Explore fresh, expert perspectives on customer engagement and innovation

Picture this: It's Monday morning, and your quality assurance manager sits down with a stack of randomly selected call recordings from last week. They'll spend hours listening, scoring, and writing feedback notes. By Friday, they might have reviewed 50 calls from the thousands that took place.

Meanwhile, compliance risks hide in unmonitored interactions, top-performing agents go unrecognised, and struggling team members miss opportunities for targeted improvement. The traditional approach to quality assurance isn't just inefficient—it's leaving your contact centre exposed and underperforming.

But what if you could monitor every single customer interaction automatically? What if quality assurance became a real-time, comprehensive process that drives continuous improvement rather than sporadic checking?

This transformation is exactly what AI-powered quality assurance delivers—and it's revolutionising how smart contact centres ensure compliance, develop agents, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

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The Hidden Costs of Traditional QA

Manual quality assurance creates a cascade of problems that impact every aspect of contact centre operations:

Limited Coverage: Reviewing only a tiny percentage of interactions means most quality issues, compliance risks, and coaching opportunities remain invisible.

Subjective Bias: Human reviewers bring their own perspectives and inconsistencies, leading to unfair evaluations and missed insights.

Reactive Response: By the time manual reviews identify problems, customers have already experienced poor service, and compliance breaches may have occurred.

Resource Drain: QA managers spend countless hours listening to recordings instead of developing strategies and coaching agents.

Missed Opportunities: Without comprehensive analysis, contact centres can't identify what makes their best agents successful or replicate those behaviours across teams.

The result? Compliance risks, disengaged agents, and missed opportunities to transform performance.

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How AI-Powered QA Changes Everything

Modern AI-driven quality assurance systems flip this model entirely. Instead of sampling a fraction of interactions, they analyse every single customer conversation across all channels—calls, emails, web chat, and SMS.

Here's how the technology transforms QA processes:

100% Coverage: Every interaction receives quality analysis, eliminating blind spots and ensuring comprehensive oversight.

Real-Time Insights: Issues are identified immediately, enabling proactive intervention rather than reactive damage control.

Objective Analysis: AI removes human bias, providing consistent, data-driven evaluations based on defined criteria.

Multi-Channel Monitoring: Quality assurance extends beyond phone calls to encompass your entire customer engagement ecosystem.

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Four Pillars of Intelligent Quality Assurance

1. Comprehensive Monitoring That Misses Nothing

AI-powered QA software monitors conversations across every channel where customers interact with your business. Whether it's a phone call about a billing query, an email complaint, or a web chat support request, every interaction receives the same thorough quality analysis.

This comprehensive approach reveals patterns and insights that single-channel monitoring misses, providing a complete picture of customer experience quality.

2. Compliance Made Simple and Bulletproof

Compliance isn't optional, and random sampling isn't sufficient. AI QA tools track, review, and evidence compliance across 100% of interactions, helping contact centres meet industry regulations consistently.

Instead of hoping your sample catches compliance issues, you gain confidence that every interaction adheres to required standards. This proactive approach protects your reputation, avoids costly fines, and gives your team the confidence to operate compliantly.

3. Insightful Coaching That Drives Real Improvement

AI-powered analysis reveals the 'why' behind customer objections, agent performance, and interaction outcomes. Instead of generic feedback, managers can provide specific, evidence-based coaching that addresses real performance gaps.

Identify what techniques your top performers use, understand common objection patterns, and create tailored training programmes that drive measurable improvement across your team.

4. Real-Time Performance Intelligence

Advanced QA systems provide instant insights into key performance metrics, balancing customer satisfaction with operational efficiency. Managers can spot trends as they develop and adjust strategies before small issues become major problems.

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The Technology That Powers Transformation

Modern QA systems integrate multiple AI technologies to deliver comprehensive insights:

Speech-to-Text Analytics: Convert every conversation into searchable transcripts, enabling keyword searches for compliance terms, quality indicators, and trending topics.

Sentiment Analysis: Understand customer emotions throughout interactions, identifying positive experiences worth replicating and negative patterns that need addressing.

Success Intelligence: Analyse what makes top-performing agents successful and provide actionable recommendations for improving overall team performance.

Advanced Reporting: Real-time dashboards and analytics provide the data needed to make informed decisions about training, processes, and resource allocation.

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Real-World Results: The HoneyLegal Success Story

The transformation potential is clear in real customer results. Karl from HoneyLegal explains: "AI will absolutely revolutionise the way we approach sales training and people's individual performance."

HoneyLegal transformed their QA process by gaining deep insights into call performance, compliance, and agent success. This helped them streamline quality control, enhance coaching, and scale performance improvements across their team—moving from reactive management to proactive optimisation.

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The Business Case for AI-Powered QA

The benefits of implementing intelligent quality assurance extend throughout contact centre operations:

Risk Reduction: Comprehensive compliance monitoring protects against regulatory penalties and reputational damage.

Cost Efficiency: Automated analysis eliminates manual review time, freeing QA managers to focus on strategic improvement initiatives.

Performance Enhancement: Data-driven coaching delivers measurable improvements in agent effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Scalable Operations: AI-powered systems grow with your business without proportional increases in QA resources.

Competitive Advantage: Understanding exactly what creates exceptional customer experiences enables you to consistently deliver superior service.

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Moving Beyond Tick-Box QA

Traditional quality assurance often becomes a compliance exercise that provides limited value to agents or operations. AI-powered QA transforms this dynamic entirely.

Instead of random checks that may miss critical issues, you gain comprehensive insight into every customer interaction. Instead of subjective evaluations, you receive objective, data-driven analysis. Instead of reactive problem-solving, you enable proactive performance improvement.

Most importantly, QA becomes a strategic tool for business growth rather than a necessary cost centre. When you can identify exactly what creates successful customer interactions and replicate those behaviours across your team, quality assurance becomes a competitive advantage.

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The Future of Contact Centre Excellence

The contact centres that succeed in today's competitive environment are those that learn from every customer interaction. They don't just handle calls—they extract intelligence that drives continuous improvement.

AI-powered quality assurance makes this comprehensive learning possible. By analysing every conversation, it reveals patterns, trends, and opportunities that traditional sampling methods miss entirely.

When you can see what works, understand what doesn't, and provide targeted coaching based on real performance data, your contact centre transforms from reactive operations to proactive excellence.

The conversations are happening. The data is there. The question is: are you using it to drive the performance and compliance your business needs?

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Ready to transform your quality assurance from random sampling to comprehensive intelligence? Discover how AI-powered QA software can improve compliance, enhance agent performance, and drive better customer outcomes across every interaction.

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Many BPO leaders are under growing pressure to deliver consistent performance, all whilst operating in an environment that’s increasingly competitive and cost-sensitive.

One of the biggest challenges is not the lack of data, but knowing how to interpret it. BPOs often track dozens of metrics, yet they still struggle to understand whether performance is strong, weak, or simply average for the market. Without a clear point of comparison, it’s impossible to know where to focus improvement efforts, or how to demonstrate value to clients.

In this article, we explore how accurate benchmarking helps outsourced contact centres to:

• Assess performance more accurately.
• Identify meaningful improvement opportunities.
• Use data to drive better outcomes across sales, service and debt collection operations.

What is Benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the process of comparing your contact centre’s performance against industry standards or peer groups to understand how well you’re really performing.

Rather than viewing KPIs in isolation, benchmarking provides context. It shows where performance is competitive, where gaps exist, and which metrics matter most for your operating model.

There are two primary approaches:

• Competitive benchmarking: Comparing performance against similar BPOs or outsourced contact centres
• Process benchmarking: Comparing workflows against recognised best practice, sometimes drawn from other industries (used less frequently in contact centres)

The Benchmarking Challenge for BPOs

In practice, benchmarking is not always straightforward. BPOs often face inconsistent data, varying KPI definitions between clients, and limited visibility of reliable industry standards. Combined with the pace and pressure of contact centre operations, this makes it difficult to establish benchmarks that are both accurate and actionable.

Despite this, benchmarking remains essential for BPO performance and long-term competitiveness.

Done well, benchmarking allows BPOs to:

• Understand whether KPIs reflect strength or emerging risk
• Use objective data to support operational and commercial decisions
• Identify best practices and apply them consistently across teams
• Spot early warning signs, such as rising agent workload or churn, before they impact service delivery

Overcoming benchmarking challenges starts with a clear strategy: defining objectives, selecting relevant KPIs and measuring performance consistently over time. Our complete guide to call centre reporting metrics explains which KPIs matter most and how they should be read together, rather than in isolation.

What are the Top KPIs Contact Centres Prioritise in 2026?

MaxContact’s 2025/26 UK Contact Centre KPI Benchmarking Insights Report reveals a shift in how contact centres prioritise performance metrics. Rather than focusing on a single efficiency measure, decision makers are increasingly balancing customer experience, responsiveness and commercial outcomes.

Based on responses from 300 UK contact centre leaders, the three most focused on KPIs are:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – prioritised by 48% of respondents
• Speed of Answer – cited by 35% as a critical performance metric
• Service Level Achievement – selected by 34% of contact centres

Close behind these sit commercially focused metrics such as conversion rate (33%), first call resolution (33%), and revenue per contact (32%), reflecting the ongoing pressure to balance service quality with financial performance.

We explore why a blended approach to call centre metrics is the best way to measure call centre efficiency.

Of course, the metrics that contact centres report on, is also dependent on the industry they operate in.

Key KPIs for Sales and Debt Resolution BPOs

Understanding which KPIs matter most is critical for BPOs operating in sales and debt resolution. While both rely on outbound performance, the metrics that drive success (and the way they should be interpreted) differ significantly between the two.

The latest benchmark data shows that high-performing BPOs don’t track more metrics than their peers. They focus on the right ones and use them together to guide decisions, not just report outcomes.

Sales-focused BPOs

For sales-driven BPOs, performance is ultimately measured by revenue. But revenue outcomes are shaped by a combination of efficiency, lead quality and agent effectiveness.

The 2025/26 Benchmark Report shows that while sales volumes have softened slightly year-on-year, revenue performance is holding up, suggesting agents are working harder and conversations are becoming more complex.

Key KPIs for sales BPOs include:

• Conversion rate: Measures the percentage of contacts that result in a sale. Benchmark data shows a mean conversion rate of 16%, with nearly 30% of teams achieving rates between 20-29%. Improving conversion is less about increasing call volume and more about better lead prioritisation, agent coaching and script effectiveness.
• First-call close rate: Indicates how often a sale is achieved on the first interaction. The benchmark mean sits at 25%, down slightly year-on-year, reflecting a tougher sales environment. Falling first-call close rates can point to lead-quality issues or gaps in agent confidence and product knowledge.
• Average revenue per call: The mean revenue per call now sits at just under £230, although this figure is heavily skewed by top performers. Over 45% of sales teams generate less than £59 per call, highlighting a significant performance gap between average and high-performing BPOs.
• Calls to success ratio: Tracks how many calls are needed to secure a sale. A rising ratio often signals inefficiencies in targeting, messaging or dialling strategy, issues that cannot be solved by increasing activity alone.

High-performing sales teams use these metrics together to understand why performance varies between campaigns, agents or lead sources, not simply whether targets were met. We explore how sales teams follow data effectively in our article Is your outbound sales team truly data-driven?

Debt Resolution BPOs

Debt resolution BPOs face a different challenge: recovering outstanding balances while navigating increasingly complex and sensitive customer conversations.

Benchmark data suggests debt collection teams are operating in a more difficult economic environment, with performance under pressure despite consistent effort.

Key KPIs for debt resolution BPOs include:

• Right Party Contact (RPC): Measures how effectively agents are reaching the correct individual. The current benchmark mean is 27%, making RPC one of the most important early indicators of list quality and call timing effectiveness.
• Promise to Pay (PTP) rate: Indicates the percentage of contacts that result in a commitment to pay. The benchmark mean sits at 28%, broadly in line with last year, suggesting agents are maintaining performance despite tougher circumstances.
• First Call Resolution (FCR): Measures whether a payment or promise to pay is achieved on the first interaction. The benchmark mean has fallen to 37%, down five percentage points year-on-year. A meaningful decline that reflects more complex debtor situations rather than declining agent capability.
• Percentage of debt collected: A high-level indicator of overall effectiveness. The benchmark mean has dropped to 28%, down from 32% last year, reinforcing the need for smarter call strategies, better timing and more personalised conversations.

For debt resolution BPOs, these KPIs must be interpreted in context. Falling FCR or recovery rates may signal broader economic pressure rather than operational failure. But without benchmarking, that distinction is impossible to make.

The Role of Technology for Benchmarking Success

Benchmarking only becomes valuable when insight leads to action. This is where technology plays a critical role.

The 2025/26 Benchmark Report shows that 66% of contact centres are already using or piloting AI, with 60% planning further investment in AI and automation in 2026. This reflects a clear shift away from retrospective reporting and towards real-time performance control.

Modern contact centre platforms enable BPOs to:

• Optimise agent performance: Use real-time dashboards, coaching tools and conversation analytics to identify what high performers do differently and replicate it at scale.
• Improve customer outcomes: Balance efficiency with experience by monitoring metrics such as conversion, FCR and CSAT together rather than in isolation.
• Drive operational efficiency: Adjust dialling strategies, lead prioritisation and resource allocation based on live performance data, not end-of-day reports.

In a highly competitive outsourcing market, technology is no longer a differentiator on its own. The advantage lies in how effectively BPOs use data to benchmark performance, guide decisions and demonstrate value to clients.

Not Sure How You Measure Up?

The 2025/26 UK Contact Centre KPI Benchmarking Insights Report provides in-depth analysis of industry performance, with actionable insight for sales and debt resolution BPOs.

Download the report to compare your KPIs against UK benchmarks, identify performance gaps and understand what high-performing outsourced contact centres do differently.

Download your copy today

Ben Booth, CEO of MaxContact has been recognised as one of The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2024, in partnership with The Times.

Created by trusted investment partner LDC – part of Lloyds Banking Group, The Top 50 celebrates entrepreneurs demonstrating remarkable ambition, and is now in its seventh year.

This year the programme received more than 700 nominations showcasing the exceptional individuals building successful and growing businesses right across the UK.

The business leaders featured in The LDC Top 50 for 2024 are making a real impact by creating jobs, promoting social equality, championing sustainability, expanding internationally and integrating purpose into their business practices. They operate from 39 towns and cities across the UK and span every sector of the economy, collectively they employ 5,146 people and generate revenues of more than £1.1bn.

MaxContact is the best cloud contact centre platform for delivering conversation outcomes and customer insights to generate more revenue – compliantly. After ten years working for a contact centre solution reseller, CEO Ben Booth was frustrated with providers that overpromised and underdelivered on features, support and resilience. Determined to enhance the agent and customer experience, MaxContact was formed. Over 7 years later, the business has become one of the fastest growing contact centre technology specialists in the UK.

Ben Booth, CEO of MaxContact said: “Being recognised as one of the UK’s Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders is a testament to the incredible work the team at MaxContact has accomplished. We started this journey with a vision to transform the contact centre industry, focusing on delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving revenue growth for contact centres, globally. This accolade reinforces our commitment to innovation and excellence in the field. As we continue to grow and evolve, we remain dedicated to our mission of enhancing both agent and customer experiences in the contact centre space.”

John Garner, Managing Partner at LDC, added: “It’s been seven years since we launched The LDC Top 50 and in that time we’ve had the privilege of meeting some truly remarkable people. Our business leaders for 2024 show relentless drive and determination in their growth ambitions, and I’d like to congratulate them on everything they’ve achieved so far. This is certainly not the end of their success and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.”

Read more about The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2024 here: https://bit.ly/3Y3rfxY

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If you work in a contact centre that operates in the debt resolution industry, you’ll know that achieving a high right-party contact (RPC) rate is key to success. After all, how can you collect payments efficiently if you’re not speaking with the right recipient in the first place?

Despite this, our recent benchmark report shows that many contact centres struggle to achieve optimal RPC rates. In fact, 23% of contact centres have a RPC rate below 20%, while the industry average sits at just 26%.

So, what can contact centre managers do to improve their RPC rates and, ultimately, increase the percentage of debt collected?

In this blog post, we’ll explore effective strategies that can help your call team connect with the right people consistently.

Challenges to Achieving High Right-Party Contact Rates

Contact centres in the debt collection industry need to carefully consider and address several common challenges to improve right-party contact rates (RPCs).

Challenge 1: Poor Data Quality & Incorrect Information

Poor data quality is a common culprit of low right-party contact rates (RPCs). When contact information is incorrect, incomplete, or outdated, it becomes difficult to reach the intended recipient, leading to wasted time and resources.

Here are some examples of data quality oversights and their consequences:

Oversight: Inaccurate or incomplete information due to data entry errors, system integration problems, or customer-provided data.

Consequence: Difficulty reaching the intended recipient, wasted time and resources and reduced customer satisfaction.

Oversight: Duplicate records for the same customer, once again caused by data entry errors or inconsistent data sources.

Consequence: Confusion and inefficiency in call routing, resulting in unnecessary attempts to contact the same person.

Oversight: Outdated contact information due to changes in addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses.

Consequence: Failed attempts to reach customers, decreased efficiency and potential lost revenue.

Challenge 2: Inefficient Call Routing

Call routing is an invaluable tool- but only when used correctly. Inefficient call routing is another culprit of low RPCs. Here are some examples of the oversights contact centres often make with call routing and the impact on KPIs.

Oversight: Call routing rules are not implemented properly or updated.

Consequence: Calls are directed to the wrong agents or departments. Unnecessary transfers and delays lead to frustrated customers and negatively impact agent efficiency.

Oversight: Outdated call routing systems are not updated in real-time with information about agent availability, call volumes and customer preferences.

Consequence: If a system is unaware of a sudden increase in call volume or an agent’s unavailability, it will continue to route calls to that agent, resulting in inefficient routing and longer wait times.  

Oversight: Agents aren’t trained to identify and route calls correctly.

Consequence: Untrained agents may misinterpret caller information, direct calls to the wrong departments, or transfer calls to agents ill-equipped to handle the customer’s query.

The Impact of Low Right-Party Contact Rates

Low right-party contact rates lead to increased costs, reduced customer satisfaction and potential compliance issues.

Let’s explore each one in more detail to understand the impact.

Increased Costs

• Inefficient call routing leads to agents spending time on unproductive calls, wasting resources and delaying debt recovery.
• Dealing with frustrated customers and repetitive tasks contributes to high agent turnover rates, increasing hiring and training costs.

Reduced Customer Satisfaction

• Difficulty reaching debtors can lead to missed payments and lower debt collected percentages.
• Negative customer experiences can tarnish a debt resolution company’s reputation, making it harder to collect debts in the future.
• Frustrated debtors may take legal action against debt resolution companies, leading to increased legal costs and potential reputational damage.

Potential Compliance Issues

• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has guidelines to treat customers fairly and reasonably. If contact centres fail to reach the right party, it can be seen as a breach of this requirement, leading to regulatory action, including fines or penalties.

Strategies for Improving Right-Party Contact Rates

How to Manage Data Accuracy and Quality

So we know the accuracy and quality of contact data impact right-party contact rates, but what strategies can call centres action to improve data?  

StrategyOverviewStrategy 1: Implement a Data Cleansing and Validation ProcessIt’s important to regularly review and clean contact data to remove typos, inconsistencies and outdated information. Use data validation tools to ensure data is formatted correctly and adheres to specific standards.Strategy 2: Enrich Contact DataSupplement existing data with additional information, such as demographic details, preferences and recent interactions. This can help you tailor your outreach efforts and increase the likelihood of reaching the right person at the right time.Strategy 3: Integrate with CRM SystemsConnect your contact centre software with your CRM system to access comprehensive customer information and ensure data consistency. This can help you avoid duplicate records and provide agents with a complete view of each customer’s interactions.Strategy 4: Leverage Third-Party Data SourcesSupplement your existing data with information from third-party providers to improve targeting and accuracy. Consider using demographic data, credit bureau information, or social media data to enhance your understanding of customers.Strategy 5: Establish Data Governance PoliciesDevelop clear policies and procedures for data management and quality. This includes regular data audits, data cleansing, and data retention guidelines. To ensure this is carried out effectively, all employees must be aware of and adhere to these policies.Strategy 6: Combine Accurate Data with Automated DiallingAutomated dialler systems can reduce human error and improve call efficiency. However, accurate data is essential for these auto-diallers to function effectively and minimise wasted calls.Strategy 7: Monitor Data Quality MetricsUse analytics tools like MaxContact’s reporting capabilities to track RPC rates, data accuracy and other relevant metrics. This will help you identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance your contact centre’s performance.

How to Optimise Call Timing

Call timing plays a key part in improving right-party contact rates and debt recovery. Here are some effective strategies to enhance call timing.

StrategyOverviewStrategy 1: Introduce Predictive DiallingPredictive dialling can automatically dial numbers based on predicted availability and considers factors such as past call history and customer behaviour. This reduces the time agents spend on unanswered calls and improves overall efficiency.Strategy 2: Analyse Historical DataUse MaxContact’s analytics features to examine historical data and identify optimal calling times for debtor segments. Consider factors such as the day of the week, time of day and specific customer preferences when scheduling calls.Strategy 3: Implement Skills-Based Call RoutingSkills-based call routing directs calls to agents with the appropriate skills and expertise to handle specific debt collection scenarios, such as dealing with difficult debtors or negotiating payment plans. Customers are connected with the best-qualified agents, improving their overall experience and increasing the likelihood of successful debt recovery.Strategy 4: Use Intelligent Retry StrategiesImplement a system of intelligent retries to increase the chance of reaching debtors when calls go unanswered. Vary the time between call attempts based on factors such as the debtor’s history, the urgency of the debt and previous attempts. Consider omnichannel communication, such as email or text messages, to reach debtors who may not answer phone calls.

How to Boost Call Agent Skills in Debt Collection

Agent training and development can improve right-party contact rates and enhance overall performance. Here are some ways you can deliver impactful training:

StrategyOverviewStrategy 1: Give Comprehensive TrainingTrain agents on customer data, contact strategies and communication skills, all tailored to debt collection. Utilise features such as call scripting and training on objection handling to equip agents with the tools they need to interact with customers effectively.Strategy 2: Analyse Call PerformanceUse speech analytics to analyse call transcripts and identify areas for improvement in agent performance. This can help you pinpoint areas where agents may need additional training or coaching.Strategy 3: Prioritise Regular Feedback and CoachingOffer regular feedback and coaching to agents based on their performance analysis. Address identified areas for improvement with tailored coaching, helping agents develop their skills and increase their confidence (and boost your retention rates).Strategy 4: Track Additional KPIsMonitor additional KPIs such as average handle time (AHT), average call rate (ACR), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) alongside RPC to gain a more comprehensive view of agent performance. These metrics can help you identify areas for improvement and measure the impact of your training and development efforts.

By implementing these strategies to improve data quality, call routing and call agent skills, debt resolution contact centres can significantly improve their right-party contact rates and achieve better outcomes.

Incorporating advanced outbound contact centre software is essential for achieving these goals. Features such as auto-diallers, speech analytics and reporting analytics can provide valuable insights and automation capabilities and help measure performance.

By investing in the right technology and implementing effective strategies, you can overcome the challenges highlighted in our benchmark report and achieve higher RPC rates. Increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs, ultimately boosting the overall performance of debt resolution.

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Training call centre agents feels like an uphill battle.

With staff turnover at 30.2% annually, onboarding never stops. And when agents leave, the pressure piles on—remaining staff take on extra work, while new hires are rushed through training.

And yet, many call centres still rely on outdated training methods that don’t prepare agents for real-life conversations:

• Classroom sessions cover hypothetical scenarios, not everyday challenges.
• Shadowing and coaching are inconsistent and depend on the trainer’s style.
• Manual call reviews cover only a fraction of conversations, leaving big blind spots.

These methods take too long, aren’t scalable, and fail to build agent confidence.

The result? Underprepared agents, longer call times, and frustrated customers.

If you’ve ever scrolled through call centre forums, you’ll find plenty of agents venting about poor training at (some, not all) call centres:

“My last job offered zero training. I was told to report to the call centre, but the trainer never showed up. I kinda bounced around a couple of days until I started taking calls by myself.”

“When I started taking calls, I had to put people on hold because I didn’t know what I was doing. If I was given examples of real customer calls instead of just the easy stuff in training, I wouldn’t have had to put customers on hold to ask questions.”

But what if training could be smarter? What if AI could personalise coaching, identify struggling agents faster, and automate quality assurance?

That’s where conversation intelligence comes in.

What is conversation intelligence – and why does it matter?

Conversation intelligence is AI-powered speech analytics that captures, transcribes, and analyses 100% of customer interactions in a call centre.

Instead of relying on manual quality assurance (QA) reviews of random calls, conversation intelligence provides complete visibility into agent performance.

Through AI-driven insights, this technology does more than just record calls. It highlights patterns, detects training gaps, and automates coaching recommendations.

And yet, 61% of call centres don’t use it. (Benchmark Report)

How conversational intelligence transforms call centre training

Trainers waste hours on call reviews – AI speeds things up.

For call centre trainers, conversation intelligence changes things. Instead of spending hours reviewing calls manually, they can focus on what really matters; coaching agents to perform better.

• Reduces their manual QA workload: Auto QA means no more spending hours reviewing call samples at random.
• Helps them see exactly where agents struggle: AI highlights common mistakes and weak points.
• Improves the effectiveness of training: Data-driven coaching helps agents improve faster.
• Speeds up the onboarding process: They can give new hires personalised training insights and real examples from day one.

With conversation intelligence, trainers can focus on coaching, not admin.

MaxContact’s Spokn AI: A smarter approach to conversation intelligence

MaxContact’s Spokn AI and Success Intelligence helps call centre trainers spend less time reviewing calls manually, and more time delivering impactful coaching that helps agents succeed.

1) Find training opportunities easily

You don’t have time to manually review every agent’s performance. But when you’re reliant on random call samples, many coaching opportunities get missed.

But what if you flip the process? Instead of listening for issues, conversational AI lets you search for them through keywords or flags calls with negative sentiment.

Here’s what the outcome would look like:

• AI identifies common mistakes; missing compliance scripts, failing to handle objections, or struggling with customer queries.
• Instead of waiting for a random performance review, conversational AI helps to find calls that need attention quicker.
• Make training data-driven, giving agents the right coaching at the right time.

STAT: 37% of call centres don’t provide agents with weekly feedback, slowing down development.

2) Manual QA slow and limited? Get better insights with Conversational AI

Traditional quality assurance is slow. Managers only review a handful of calls, so feedback is delayed and inconsistent.

• Speech-to-text technology transcribes 100% of calls, making them easy to search and analyse.
• Keyword tracking and sentiment analysis let managers proactively search for compliance issues and poor-quality interactions.
• QA teams can assess more calls in less time, leading to better insights into agent performance.

STAT: Only 20% of call centres manually evaluate more than 21%-30% of weekly calls.

3) Stop the guesswork: Give agents bias-free feedback

Performance reviews in call centres often rely on a manager’s personal observations, which can be inconsistent, biased, or based on too small a sample of calls.

While one agent might get detailed coaching from their manager, another gets generic feedback that doesn’t go far enough to address their actual weaknesses.

Feedback that misses the mark

Scenarios

Michelle and Tom work in the same call centre.

Scenario 1: Michelle’s manager listens to three of her calls and notices she sounds hesitant when handling objections.

The feedback?

“Be more confident.” But she doesn’t get specific guidance on how to improve.

Scenario 2: Tom’s manager is too busy to review his calls, so he gets vague, general feedback.

The feedback?

“Work on your customer interactions.” Even though his real issue is rushing through compliance scripts.

The likelihood of Michelle and Tom improving their call outcomes with this feedback is slim, as they have no clear understanding of what they need to change.

With conversation intelligence, this kind of vague and subjective feedback disappears.

AI-powered coaching tools, like our Success Intelligence feature, analyses performance objectively, giving managers real insights based on every agent’s actual calls.

Conversational AI continuously monitors:

• Talk/listen ratios – Is the agent dominating the conversation, or do they allow room for customers to engage?
• Objection handling success – Does the agent navigate customer pushback, or do they lose the sale?
• Customer sentiment analysis – How do customers actually feel after the interaction? Do they leave feeling satisfied?

This level of data insight shapes coaching that is specific, fair, and effective. Agents always know where they stand, what they’re doing well, and what they need to improve, without the frustration of inconsistent feedback.

4) Improve agent onboarding with AI-driven insights

It’s not just ongoing training that conversational intelligence can positively impact.

For new agents, onboarding can feel like being thrown in at the deep end. With most training reliant on theory-based learning, agents are left unprepared for real-life calls.

Conversation intelligence makes onboarding practical and personalised.

• New hires can listen to real, top-performing calls, rather than outdated training scenarios.
• AI helps managers to identify high-performing agents so new hires can shadow and learn call techniques from the best.
• Conversational intelligence speeds up the onboarding process without cutting corners, so agents feel more confident handling live calls sooner.

Poor training drives turnover, increases call times, and frustrates customers.

With Spokn AI and Success Intelligence, call centres can train smarter, coach better, and build more confident teams.

Want to see how conversation intelligence can transform your call centre training?

Start coaching smarter. Book a demo today

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To keep pace with evolving customer expectations, businesses are constantly seeking ways to enhance their customer experience whilst improving operational efficiency. At MaxContact, we’re proud to introduce Contact Hub Connect, our next generation agent interface that not only meets your customers where they are but also significantly boosts agent productivity.

The Shifting Landscape of Customer Engagement

The way customers interact with businesses has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. As Kayleigh Tait, Head of Marketing at MaxContact, points out, “We’re looking at research around usage of digital channels. The average consumer uses 6 touchpoints across various different channels when making a purchase, and that’s in comparison to 2 touchpoints from 15 years ago.”

This shift underlines the increasing importance of digital channels in customer interactions. Customers now expect seamless communication across multiple platforms, including email, web chat, SMS, and voice. Contact Hub Connect has been designed with this multi-channel reality in mind, providing a unified interface that allows agents to effortlessly navigate between different communication channels.

MaxContact’s Commitment to User-Driven Development

At the heart of Contact Hub Connect is our commitment to user-driven development. Elin Simmonds, our UX lead, emphasises the importance of involving users throughout the design journey: “It’s very important that the people are actually building the product understand how the end users use it.”

This user-centric approach involved extensive research, including interviews and site visits with both agents and managers. By observing how agents interact with existing systems and identifying pain points, we’ve created a solution that addresses the needs of those on the front lines of sales, collections and customer service.

5 Ways Contact Hub Connect Boosts Agent Productivity

Let’s dive into the specific features that make Contact Hub Connect a game-changer for agent productivity:

1. Unified Inbox for All Digital Channels:

Contact Hub Connect introduces a streamlined inbox that consolidates all digital interactions – email, web chat, and SMS – into a single, easy-to-navigate interface. This unified approach allows agents to seamlessly switch between different channels without the need to toggle between multiple systems or windows.

2. Improved Customer History and Context:

With Contact Hub Connect, agents have instant access to comprehensive customer information and interaction history. As Elin explains, “We can see what the digital history of a customer looks like, as well as voice history.” This feature provides agents with valuable context, enabling them to provide more personalised and informed service.

3. Enhanced Canned Responses and Shortcuts

We’ve reimagined how agents can use pre-written responses and shortcuts. The new system allows for quick insertion of canned responses using keyboard shortcuts, with a preview feature that lets agents see and edit the full response before sending.

4. Integration with Spokn AI for Voice Transcripts and Insights

For users with Spokn AI enabled, Contact Hub Connect provides powerful insights derived from voice interactions. Agents can access call summaries, sentiment analysis, and key topics discussed, all within the same interface. This integration helps bridge the gap between digital and voice interactions, providing an omnichannel view of customer communications.

5. Seamless Switching Between Digital and Voice Interactions

Contact Hub Connect isn’t just about digital channels – it’s designed to work seamlessly with voice interactions as well. Agents can easily initiate a voice call from within a digital interaction, with all the familiar call controls and scripting tools available at their fingertips. This integration ensures that agents can provide consistent service regardless of the channel.

Looking to the Future

Contact Hub Connect represents a significant step forward in our vision for the future of sales, collections and customer service. By providing agents with the tools they need to work efficiently across all channels, we’re enabling businesses to meet the evolving expectations of their customers and their growth targets.

As we continue to refine and expand Contact Hub Connect, we’re excited about the possibilities for future enhancements. We’re exploring ways to further leverage AI and automation to support agents, as well as looking at additional integrations that will make the platform even more powerful and versatile.

Are you ready to upgrade your customer interactions and boost your agent productivity? Contact us today to learn more about Contact Hub.

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