Coming from a background of being a call center employee (and now a chat-only agent for a big tech support company), I've been grappling with these nasty fucking things for years now. You can have a bang-up week where 99% of your contacts are absolutely brilliant, but that one time you went over target handle time, stayed off the phone a little too long (we're talking 30 seconds) after a stressful contact, or maybe you're taking a few too many bathroom breaks for the company's liking, and suddenly you're a problem and need to have an improvement plan put in place.
What's worse is that people working in these QA and Metrics departments are extremely nitpicky and, despite allegedly following their list of rules and guidelines, are entirely subjective to your whole contact. Who the fuck invited these people anyway? I'm out here trying to actually solve problems and these chucklefucks, in what appears to be an ivory tower from my lowly customer-facing position, are judging me for how I'm getting this shit done?
I know why they're there. They're not there to help the agents improve. They aren't even here to ensure the callers have a positive experience. They're here to look for and invent excuses to keep people from getting ahead in their positions, to keep them stuck where they are at best or at worst looking for a way to fire them.
The results should speak for us workers and how we should be treated and rewarded, not these over-scrutinizing little shits. Over-scrutinizing little shits who I understand are still workers. I don't think they're necessary in the least. Do any of them really thin that their position actually matters? If one of the agents fucks up hard, you bet the person they were in contact with will let their higher-ups know. The QA and Metrics department of all these fucking call centers are redundant, and their employees are positioned against the general workforce.