Quality Assurance | AG Weekly

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What Is Quality Assurance?

At AvantGuard, quality assurance is our process of verifying that the performance of our team members meets our quality standards. We want to make sure that as an organization we're able to deliver high performance for three groups of people involved: our dealers, our customers, and also making sure that the team members are also taken care of. We want quality at our company to be something that's enjoyed by all three parties involved. Quality assurance in any organization should make sure that everybody involved is happy.

Here at AG, quality starts with a member of the training and development department sitting sitting down and reviewing the performance of each team member out in the monitoring center. They look at the things that they did while acting on the signal. They also listened to the phone calls that were made and they look at the action plans and how things went for both the team member and also for the customer.

They measure all of this against a quality monitoring form that has been created for each signal type. They also reference a "quality standards definitions" document so that they can ensure that the way that they review one team member is the same for every other team member that they review. The quality monitoring form consists of key questions that they look through to make sure that team member is following the procedures that have been set forth by our dealers and also making sure that they meet the standards that have been set forth by your organization.

That form is broken up into different categories that deal with safety whether we're taking care of the customer or making sure that we're doing everything that we need to so that their life and property is protected. And also making sure that we're developing good rapport with that customer so that we can make sure each customer feels like they're being taken care of. In addition, we do this so that we can help improve the relationship that customer already has with their alarm company.

We're also looking at things that have to do with efficiency, making sure that we are moving as quickly as we need to and that we're not wasting any time. Whether that's saving the company time, saving the dealer money and time as we act on their accounts and also keeping in mind that we're interrupting subscribers throughout their day. And so we want to make sure that we're being efficient in that way as well.

And then the last thing that we're looking for is that the the team member has a general knowledge of our procedures and of the procedures and standards set forth by the dealers that we monitor for.

How Does Quality Assurance Help In A Monitoring Center

Our QA processes help out in the central station in a few different ways. First off, everybody at work wants to know how they're doing. They want to know whether they're performing well and a huge part of a team members satisfaction at work is in knowing that doing their jobs well. So the first way that a quality assurance program helps team members out in this Central Station is it allows them to feel confident that they're doing what's right. That way, if they are making mistakes or if there are things that they need to improve upon, then a quality assurance program gives them the tools and the information and the feedback that they need to know in order to be successful.

A quality assurance program helps benefit a central station in variety of different ways. First it allows team members to know where they stand and to know how well they're doing at a job. A good deal of team member satisfaction in a place of employment has to do with how well they're performing and if they never receive any feedback on how well they're doing then they lack a source of motivation and satisfaction without feedback from a quality quality assurance program. Most times when someone's making a mistake it's because they don't either understand that they are making that mistake or they don't know what's exactly expected of them. A quality assurance program allows us to provide them with that feedback so that they are able to succeed and improve and build upon that.

A quality assurance program also helps the organization as a whole. If you've got everybody receiving feedback then everybody is able to improve and the culture of the organization is also able to develop and to grow. Before implementing a quality assurance program, you need to make sure that you have a culture that's based around quality. Without this culture, pushing out a quality monitoring form or a quality monitoring program, team members won't won't buy in. Whereas if you have a culture that's built around quality, then it just becomes a natural process that's part of your organization already.

What Are Some Key Performance Indicators?

Our main performance indicators at AG are safety, rapport, efficiency and knowledge.

Safety

Safety so that we make sure that our customers are taken care of. Really this is the backbone and this is the most important thing that we do at AvantGuard our dealers have entrusted us with the lives and the property of their customers. Here at AG, we truly do care about them. We want to make sure that they're safe and that they feel safe which leads us into our next standard, rapport.

Rapport

We want to build a relationship with each one of our customers and build a relationship with each one of our dealers so that they know that we've got their best interests in mind. We want this to be a partnership where we work with them side by side so that they understand that we're helping them achieve their goals.

Efficiency

Next we have efficiency. We want to make sure that we're doing things in an efficient manner, meaning that we're not wasting time that we're moving quickly with our processes and making sure that help gets sent along the way; all with the understanding that we're not going to sacrifice quality just for speed.

Knowledge

And lastly, knowledge. We want to make sure that our team members have a good understanding of what our procedures are. We want to make sure that they understand how each process affects the customer, how it affects the dealer, and so we work really hard so that we can push that out. And again a quality assurance program is able to help us so that we can measure each one of those and make sure that we're meeting those standards.

Additional Thoughts On QA

With any quality assurance program, and I feel that here at AG in particular, we see that it can't be a static thing. Quality is something that should be ever evolving and ever changing. Many times here at AG, we've taken a look at our quality assurance program and we've reached out to dealers we've reached out to customers and we've reached out to our own team members and said hey what is it about your job or what is it about the feedback that you've been giving or what is it about the performance that you've received that that needs to be improved. And then we listen we listen to the feedback that our team members give us because we want our quality assurance program to be something that they're happy with so that when they receive that feedback they don't resent it but it's something that they look forward to.

And I think that listening to the voices within your organization is critical in this role. As you develop a quality program you need to make sure that every each and every party is satisfied. If you ignore one group then you're not going to be able to satisfy them. They won't buy into your program and you won't be able to accomplish what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And in the end that's making sure that we're taking care of the people that depend on us, whether that's the customer who's sitting at home or it's the team member that comes to work.