3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

Metrics tell part of the story when it comes to the contact center; they show if agents are resolving calls quickly enough, if they are upselling, and other important facts. But they don’t show the full picture, because it is hard to properly measure customer interaction.

Learning how agents perform requires listening to them in real-world situations, not just watching the numbers. Yet, not all call monitoring is created equal. While any sort of call monitoring can help the contact center, there definitely are best practices that can make monitoring more efficient and beneficial.

Here are five secrets to better call monitoring.

1. Focus both on good and bad calls alike

Criticism can be constructive, but too much focus solely on what’s going wrong can transform call monitoring into judgment sessions that unnerve agents.

Rather than just focusing on non-confirming calls, pick an equal balance of both good and bad calls so positive reinforcement and less severe corrections mix with more harsh criticism. This will ultimately make monitoring better received by agents.

2. Compliance and quality are not the same thing

Make sure that agent scoring is squarely aimed at improving customer satisfaction. Don’t measure compliance within quality. The point is a good customer experience, not enforcing rules. Make that the point of call monitoring.

3. Use technology for monitoring all calls

Historically, only a small subset of agent calls could be monitored. Technology has changed that, however, and now speech analytics help the contact center uncover key words within calls and use those keywords as flags for review.

If your call monitoring is only taking a random sample of agent interactions, your sample size is too small and you probably are missing the real issues. Use technology to your advantage!

4. Engage a third-party monitoring firm

Call monitoring is a crucial component of good contact center operations. Yet, it also can siphon off resources and distract management from other tasks that can only be handled in-house.

Third-party call monitoring services such as BPA Quality not only help contact centers achieve rigorous monitoring and eliminate bias, they also save contact centers time developing and maintaining in-house monitoring programs.

5. Get agents involved in monitoring

Having agents perform call monitoring in addition to management does two things. First, it helps agents think more critically about their own calling process. Second, it teaches best practices by highlighting the good and the bad.

Peer review can be a valuable learning aid, in addition to a smart way to spread the workload of call monitoring.