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Call Monitoring: An Agent's Friend or Foe?

BPA Featured Article

Call Monitoring: An Agent's Friend or Foe?



By Alicia Young, Web Editor
June 27, 2017


There tends to be a stigma surrounding call monitoring for quality assurance purposes. For the most part, the idea makes agents uncomfortable because they feel like they’re being spied on. No one likes to fail, but the added pressure associated with having someone listening in on their phone calls can easily make agents uncomfortable enough where they start messing up and providing poor customer experiences.


Cracking under pressure is a common occurrence that usually happens when people build events up too much in their heads. Thinking “I’m going to get fired if I screw up this call” is a surefire way to make sure you screw up the call. That nervousness is a problem a lot of call center agents have, mostly because managers don’t talk to them about why they’re listening in on phone calls.

Call Centre Helper has compiled a list of facts that quality assurance managers with their agents knew about monitoring. Let’s take a look at a few.

The first point is that call monitoring is actually an agent’s friend. This may be hard to believe, but it’s very much so true. Call monitoring is made possible through call recording, which means that there’s a permanent record of what exactly happened during a customer interaction. So, if an angry caller asserts that an agent was rude of purposely unhelpful, managers can go back to the recording and prove that that is an incorrect claim.

Monitoring also offers opportunities for improvement. A manager most likely won’t fire an agent over what they’ve heard during a call monitoring session—unless, of course, something truly obscene is said. More often than not, managers use these call monitoring instances as a chance to improve on the little things. After listening to a conversation, they may suggest that an agent use more polite phrases or stick to procedure more often for quality purposes.

Finally, call monitoring gets rid of biases when it comes to evaluations. Everyone has a bad day—it’s inevitable. However, agents shouldn’t be judged poorly just because a manager happened to walk by and overhear a particularly difficult call that wasn’t handled very well. Call monitoring allows said manager to go back and evaluate other exchanges for quality. If that particular agent has 20 great calls on record, and then that one unfortunate call, the majority should be the basis of the quality evaluation.

There are a number of monitoring solutions to choose from in the call center realm. However, 3rd party remote call monitoring solutions, like the ones offered by BPA Quality, are some of the best options. Not only does 3rd party remote call monitoring allow managers to listen in, but it also allows them to interact with agents in real time through features like “whisper.” So, if an agent is having a difficult time on a call, a manager can hop on the line and use the whisper feature to provide guidance to the agent, with the customer being none the wiser.

All in all, there’s no reason for agents to be afraid of call monitoring. While it might feel like managers are spying on agents, the reality is that they’re listening in in a beneficial way. And, with options like 3rd party remote call monitoring, this practice can even be used to save agents from sticky situations. 



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