When you hear “quality assurance manager(QAM)“, what comes to mind? Someone sitting in a dark room with headphones on, furiously taking notes?
Yeah, not quite.
In today’s contact centers, the QA manager is the glue that holds it all together. They’re the reason:
- Customers walk away feeling heard
- Agents get better every week, and
- The chaos of call center life actually stays (somewhat) on track
Let’s pull back the curtain and see what they really do.
Building and Leading the QA Function
Here’s a stat to chew on:
- 89% of customers say a good support experience makes them more likely to come back (thanks, Salesforce).
- But only 1 in 5 businesses thinks they’re actually nailing it (ouch).
So you definitely need a quality assurance manager.
They’re the brains behind your call center QA management by:
- Building the systems,
- Coaching the people, and
- Keeping everything aligned with business goals.
Think of them as the quality GPS in a maze of scripts, KPIs, and wild customer conversations. It all starts with QA team leadership:
- They hire and train QA analysts,
- Build scoring systems, and
- Create feedback loops that actually help agents improve, not just tick boxes.
That foundation includes the development of rock-solid quality standards, smart contact center quality control strategies, and continuous collaboration with operations and CX.
To understand what QAM does life let’s see one day of QA Sarah’s working day and also her responsibilities and achievements
CASE: A Day in the Life of a Quality Assurance Manager
Meet Sarah, QA Manager at a fintech call center. She supports 80 agents across calls, chats, and emails. Her toolbelt includes Call Center Studio, Google Looker, speech analytics, and a solid learning management system.
Morning Dashboards & Coffee
Sarah kicks things off by diving into yesterday’s numbers:
- CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
- AHT (Average Handle Time)
- QA (Quality Assurance) scores across the team
- Flagged calls from the speech analytics tool (anything with “cancel,” “angry,” or “lawsuit” is a red flag)
✔️Result: One agent, Alex, had three low-rated calls. Next, she will investigate it.
9:30 AM: Listening In
She fires up Call Center Studio and checks out a sample of 10 random calls. She’s rating agents on:
- Tone and empathy
- Script usage
- Whether they solved the customer’s problem
- Legal stuff (like ID verification)
✔️Result: She logs scores and feedback in the QA dashboard.
11:00 AM: Real Talk With Alex
Coaching time. Sarah pulls Alex into a quick 1:1 meeting
- They listen to one of his flagged calls together
- He missed a key empathy moment and didn’t escalate a tricky issue
- They agree on two action points for next week
✔️Responsibility: Training and coaching, QA team leadership
Noon: Lunch Catch-Up
Sarah grabs lunch with the Training Lead. They chat about:
- The next onboarding cycle
- How to add de-escalation skills to the soft-skill training modules
✔️Responsibility: Collaborating on training development
1:00 PM: Weekly QA Team Meeting
Weekly QA team meeting. The agenda:
- Top and bottom 5 agents (QA score-wise)
- Trends in compliance misses
- Updating how they score empathy
They decide to get tougher on closing scripts starting next month.
✔️Responsibility: QA team leadership, continuous improvement
2:30 PM: Big-Picture Strategy
Sarah meets with the Ops Head and the CX Lead. She presents:
- QA trends: 27% of unhappy customers mention long wait times
- Top agents always use the customer’s name early—a small thing, big impact
Her suggestions?
- Add empathy scripting to onboarding
- Improve queue routing to cut down hold times
✔️Responsibility: Customer experience management, reporting, and strategy
4:00 PM: Playing with New Tools
She tries out a new AI-based sentiment analysis plugin inside Call Center Studio Features. It tracks tone shifts in live calls.
She’s setting up a 2-week pilot with the outbound team.
✔️Responsibility: Tool implementation, innovation in QA processes
5:30 PM: Wind Down & Plan Ahead
Before heading out, Sarah:
- Updates dashboards
- Flag a few calls to review tomorrow
- Starts writing up a new version of the agent scorecard
✔️Responsibility: Documentation, quality standards refinement
Close the Day with the Feeling of Success
Sarah is successful because she combines strong analytical thinking with empathy and clear communication. She doesn’t just point out mistakes but also helps her team grow from them.
To be a great QA manager like Sarah, you need a unique mix of skills:
-
- Sharp attention to detail,
- A data-driven mindset,
- Excellent listening skills,
- Emotional intelligence, and
- A deep understanding of call center tools and metrics.
The best ones also know how to inspire trust and bring out the best in their agents, even during tough feedback conversations.
The Role of Call Center Studio in QA Management
For Sarah, and many QA managers like her, Call Center Studio isn’t just a platform; it’s the control room. From one dashboard, she has:
- Call monitoring tools: Monitor and review real-time or recorded calls using
- Deep performance analysis: Access detailed agent performance metrics
- Speech analytics: Automatically flag calls with risky keywords through
- New tools like AI sentiment analysis or routing optimizations
Summary: What a QA Manager Does
If you’re still picturing someone with headphones and a red pen, it’s time for a reboot.
Today’s quality assurance manager is a strategist, coach, trend spotter, and systems thinker. They:
- Lead people
- Set quality standards
- Dive into data
- Spot patterns
- Improve customer experience management from the inside out
So if you want fewer hold-time complaints and more 5-star reviews?
Step one: Make sure your QA manager isn’t in the background but at the table, shaping contact center quality control and strategy.
