set shared performance standards, identify gaps, and run post-training reinforcement.
In doing so, contact centers can create a unified vision of excellent customer service, work cooperatively towards that, and maximize the value of their investments in QA technology.
Moreover, this approach combats the “us vs. them” mentality between critical QA stakeholders and ensures that evaluations translate into performance development.
2. Use More Than One Method to Evaluate Customer Interactions
Many leaders default to scorecards for QA, but it’s vital to include other approaches, like customer surveys, secret shopper programs, and appropriate metrics.
Diversifying the contact center’s methods provides a more complete picture of interaction quality.
Contact centers may also look beyond the agent-customer conversation, too, analyzing the pre- and post-contact experience to isolate service experience issues outside the agent’s control.
3. Align Quality Scores with Customer Satisfaction
Look for a correlation between QA scores and customer satisfaction metrics. If they align, the contact center is likely already measuring what matters most to customers. If not, it’s time to revisit the QA scorecard.
However, remember that not every scenario lends itself to this. For instance, some intents – such as loan denial conversations in banking – will undoubtedly deliver low CSAT scores.
As such, balancing QA insights with customer intent and situational context is critical.
4. Recognize That Your Scorecard Is Not Your Quality Program
Many leaders equate their scorecard with their strategy, but the form is just a tool.
Indeed, a QA program should encompass standards, coaching, connected learning strategies, and roles and responsibilities.
The form comes later and is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.
5. Demonstrate Unquantifiable Standards Within the Scorecard
Criteria like politeness or empathy can feel vague to agents. Creating a library of excellent customer conversations helps bring these standards to life, clarify performance expectations, and build agent confidence.
Additionally, consider developing a standards repository that defines every criterion in plain language and includes examples of each rating. That offers a valuable resource for everyone, from new agents to seasoned supervisors.
6. Take More of a Behavior-Based Approach to QA
Many contact centers report quality in terms of scores, but this can lead to unproductive conversations like, “You got a 73; how do we get you to 86?”
Instead, focus on behavior-based approaches. For example:
- For new agents, evaluate one skill at a time, building proficiency step-by-step.
- For experienced agents, target specific areas for improvement rather than reviewing all 15 criteria every time.
- For organization-wide initiatives, focus QA efforts on a single skill or behavior for a defined period.
Such an approach ensures targeted coaching and sustainable performance improvement.
