What is PKT in the Call Center

If as a call center you want to ensure 100% customer satisfaction and a soothing customer experience every time a chat/call lands at the contact center then must ensure that all agents on the floor are skilled and trained utterly and monitor the agent's product knowledge regularly.

What is PKT in the Call Center

Keeping a regular check on agents' process knowledge is very imperative to deliver quality customer satisfaction. If these checks are not done in a timely manner, it can also adversely affect the other call center metrics, e.g FCR, AHT, and CSAT.

One of the common methods used by every call center to test an agent's product knowledge is conducting PKT i.e Product Knowledge Test.

So in today's article, we are going to discuss What is PKT and the benefits of conducting PKT in the call center?

What is PKT?

PKT is an abbreviation of the Product Knowledge Test in BPO. As the name implies this test is conducted to gauge the critical product knowledge of agents.

Primarily this test is conducted by the TNQ (Training or Quality) team. PKT can be conducted on the below scenarios:

• As a regular check-up of the agent's product knowledge.
• Whenever there is a new process update rolled out on the floor.
• Post-refresher training was conducted for outliers.
• Post-completion of New hires training by conducting a PKT test a trainer can identify whether an expert will remain in the process or not.

Frequency and process of PKT:

Although the frequency of PKT can be mapped with the SOP (Standard Operating procedure) for a call center however generally every call center conducts it twice a month for agents.

    For support staff i.e TLs, QAs, Associate Managers, and Trainers,      it can be conducted once a month.

Below is a sample step-by-step procedure for preparing PKT:

• The Training team prepares the product knowledge questionnaire in association with the quality team.
• The questions may be subjective or objective.
• It may also be conducted in the form of image-based questions
• Most common min 15 MCQ and a threshold of 90% to clear the PKT (but varies as per the process)
• The training team verifies the answers and shares the result with stakeholders.

Now let's talk about :

Benefits of Conducting PKT :

Further, in the blog, we will talk about the major benefits of conducting PKT.

1. Identifying Outliers:

One of the major benefits of conducting a product knowledge test is to identify outliers. If a call center conducts a product knowledge test in a timely manner it can easily figure out the regular outliers of the process and further prepare a plan of action to improve these outliers.

Read more: how to identify BQM.

2. High CPH:

The other major benefit of conducting PKT is a positive impact on call center metrics. CPH is one of the important metrics in a call center.CPH stands for Call/Chat per hour.

If an agent has successfully passed the product knowledge test it means he/she has a good product command which can be used to wrap up the call faster which will result in increasing CPH:

3. High CSAT/ NPS:

Like CPH two important call center metrics are CSAT and NPS. An agent having good product knowledge means he can resolve the query of a customer in one go which in turn increases customer satisfaction.

CSAT vs NPS Difference:

Like CSAT if the customer is happy with the resolution of an expert he/she can promote and recommend the product to another customer which in turn increases the NPS of the company.

4. Reduce FCR:

The other metric which can be reduced by conducting regular knowledge tests is FCR. FCR is an acronym for First Call Resolution.

It is evident that if an agent has a sound knowledge of the product he can handle the customer with ease and can resolve customer queries in a single call or chat, while if the agent does not have the requisite product knowledge then the agent will deliver incomplete and misleading information to the customer which will compel the customer to again reach out to customer care for accurate information and will reduce FCR.

5. Increase productivity:

If every agent is able to successfully clear the PKT that it directly impacts productivity, meaning the agent handles more chats with the increase in customer experience which results in more productivity and revenue.

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The other part is if a good number of agents are well versed in product knowledge that there is less need for support staff which can be utilized for other productive work on the floor.

FAQ's on PKT:

Let's look into some common questions and answers with respect to PKT in the Call center:

Q. What is the Full form of PKT?

A. Product Knowledge Test.

Q.What is the idle frequency of PKTs?

A. Twice a month for agents, once a month for support staff

Q.Who prepares the questions for PKT?

A. TNQ (Training and Quality) Team.

Q. What is the threshold to clear the PKT?

A. 90% (varies as per the process need)

Q. What is the mode of PKT questions?

A. Subjective, objective, or image-based.

Final Thoughts:

In my opinion, not even agents but rather support staff  (up to AM level) should also be examined by these PKTs as they are the immediate support on the floor to the agents and plays a key role in delivering excellence to customers.

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