Evaluation Rubrics

Evaluation rubrics define the criteria used to score calls in COPC Evaluation. Each rubric contains a list of weighted criteria that calls are evaluated against.

Accessing Evaluation Rubrics

Click Settings in the left navigation, then open the Evaluation Rubrics (COPC) tab.

Creating a New Rubric

Click New Rubric
Fill in the rubric details:
- Name — A descriptive name (e.g. “Customer Service Evaluation Q2”)
- Description — Optional note for your own team about when to use this rubric. It is not shown to the evaluator and does not affect scoring
Add evaluation criteria (see below)
Click Save

Understanding Criteria

Each criterion in a rubric has the following fields:

Field	Required	Description
ID	Yes	Unique identifier (e.g. `greeting`, `data_verification`)
Name	Yes	Display name (e.g. “Greeting Protocol”)
Description	No	What the evaluator should look for
Max Points	Yes	Maximum score for this criterion (must be > 0)
Section	No	Group label (e.g. “Opening”, “Body”, “Closing”)
Critical Error	No	If checked, scoring 0 on this criterion fails the entire call

Critical errors: When a criterion marked as critical receives a score of 0, the entire call automatically scores 0% regardless of other criterion scores. Use this for non-negotiable requirements like identity verification or compliance disclosures.

Writing Criterion Descriptions

The Description is what the evaluator actually reads. Four things separate a criterion that scores the way you intend from one that does not.

1. Say what earns full marks, in proportion to the weight. This is where rubric effort pays. One rubric we worked through described its heaviest criterion — 35 of 110 points — in a single 196-character sentence about “responding coherently to objections”. Nothing in it said where the line between partial and full credit sat, so the score wandered. Rewritten to 826 characters, with the behaviors spelled out, it scored consistently. A criterion carrying a third of your points deserves more than one line.

2. Put applicability in its own sentence. The single most valuable thing you can do, and the one place ambiguity actively hurts:

Ambiguous — Offer the retention discount, or explain the cancellation consequences (applies to calls where the customer does not accept the offer)

Does the parenthetical govern the whole criterion, or only the clause beside it? Both readings are grammatical, and the evaluator will not settle on one. On a 30-call sample, the same criterion written this way was treated as not applicable 10 times in one run and 14 times in the next.

Clear — Explain the cancellation consequences. This criterion applies only to calls where the customer does not accept the offer. When the customer accepts, criterion 4 is evaluated instead.

An ambiguous criterion does not produce a wrong score. It produces an unstable one — which is much harder to defend to an agent disputing their result.

3. Name any exemption specific to your process. Hang-ups, dropped lines and situations that never arose are handled automatically — see How Scoring Works. If your process exempts a criterion for some other reason — a transfer to another queue, a system outage, a script the agent is not permitted to read — say so, in its own sentence.

4. Do not put scoring rules in the rubric’s Description field. Only each criterion’s name, description, section, points and critical flag are shown to the evaluator. The rubric-level Description is for your own reference — a note about when to use this rubric, visible to your team and nobody else. Rules written there have no effect on scoring.

Adding Criteria Manually

Click Add Criterion in the rubric editor
Fill in the fields for each criterion
Repeat for each criterion you want to add
The editor shows a running total of criteria count, total points, and critical criteria

Importing Criteria from CSV

You can bulk-import criteria from a CSV file:

Click Import CSV in the rubric editor
Select your CSV file

CSV format — one row per criterion. A header row is optional: the importer recognises one and skips it.

id,name,description,max_points,is_critical,section

Example CSV:

greeting,Greeting Protocol,Agent greets customer and identifies themselves,10,false,Opening
verification,Data Verification,Agent verifies caller identity,15,true,Security
active_listening,Active Listening,Agent demonstrates active listening skills,10,false,Body
resolution,Issue Resolution,Agent resolves or properly escalates the issue,20,false,Body
closing,Closing Protocol,Agent summarizes and closes appropriately,10,false,Closing

Notes:

Columns: id, name, description, max_points, is_critical, section
A leading header row is detected (its fourth column is not a number) and skipped
is_critical accepts: true, 1, yes (anything else is treated as false)
Rows with fewer than 4 columns or missing required fields are skipped
Importing replaces all existing criteria in the rubric

Rows that cannot be parsed are skipped without a warning. After importing, check that the criteria count and total points shown in the editor match your file. Three traps account for almost every surprise:

.xlsx will not import. An Excel workbook is not a CSV. In the editor the import appears to do nothing at all; through the API it returns Error processing CSV file. Export to CSV first.
is_critical must be true or false. A placeholder like todo or TBD parses as not critical. One matrix arrived with all five of its prohibitions written that way, which silently meant no criterion could ever fail a call. Confirm the critical count in the editor after importing.
Criterion IDs are permanent. They are the key that ties a score to its criterion over time, so renaming an ID detaches every result already recorded against it and the trend in the Call Center Report restarts. Keep IDs stable across revisions, and never renumber them positionally when you insert a criterion.

Trailing spaces in name or section also split groups that should be one.

Attaching a Rubric to a Project

A rubric can also be stored on the project itself. This happens when you save a COPC configuration for automatic analysis: the selected rubric becomes the project’s rubric, and every call that arrives afterwards is scored against it without asking again.

The project’s rubric also drives the Call Center Report — the quality scorecard lists criteria in rubric order instead of by point weight, so the report reads like your rubric document.

Editing and Deleting Rubrics

Edit: Click the edit icon on any rubric card to modify its name, description, or criteria
Delete: Click the delete icon to permanently remove a rubric

Editing a rubric never changes results that were already produced — each evaluation stores a snapshot of the rubric it used. Calls analyzed after the edit use the new version, so a rubric changed mid-period can leave the report’s scorecard comparing unlike things.

Best Practices for Rubric Design

Keep criteria focused — Each criterion should evaluate one specific behavior
Use meaningful IDs — IDs appear in exports and reports, so make them descriptive, and keep them stable once results exist
Balance point weights — Assign more points to criteria that matter most, and describe the heavy ones in the most detail
Use critical errors sparingly — Reserve them for truly non-negotiable requirements
Group with sections — Use sections to organize criteria logically (e.g. Opening, Body, Closing)
State applicability explicitly — A criterion that only covers some calls should say so in its own sentence
Test with a small batch — Score five to ten calls yourself and compare before pointing the whole operation at it

Before writing the descriptions, read How Scoring Works. It covers the rules the evaluator applies to every rubric on its own — hang-ups, criteria that do not apply, and how prohibitions are judged — which is most of what clients used to write by hand.