Every contact center serves as a “face” of an organization to its customers. For this reason, companies often invest in quality assurance initiatives to make sure their customer service teams offer the best support possible.
Contact center QA tools are an essential component of such initiatives.
What is call center quality assurance software?
Call center quality assurance software allows you to monitor the quality of customer interactions, train and onboard agents, as well as improve your contact center operations.
💡 Call center quality assurance solutions are also known as contact center quality monitoring software, or contact center quality control platform.
Key features of call center QA software typically include:
- Help desk integrations: Contact center QA software integrates with help desk solutions and “imports” customer interactions, including phone calls, chat sessions, and email exchanges, to make conversation reviews possible — all in one place.
- Scorecards and grading: Call center quality monitoring software offers customizable scorecards and grading systems that enable you to set specific evaluation criteria and review support conversations.
- Feedback and coaching: Having quick access to QA scores and customer surveys makes it easier to provide feedback and help agents improve their skills and performance through regular coaching and training.
- Reporting and analytics: Call center quality monitoring tools generate reports to help you identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement in your contact or call center.
- Automation: Some QA tools leverage automation and artificial intelligence (AI) features for tasks like sentiment analysis and autoscoring customer interactions.
When do you need call center quality assurance software?
If you’re in the early stages of starting with quality assurance, with just a few contact center agents, you can probably use a combination of spreadsheets, Slack, and email for your QA program. However…
Because QA software is so important for providing high-quality customer service and coaching agents, it should come as no surprise that there are many options available today.
Below, you’ll find a comparison of the top 5 call center quality assurance solutions.
What are the best call center QA solutions?
The list of the best quality assurance software for contact centers includes:
- Zendesk QA (formerly Klaus)
- MaestroQA
- Playvox
- EvaluAgent
- Scorebuddy
Zendesk QA (formerly Klaus)
Zendesk QA is a quality assurance software designed to boost your contact center’s revenue through outstanding customer service. It uses AI to identify where your agents might be falling short and resources going to waste, then helps you address these issues.
✅ Instant access to AI-powered insights. 100% coverage, automatic conversation discovery, and the ability to tailor conversation sampling with AutoQA are at your disposal.
✅ VoiceQA technology. Zendesk QA is equipped with speech-to-text capabilities and automatically generates call summaries to make monitoring calls for quality assurance easier.
⛔ Limited agent training capabilities — Zendesk QA organizes performance data with smart AI features and helps you understand where your agents are excelling, and where they are falling behind. There’s no in-app Learning Management Solution just yet, though.
MaestroQA
MaestroQA is contact center quality assurance software that helps teams improve customer experience. The platform allows you to score customer interactions, gather data and customer feedback, and measure agent performance over time.
✅ Screen capture. MaestroQA can record every action your agents take when handling support tickets, providing a comprehensive view of their interactions.
✅ Grader Quality Assurance workflow. You can evaluate the accuracy of your QA graders through the “Grade the Grader” workflow.
⛔ Lack of AI-based scoring. Despite its automated quality management capabilities, MaestroQA does not offer autoscoring for support conversations.
Playvox
Playvox is a comprehensive quality assurance software designed to evaluate and improve the quality of customer interactions across various channels that your contact center manages.
✅ Customizable dashboards. Playvox provides robust reporting capabilities that display key performance indicators and support trends.
✅ Advanced agent coaching. With Playvox Coaching, you can monitor individual agent performance, track goal achievements, and assess their progress over time.
⛔ Autoscoring is limited to customer sentiment analysis. Playvox’s Auto QA primarily focuses on automated sentiment analysis, it doesn’t score support conversations automatically.
EvaluAgent
EvaluAgent is a contact center quality assurance software that provides a range of features to help you effectively manage, monitor, and improve the performance of customer service teams.
✅ Customizable dashboards. EvaluAgent offers robust filtering options and generates reports based on individual QA scorecards, customer support teams, and agents. It also provides the convenience of automatic monthly reports for senior managers.
✅ Unified scorecard management. You can access and use multiple scorecards within the platform, regardless of the workspace or customer interaction type.
⛔ Minimum seat requirement. EvaluAgent’s pricing structure is designed for teams with a minimum of 30+ seats, making it less suitable for smaller support teams.
Scorebuddy
Scorebuddy is contact center quality assurance software that allows you to evaluate customer interactions across various channels, including phone, email, and live chat support.
✅ Advanced learning management. Scorebuddy offers a Learning Management System (LMS) for uploading and creating dedicated training content.
✅ Various survey types available. Scorebuddy enables you to send branded surveys to customers, including Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and multiple-choice survey questions.
⛔ Limited filtering options. While Scorebuddy offers robust data and reporting dashboards, its filtering capabilities are somewhat limited, making it challenging to extract insights from the data.
Need more call center QA tools?
There is a wide range of contact/call center quality monitoring software available on the market today. The top 5 options discussed above are just the tip of the iceberg.
If you still need more options, consider the following:
- Sprinklr
- Medallia
- Miuros
- Kaizo
- Loris
- Sprinklr
- Observe.AI
- Aprikot
- Summatti
Finding the right call center quality monitoring software for your needs
Of course, the main consideration when deciding which platform to use should be the specific needs and customer service goals. It may take some time to determine which solution is the best match for your company, and that’s okay. Test out several call center quality assurance solutions during free trials before committing to one option in particular.
You may want to ask yourself what you want out of the software:
1. Integrations with your current tools. When selecting quality assurance software, prioritize options that seamlessly integrate with your existing helpdesk and other tools used in your contact center. This ensures that all your data is centralized, eliminating the need for switching between tabs or manual data transfers.
2. Features that matter most to your team, for example:
- Customizable scorecards — opt for call center quality monitoring tools that allows you to create scorecards tailored to your internal quality standards and customer service goals. This should include the ability to customize categories, weightings, and rating scales.
- Grading calibration — seek a solution that offers a QA calibration feature for consistent evaluation of customer interactions. While calibration methods may vary, the goal is to ensure uniform grading.
- Dashboards and reporting — choose call center quality monitoring software with well-organized data presentation, providing insights into agent performance and essential customer service metrics.
- Automation and AI — prioritize features like sentiment analysis and AutoQA, which can help you save time and effort in the quality assurance process.
4. User-friendly interface. Make sure to test the call center quality monitoring software’s user-friendliness and intuitiveness. Consider the level of training and onboarding required for your team and avoid QA tools in BPO with overly complex interfaces that could hinder your quality assurance program.
5. Reliability and compliance. Ensure that the call center quality monitoring tools meet your security and compliance requirements. This includes assessing organizational and technical controls, internal policies, employee training and development, as well as certifications like SOC 2.
6. Pricing. Select a call center quality monitoring tool that aligns with your budget while offering the necessary features and integrations. Typically, support teams allocate around $29 per agent monthly to their QA tool, with an average total software budget of $184 per agent monthly.
7. Scalability. Choose a tool capable of accommodating your team’s growth and evolving needs. Review case studies to understand how the software has performed for similar companies in terms of scalability.
8. Available support. Look for unbiased feedback on the provider’s support responsiveness and overall customer experience by consulting review sites such as G2. This ensures you receive adequate assistance when needed.
The more you know before you choose the right contact center quality assurance software for your team, the better.
Still not sure how to pick the best quality assurance solution for your needs? Check out our Buyer’s Guide →
Bonus: Life in a Contact Center
We talked with Ahmad Baydoun, Operations Manager at a leading customer experience management company. Ahmad started his journey in the company 11 years ago in a level one position, working as an agent. In the following years, he grew in the position and took on many different roles before realizing that quality is his favorite part of customer service. (Us too, Ahmad…)
Watch our Fireside Chat with Ahmad, or listen to the podcast about his experience with contact centers. Enjoy!
Published in November 2020; last updated in October 2023.
