In the era of messaging and AI-powered chatbots, 86% of consumers still prefer communicating with real people, making human presence in any service essential. More than half of the interviewees in another survey stated that they prefer to deal with urgent matters by phone. However, having a call center is not enough to satisfy customers; you must also offer excellent service quality. That's where call monitoring helps.
Phone call monitoring evaluates call center performance. It is an effective method to check efficiency, detect problems, and set areas for future improvement. As an expert in the customer service outsourcing industry, Simply Contact will help you discover the secrets of successful monitoring, its benefits, challenges, and best practices.
Monitoring calls involves listening to live and recorded calls and recording and analyzing deep phone calls for various purposes. This practice is applied in many industries where direct communication with customers occurs, including finance, law enforcement, health care, and many others.
It is a common practice for customer service and sales departments, considering that many customers prefer to contact brands via phone. Regular monitoring can help achieve higher quality and ensure that processes comply with company regulations.
Monitoring can also help define the main reasons customers ask for assistance. It can also help identify issues with the product or call center performance. Monitoring is an effective way to eliminate basic problems, provide training sessions for agents who do not meet quality standards, and improve preparation for new employees.
The obvious benefit is that the monitoring process can improve the efficiency and operation quality of the team and enhance overall performance for the entire call center. Monitoring can also serve as a motivational push for employees by making them aware that their work may be reviewed at any time. But monitoring can offer much more, so let's review what else the monitoring practice can offer your business.
| Quality We are sure your company has quality standards and an image of the experience you want to deliver for your customers. Monitoring shows how close agents are to your goal and how productive their work is. | Training and team development Once you see inefficiencies, you can use recorded calls as educational material. It will be a useful example of operation processes for your new employees and existing team members. |
| Performance evaluation During call monitoring, your company's supervisors can provide individual agents with performance evaluations. It will help to analyze the operator's work, offer targeted feedback, and identify the top performers. | Insights into customers' pain Monitoring can reveal weaknesses in your products and services and common customer concerns and needs. It is an effective method of collecting feedback and making necessary improvements. |
| Better customer experience If issues arise during the interaction, the manager can join the call and help solve them even without the customer's knowledge. Combined efforts help provide an excellent experience and improve resolution rates. | Operation efficiency Analyzing phone calls helps detect the issues that make agents work harder. It shows software errors and inefficient workflow parts and suggests where you need to update your usual process. |
The benefits speak for themselves and show how much you can gain from monitoring implementation, but to make it successful, you will need to consider the challenges too.
| Privacy concerns For some employees, monitoring can be a source of stress and dissatisfaction because they feel their privacy is compromised. To prevent reduced morale within your team, ensure clear communication about monitoring practices. Let your team understand that the main goal is improvement, not criticism or a lack of trust. | Legal issues You need to remember that different jurisdictions may also have different regulations and laws related to phone call monitoring and recordings. To avoid any law-type problems, ensure your company's monitoring processes comply with all necessary regulations for your region. For example, in some places, you need clear consent to record. |
| A large amount of calls When your call center receives hundreds of calls daily, monitoring each one can be challenging, and selecting specific calls for review can be equally challenging. You can implement automated monitoring tools empowered with AI. These tools can flag calls for future review based on provided criteria (negative sentiment, waiting time, etc.). You can also apply random sampling. | Quality vs quantity A lower amount of processed calls does not mean low productivity due to various complexity. So, how do we evaluate the performance in this case? Establish a clear metric system for evaluation, prioritizing quality over quantity. Use various score points to highlight key performance indicators. |
| Changing expectations Although monitoring shows excellent results, customer satisfaction may still seem low due to changing needs. Analyze your customers' expectations and needs to provide high-quality services. Implement the feedback from the agents and customers to see the trends. Provide regular updates of monitoring criteria. | Resistance to change Employees may react negatively to new monitoring practices or feedback that could affect their performance. Involve agents in monitoring practice development. Discuss the benefits and demonstrate the possibilities for personal and professional growth through monitoring. |
When we talk about call center quality monitoring, first of all, call monitoring comes to mind, but it is not the only way to control call center quality. Quality checks can be performed in many ways, but today, we will review the most efficient types based on our experience. We know how to create a working customer service strategy and want to share a few tips with you.
This type is the first and especially essential for call centers, as calls are their usual routine. As we mentioned before, call monitoring helps to evaluate the efficiency of help and check performance and compliance with the company's scripts. Monitoring phone calls is a basic way to evaluate customer satisfaction and the main factors that affect it.
Screen monitoring is primarily used in call centers where the agents often interact with software and systems. It may be performed by real-time observation or recording review. Such monitoring can show the efficiency of the current workflow in general and software tools, the simplicity of the navigation system, and the need for upgrades.
One of the main goals of any call center is to achieve high customer satisfaction, so feedback monitoring is essential for successful evaluation. You can monitor the post-interaction satisfaction level to see how helpful and positive the conversation went and if your customers received all they expected from the call.
Analytics tools can evaluate the performance more effectively than human experts due to their capability to analyze large data sets. You can set specific metrics like call resolution rate, response time, handle time, and others for control. Data-driven reports help identify weak areas in operational processes.
You can combine various types of call center monitoring to provide all-covering quality control. A combined approach can help you develop a working operation strategy based on agents' personal growth and enhanced customer satisfaction.
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The mission of the software in the call center is to make the agents' work easier and more productive, streamline the basic processes, and empower the team's capabilities. You need to choose user-friendly software that is easy to use, convenient, and effective for various tasks and has enough flexibility.
You need a high-quality recording tool to record calls without any struggle. The recordings will source training materials and insights into customers' needs.
Analytic tools for speech analysis are an accurate source of insights into customers' reactions and operators' performance during the call. They can analyze customer's intentions, emotions, and sentiments.
The automated scoring program evaluates operators. You can set specific scoring targets, such as empathy, accuracy, efficiency, compliance with company scripts and regulations, etc.
This software helps transform collected insights into future scheduling and workforce planning. You can arrange the work process, apply the required training, and share insights with your agents to improve performance.
Artificial intelligence is an easy chance to simplify and streamline your working processes. AI can support agents with virtual assistants or automate tasks that do not require direct human attention.
At Simply Contact, we studied various aspects of call center management and believe that one secret to success is choosing the most effective practices for your business. So, today, we are going to present you with a short list of the best call center monitoring practices. Let's look closely at each one, its features, and its benefits.
Silent phone call monitoring is the method for agent evaluation when a supervisor listens to the conversation without notification. In this case, the agent and customer are not informed that the call is actively listened to. Silent monitoring helps form real-time feedback or switch to whispering if agents need assistance or guidance during the call. As an alternative, the call can be recorded for later evaluation.
The main benefits:
This practice will work best if you arrange clear communication about your monitoring practice with the agent to build a reliable foundation of trust and understanding. Transparency will lower the risk of corrupted morale and stress due to monitoring. Make sure your supervisors have training on how to provide constructive feedback.
Whisper monitoring or whispering is often used when a new agent responds to the call. The whispering method allows a manager or supervisor to join the call without the customer’s awareness. This method helps to provide real-time assistance, coaching, and guidance to call center operators who need assistance during the phone call. The agents will get help, and the customer will get a solved issue without transferring the call.
The main benefits:
You need to provide thoughtful training for coaches so they are prepared for quiet assistance without taking over the call if it is not required. They need to provide constructive and helpful feedback aimed at improvement more than criticism. Like silent monitoring, you need to develop a culture of trust during the practices and use it for skills development. Encourage agents to provide feedback about their experience of whisper monitoring.
Barge in monitoring is a call center practice in which a supervisor or manager actively joins the call between an agent and a customer. In this case, both the customer and agent are aware of the third person's presence. A supervisor can actively participate in a conversation or keep silent, taking part only when assistance is required. The presence of the third person can change the call dynamic, especially in arguing situations.
The main benefits:
The knowledge that the supervisor can join the conversation may be a source of stress for a new agent, so they need they will get full support. You need to clarify when the supervisor can join the call during the monitoring to ensure it is provided constructively and without the agent's overshadowing. Pay attention to supervisors' and agents' feedback from this practice to see the strong and weak sides.
We consider takeover more like a last resort than an often-used option. Takeover means that the manager or supervisor controls the phone call and situation. This approach provides direct communication between the supervisor and customer for assistance or complete interaction handling. Such a decision can be made if the agent can't handle the issue or makes a mistake that requires removing the agent from the conversation.
The main benefits:
Once more, you need very clear and transparent rules about when the supervisor can take over the conversation. You need to encourage and allow your agents to handle the situation themselves, intervening only when necessary. Such an approach helps to develop their confidence in the process and skill set. Consider feedback from the supervisor and agent to see how efficient the resolution was.
Monitoring through call recording means analysis of the recorded income and outcome calls. Besides quality assurance, the recorded calls can be used for training, compliance, and performance evaluation. You need the software to arrange automated recording and a secure database for keeping, retrieval, and playback of records. Customers receive the notification that the call is recorded to inform them of the process.
The main benefits:
First, you must develop an obvious notification system to ensure the agent and customer know the call may be recorded. You may need a schedule for reviewing the recorded calls to ensure they receive an accurate evaluation and feedback. Consider recording the tool for skill development and constructive feedback from trainers.
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A call center monitoring system can upgrade and improve your call center's operation and performance. It can help evaluate your agents' skills and efficiency and detect what needs improvement. It is also a source of training materials and essential for skills development. Beyond that, such a system improves the quality of phone assistance, enhances the customer experience, and identifies why customers may seek help.
Now that you know what is call monitoring, you can use this practice to improve your company's standards and make your teams more productive or choose the outsourcing option.
At Simply Contact, we offer advanced customer support solutions to improve quality, boost performance, and enhance customer satisfaction. Optimize your customer experience and outpace the competition.
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