3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

It would be easy to assume that the customer-centric approach is standard in the contact center as this industry is focused on customer service. But without making this strategy a priority, the activities in the contact center may be fully focused on the initiatives of the center or the organization and not the customer experience. To achieve real success, the center needs to be focused on the latter, measuring what really matters when it comes to the optimal customer interaction.

A NewVoiceMedia (News - Alert) blog recently focused on the qualities that make up the customer-centric contact center. The typical customer service environment is one focused on measurements, and that typically means recording and measuring everything. Tools like 3^rd party remote call monitoring from providers such as BPA are critical to the overall success, but there needs to be a strategy involved – a reason to measure in the first place.

When measuring their satisfaction when interacting with the contact center, the customer doesn’t care how many calls the agent handles in an hour. The customer cares about how quickly their issue is handled and to what level of satisfaction. If the contact center isn’t measuring that metric, they’re missing the point in quality customer interactions. Yes, productivity has to be measured for a healthy bottom line, but how productive is the contact center if customers aren’t happy?

Let’s take a look at what matters to today’s customer and what needs to be measured with 3^rd party remote call monitoring:

Service Level – the ease in which the customer is able to reach an agent that can resolve his or her issue plays a significant role in satisfaction. The customer-centric contact center will measure how quickly the customer is able to reach that agent. This metric should be measured against a goal of X percent of customers answered in Y seconds, instead of the standard Average Speed of Answer (ASA) as the straight average ignores the customers who hang up angry before reaching an agent.

FCR – First Call Resolution has been an industry staple for quite some time as it greatly impacts customer (and agent) satisfaction. Customers don’t want to have to contact the center more than once on the same issue and if they do – it drains center resources. The challenge is in measuring this metric accurately. 3^rd party remote call monitoring can certainly help, especially when integrated with customer contact records.

Quality and Satisfaction – both arecritical measurements in the contact center as the customer’s perception of the interaction is essential. Post-interaction surveys can help in the process, while monitoring is also critical in this step. The tone of voice and words spoken in an interaction can speak volumes as to the level of satisfaction the customer is truly experiencing – especially if they are unwilling to share their insight in a survey.

Agent Satisfaction – any contact center manager who doesn’t believe there is a correlation between the unhappy agent and the quality of customer care is likely experiencing less than stellar results from the contact center. Recruiting quality agents is a time-consuming and costly endeavor, much like recruiting loyal customers. Both must be treated well or the organization spends a lot of money unnecessarily replacing losses on both sides.

Once a clear strategy is developed with these goals in mind, it’s important to train all key players in the proper operation of the center. This TMCnet article highlights the importance of training for the right customer-centric environment. BPA 3^rd party remote call monitoring can go a long way in supporting the process by allowing managers to coach using both excellent call recordings and those that need a little help.

At the end day, it’s clear that a customer-centric contact center takes both strategy and hard work, but the efforts can quickly pay off with a reduction in repeat calls, an increase in FCR, greater satisfaction for both agents and customers and improved productivity overall.