What exactly is call monitoring?

Is it big brother eavesdropping on every phone call made? Is it employers checking up on employees to catch them when they’re goofing off? Is it a system which checks for sound quality?

 

It’s really none of the above. Call monitoring actually provides a much more productive and positive energy in the workplace than one may expect.

 

In business terms, “Call Monitoring” typically refers to the practice of listening to customer interactions, and providing feedback to the agent on what they can improve on. More and more of the listening is done after the fact, as supervisors play back calls as opposed to side-by-side coaching or listening in on a live call.

 

While many businesses often hold off on implementing an efficient call monitoring system over concerns the process is too costly or complicated, the fact is the process has never been easier.

 

One company delivering turnkey call monitoring solutions for businesses ranging in side from the Enterprise-scale to the SMB is the Connecticut-based Coordinated Systems Inc. (CSI).

 

CSI’s flagship solution, Virtual Observer (VO), can be installed remotely with full implemented in under two weeks. “We’ve even experienced where the first calls are captured within 1-2 days of receipt of the server,” said Rich Marcia, director of Marketing for Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI). “Our training team will then ‘train the trainer’ and within a few hours, your supervisors can be scoring calls and providing feedback to the agents.”

Call monitoring can be a force for positive change, creating a sense of empowerment and achievement through knowledge sharing and training. To many, these benefits of agent performance are clear, while to other business owners and CEOs, there are still some myths which may persist:

Will call monitoring work with our current phone system or will it require additional licensing from our telecom vendor? Virtual Observer supports most popular phone systems, including Avaya, Cisco, ShoreTel (News - Alert), Nortel, 3com, NEC, Mitel and others. ”We offer a smooth transition plan from legacy to VoIP or from system to system. Part of the low cost of ownership which VO carries is investment protection credit.”

 

Will our current workstations and servers be able to support the new call monitoring software? The minimum technical requirements for implementing a call monitoring system should not be a financial roadblock. Virtual Observer, for example, also supports virtual servers. Virtualization has been supported since 2001 and can save companies money and space. Virtual Observer can also record screens in Citrix environments.

 

Will we breaking any call recording laws or industry regulations? Recording laws vary from state to state. Click here for a state by state rundown of laws.Having a call monitoring system is more of a commitment to customer satisfaction, and your callers/customers will see it that way. As far as industry regulations go, call recording is typically a small part of the overall compliance policies a company must meet in their particular industry.

 

Will my employees have privacy concerns and trust issues? It is important to roll out your call monitoring system with employee buy-in. Click here for an example of how a company rolled out a winning call monitoring and quality assurance program.

 

Virtual Observer comes bundled with a set of quality monitoring features which enable businesses to be able to start scoring and training instantly. Recording, playback, evaluation, e-learning, performance reporting, and the VO Live suite of supervisor tools (supervisor-agent chat & live agent desktop) are all included with the core VO solution.