3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

Every contact center employs some form of call monitoring to ensure that agents are performing as expected and reliably handling calls in a courteous, efficient and legally correct manner. Unfortunately, sometimes monitoring protocols can overlook newer forms of customer interaction such as chat and social media customer engagement.

The contact center is changing fast, driven by the unceasing pace of technology innovation and the resulting explosion of ways that consumers now communicate. For many contact centers, just keeping up with the new modes of communication, and having proper protocols in place, is a challenge.

What can sometimes get lost in this flurry of expansion is quality control, however. Call monitoring is already built into most contact center systems, but chat might not get such attention.

Ignoring chat and social media interaction monitoring is a dangerous game, though. Not only are these channels equal with calling in terms of the need for friendly, efficient and legally correct behavior, but they also are more easily saved by customers and available for review by customers and others in the case of social media. While an agent mistake might effectively disappear after a call is complete, that’s not the case with social media or chat.

This makes quality control in the contact center an even bigger issue for these new modes of communication.

A good monitoring system must track and verify agent performance among all communication channels, whether phone, chat, email or social media.

Third-party call monitoring services such as BPA Quality have recognized this need and now offer monitoring services that contact centers can use to ensure that agent activity is monitored across channels. They help contact centers objectively assess not only how agents are performing on the phones, but also on chat, social media and email.

This delivers a complete picture, one that helps contact centers ensure quality and identify agents that need additional training or support. It also can help avoid costly litigation in the case of poorly performing agents.

The contact center is changing fast. But that doesn’t mean that managers can take a loose and fast approach to these new technologies. It is important to apply the same processes to the new modes of communication as the more tried and true calling function in the contact center.