When your company says they’re implementing a call recording and call monitoring or quality monitoring system that can be a sensitive issue with privacy concerns, paranoia, and trust concerns.

 

To handle it correctly, to create “a sense of empowerment and achievement through knowledge sharing and training is crucial” to the success of the program, finds a recent white paper, “How to effectively implement a quality monitoring system for rapid agent performance improvement” from Coordinated Systems, which calls it “easing the fear of big brother.”

 

“Big Brother,” the study says, refers to the feeling of having everything monitored – e-mail, phone calls, chats and other interactions. No doubt most people do not want to be bugged unless it’s a case of national security, but in most cases employees accept being monitored, whether it is in a side-by-side coaching effort, or when activities are recorded.

 

It still seems like Big Brother, however, and “implementing a call center quality monitoring product should not elevate these concerns,” the study says: “It is up to the employer to present this new procedural change in a manner that is both positive and non-intrusive.”

The paper looks at a call center recording product called Virtual Observer as it was implemented at the Hartford Courant newspaper: “Before implementing Virtual Observer, agents were monitored on a side by side basis, or remotely via a supervisor listening in on a live call.”  

The strategy for the roll out was threefold: Introduce the concept, demonstrate and educate. She called this program the “CARE” program – “We listen because we care” with the CARE being an acronym for “Coaching Opportunities, Active Listening, Relationship Building, and Encouraging Improvement.”

 

Virtual Observer was implemented on a phased basis, not only in the circulation department, but also in the newspaper’s classifieds department. The first phase included standard random sample recording and evaluation, newspaper officials say, adding that phase two introduced synchronized screen capture enterprise wide. The next phase will add additional recording methods to the Virtual Observer.

 

The study offers many more recommendations for implementations and best practices for success.