Customer Service Performance Review Phrases and Examples

Performance reviews can be unnerving. But they don’t have to be. Performance reviews can be an excellent opportunity to highlight call center agent strengths and create improvement plans. Performance reviews can help call centers find success, refine processes and training, and improve customer service standards. 

What Are Call Center Performance Reviews? 

A call center performance review is an opportunity to analyze goals, objectives and results with an agent. Customer service requirements are at an all-time high. As people adopt digital channels, your customer service team must deliver. Customer service performance evaluations allow agents to understand what they are doing well and what areas need improvement.  

Why are Customer Service Performance Reviews Important?  

A performance review gives a snapshot of an agent’s successes and points to areas that may require improvement. Whether you’re looking at skills, co-operation, tone or another scoring metric,, a performance review can help you to improve. There are other reasons why performance reviews are essential, including:  

• Customer service is at the heart of every business. All call center agents must be on the same page regarding service standards. Performance reviews are an excellent way to monitor and communicate agent behavior. 
• Reviews can become teachable moments. While reviews are an excellent time to discuss areas that need improvement, take advantage of teachable moments during the process, i.e., an actionable improvement plan.  
• They show agents where they stand. Regular performance reviews give agents a focused idea of where they stand regarding expectations and performance.  
• They can help identify where your contact center might need improvement. Performance reviews are also helpful for discovering patterns in agent performance. Do you see the same weaknesses or issues in multiple agents? It may be time to reevaluate onboarding materials or soft skills training.  
• Increase agent retention through actionable feedback. Agent performance reviews can provide an opportunity to share concrete examples of areas to improve.  
• Improve consistency and quality of the contact center. Monitoring and reviewing agents ensure you can keep an eye on the ongoing metrics that bring success to your contact center.  
  
  

Giving Feedback in a customer service employee review 

Managers alone can account for up to 70% of the variance in an employee’s engagement. Managers must make the employee performance review process as consistent and productive as possible. There are a few ways you can prepare your employees for an upcoming review:  

• Notify agents to let them know that a performance review is coming up.
• Give an outline of what you might talk about.
• Use conversation transcripts to make your points.
• Use your customer service metrics to track performance. 

Sample Performance Review Phrases for Customer Service 

Giving a performance review can be stressful. But providing positive feedback is beneficial and rewarding for both agent and manager. Here are ten phrases that can be used to encourage and praise call center employees:  

1. Peter has shown great empathy towards customer problems.  
2. Jackie always asks for customer feedback and delivers it back to the team to work on. 
3. Anna goes the extra mile to show customers she cares.  
4. Joe’s ability to take extra calls shows his commitment to his work and enhances our overall productivity.  
5. Ralph is very receptive to feedback and knows how to put it into practice.  
6. Kai is always on top of internal deadlines and goes above and beyond to do great work.  
7. Tori’s communication skills are impressive. She prioritizes responding to emails and is the first to react to customer text messages.  
8. Stephen's collaboration and teamwork skills are fantastic. He is always available to help his teammates solve a problem.  
9. Derek treats customers with a high level of respect. He never lets his emotions get the best of him, no matter the situation.  
10. Hillary shows great concern for customer expectations. She works hard to meet and exceed those expectations, no matter how challenging.

Sometimes, call center managers must give constructive criticism to their agents. Are you looking for a few compassionate but direct ideas? Here are ten phrases to use if call center employees need improvement:  

11. John could use a better understanding of our company’s service.  
12. Serena could reduce the time spent responding to customer requests.  
13. Emma could work on her tone when addressing customer complaints.  
14. Anita tends to get off topic when discussing issues with customers. She needs to make sure she focuses on the problem at hand.  
15. Samantha needs to reevaluate how long it takes her to respond to customer emails.  
16. John needs to be more empathetic in his responses to customer issues.  
17. Jason needs to stay on the script when speaking with customers.  
18. Marilyn’s behavior toward her teammates shows that she doesn’t want to be at work.  
19. Sven can be a bit more friendly in greeting customers.  
20. Charlotte can work on her patience when addressing customers.  

SMART Goals  

Think smart when you think about establishing goals for your call center agents. SMART refers to specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals.  

These goals are a great way to help call center teams improve processes and become more engaged in their work. In addition, engaged employees can increase company profitability by 21%, so SMART goal setting should be a top priority for call center managers. Use these goals to motivate your agents toward specific areas like the following:  

• Reduce average response time to email support to 30 minutes or less by the end of Q2.  
• Increase CSAT measurements from 75% to 83% by year-end.  
• Measure and improve their soft skills, like patience levels and problem-solving abilities.  
• Improve Average Handling Time (AHT) by 23% by the end of Q4 with bonus incentives. 

• Prioritize customer advocacy through improved Net Promoter Scores (NPS) by attaching survey links to our email and text bot communication channels.  

Performance reviews are an excellent opportunity for call center agents and managers to discuss what’s working and what needs improvement. By utilizing the correct phrases, managers can ensure that performance reviews are a productive and mutually beneficial experience. Contact us or request a demo today to learn more about how customer service performance reviews fit into a quality assurance plan.