An engaged customer support team could be the ace up your sleeve that:
- turns negative customer experiences into positive ones,
- converts new customers into loyal brand advocates,
- helps you stand out from the competition.
Doing regular conversation reviews and tracking customer service KPIs are important to improve support quality. Yet, employee engagement and coaching are also a critical part of the picture.
If you agree, here’s how to find the right employee engagement software for your needs.
What is workforce engagement software?
Workforce engagement software helps you manage and improve the performance of your customer support agents through tracking, training, and coaching.
The goal is to make customer service work better by making sure your staff is well-trained and motivated in a way that meets customer needs.
Employee engagement software vs workforce management solutions
Dedicated workforce management (WFM) software, on the other hand, helps you ensure that your employees are in the right place and at the right time for maximum productivity. It usually offers scheduling, time tracking, and absence management features.
Even though any business can benefit from a workforce management tool, it becomes essential if you have hourly or shift-based workers and added complexities — like different schedules, availabilities, as well as wage and hour calculations.
Depending on your needs, you might have to use both solutions separately — or leverage an existing WFM integration if available.
Some tools combine workforce engagement with employee management, but the output is rarely desirable. A lack of seamless integration still leaves teams to analyze each endeavor independently. Data and metrics are scattered, failing the goal of offering a unified solution.
Workforce engagement software for customer support — comparison
The best employee engagement tools for customer service are, essentially, quality assurance tools.
Quality assurance data is the key info you use to coach your customer service agents effectively. It gives you a close-up view of what your agents excel at and where they can improve, like how well they talk, how friendly they are, and their overall tone. This is especially helpful when you use AI-powered features to make sense of it all.
Klaus, MaestroQA, Playvox, EvaluAgent, and Scorebuddy let you review support conversations across all channels, coach agents, and automate your QA process to some extent. But, there are quite a few differences as well:
Zendesk QA (formerly Klaus)
Zendesk QA helps companies drive revenue through excellent customer service. It uses AI to pinpoint where your agents are falling short and resources are going to waste — and helps you fix what isn’t working.
Improve employee engagement with Klaus
- Easy to set up and use — you don’t have to go through a long and complicated process to get started, and there’s no extra fee for implementation. It’s the only true ready-to-go solution that you can easily plug in and play around with.
- Instant access to AI features — you get to enjoy the benefits of AI right away. Full coverage, automatic discovery of relevant support conversations, and personalized sampling with AutoQA are at your fingertips.
- Browser extension — Klaus’s browser extension lets you securely review customer conversations wherever they’re happening.
- Fast, customer-centric development and quick feature updates — Klaus is all about keeping things moving to better serve you.
MaestroQA
MaestroQA is customer support QA software that simplifies the process of evaluating how agents handle interactions, planning useful coaching sessions, and giving agents consistent feedback.
MaestroQA doesn’t offer workforce management features but integrates with various WFM & learning management solutions. Despite automated quality management capabilities, however, there’s no possibility of autoscoring support conversations yet.
Drive employee engagement with MaestroQA
- Screen capture — every move your agents make while handling support tickets gets recorded and is easily accessible through MaestroQA. This means you can review exactly what happened during customer interactions, aiding in training, feedback, and performance improvement.
- Grader QA — ensure the accuracy of your Quality Assurance (QA) graders with the “Grade the Grader” workflow. This feature helps maintain the reliability of your evaluation process by checking the consistency and precision of those responsible for assessing agent performance. It also helps with QA calibration.
- Wide range of integrations — MaestroQA integrates with popular helpdesk solutions, phone systems, learning management platforms, and data warehouses.
Playvox
Playvox is a comprehensive quality & workforce management software that lets you evaluate and improve customer support across multiple channels.
WFM features in Playvox make planning, predicting, and scheduling your employees much easier. However, the feature stack is not integrated into one employee engagement platform – Quality Management and Workforce Management are separate tools.
Support employee engagement program with Playvox
- Customizable KPI tracking and dashboards — with Playvox, you can create reports that show important customer service metrics. These reports are like powerful tools that help you see how things are going and spot trends that might need attention.
- Advanced agent coaching — Playvox Coaching helps you stay updated on how each agent is doing. You can see the goals they’ve met and keep track of their progress over time. It’s a way to support and guide your agents to improve their performance.
- Popular integrations available out-of-the-box — Playvox is designed to connect with customer service tools that are commonly used. And if you have your own systems in place, Playvox offers a customizable API, so you can smoothly fit it into your existing setup.
EvaluAgent
EvaluAgent comes with a variety of features to assist you in overseeing, tracking, and enhancing the performance of your customer service teams.
EvaluAgent doesn’t include workforce management features, but it does connect with WFM solutions like injixo. However, EvaluAgent’s pricing starts for a minimum of 30+ seats, which means that smaller support teams won’t find it suitable for their needs.
Increase employee engagement with EvaluAgent
- Multiple scorecards available in one place — EvaluAgent allows you to use all the added QA scorecards in one location, regardless of the workspace or support interaction. This means you can access and make use of various scorecards without switching around.
- Conversation transcripts — EvaluAgent’s SmartScore feature can transcribe any conversation and give you a quick summary. It provides a high-level view of what took place during the interaction, making it easier to understand and evaluate.
- Multiple integrations available — EvaluAgent smoothly integrates with various tools, including ticketing & helpdesk, call recording, and WFM solutions. This flexibility ensures that EvaluAgent fits seamlessly into your existing workflow.
Scorebuddy
Scorebuddy is a customer support QA software designed to assess customer interactions across various channels, including phone, email, and live chat support.
Scorebuddy doesn’t integrate with WFM solutions, but offers a Learning Management System (LMS) to keep tabs on training, onboarding, and tracking employee engagement. While it offers relevant insights and reporting dashboards, though, its filtering capabilities aren’t the best.
Maintaining employee engagement with Scorebuddy
- Text analytics — with Scorebuddy’s text analytics, you can delve into support tickets. It’s a way to understand the reasons behind customer inquiries, identify patterns in conversations, and quickly analyze the sentiment. This deep dive into text data provides valuable insights for making well-informed decisions and continuously improving your customer support.
- Powerful Learning Management System — Scorebuddy offers a Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you to upload and create specific training content tailored to boost your team’s skills. It’s a powerful way to ensure your customer support team is always at the top of their game.
- Easily customizable scorecards — Scorebuddy makes it simple to create different scorecards. Whether you’re evaluating interactions from various support channels, workspaces, or types of customer interactions, the tool streamlines the process. This flexibility ensures that you can adapt your evaluations to specific situations effortlessly.
Keep your support team engaged
No matter which employee engagement software you end up using, keeping agents engaged is a smart business move. It’s time-saving and less risky than continuously hiring externally, especially in a competitive job market. Engaged agents are likely to view themselves as long-term contributors, making them more willing to take on new challenges without leaving the company.
Use the employee engagement software to:
- Track basic customer service KPIs. If you’re already using a help desk solution for support tickets, monitoring key performance indicators like First Response Time or Average Handle Time should be straightforward. These metrics can be a solid foundation for your employee engagement efforts.
- Review support interactions. Just like how software developers have their code reviewed or writers get feedback on their drafts, support agents benefit from evaluating customer interactions. These reviews are meant to provide constructive feedback and maintain the quality of support.
- Talk to your agents regularly. Quantitative data is essential, but having regular conversations with your team members gives you a qualitative understanding of how things are going. These discussions can range from formal one-on-one meetings to quick, informal chats. The goal is to grasp how agents perceive their performance, understand the challenges they face, and identify the tools or support they need to excel.
Finally, it’s important to create a positive work environment and listen to your agents. There are many resources out there that take a top-down approach to advising businesses on employee engagement, retention, and increased job satisfaction, but ultimately your own support staff are the experts on what their enablement needs and other pain points are.
Giving them the chance to share their feedback in the form of employee engagement surveys and check-ins with people managers will give you extremely valuable data and insight into these arenas. You can then use it to pinpoint and improve within the context of your specific business.
Of course, it’s of even greater importance that you take action based on this input, are transparent with your employees, and remain accountable as you implement their feedback.
Still not sure how to pick the best support QA software for your needs? Check out our Buyer’s Guide →
