Quality monitoring is an important function of any call center. While it’s part of the larger customer relationship management package, quality monitoring really does get down to the basic purpose of the call center: providing customers with the quality of care they both expect and deserve.

 

Three case studies from Co-nexus, Inc., provider of the Customer eXperience Management (CXM) call center solution, illustrate how call centers in different industries are using quality monitoring to support the goals and values of the enterprises that run them.

 

First up is NRS, a commercial collection agency based in the U.S., which maintains information on more than 2.7 million debtors in its database. Prior to implementing a modern recording and quality monitoring system from Co-nexus, NRS was using an antiquated, tape-based Dictaphone system to capture and retrieve transaction information. This system was both inefficient and had become ineffective.

 

NRS was faced with needing to overcome two issues with its existing system: compliance with the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, and boosting the performance of collector agents. The agency chose to go with CXM because it met both those needs, and then some.

 

With CXM in place, NRS gained automatic recording of all communications made between debtors and the call center’s 250 employees. Because of its customizable recording module, the solution integrated seamlessly into the call center’s existing Avaya (News - Alert) communications platform, IAT predictive dialer and collections software.

 

Meeting standards for quality control, and avoiding lawsuits, suddenly became much, much easier for NRS due to CXM’s ability to index all calls for easy retrieval. The system enabled NRS to play back calls for attorneys or clients during dispute cases; the integrity of the calls could then become self-evident.

 

“CXM has been a phenomenal tool, allowing us to settle disputes quickly and effectively,” said NRS chief information office Mark Matthews, in the Co-nexus case study. “Ultimately, this makes CXM invaluable - our client retention has greatly improved as a result of the system.”

 

For Apache Corporation, an independent oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Houston, Texas, the reason to go with CXM was somewhat different: the company needed a way to record and input marketing transactions in order to verify volumes and amounts. This function represented a key element of Apache’s marketing ventures in the petroleum market, involving huge volumes of petroleum products and very precise negotiations.

 

The company chose to go with CXM because of the solution’s ability to automatically record each phone-based marketing negotiation, indexed with critical information for easy retrieval. This enabled Apache marketers to immediately review each negotiation and e-mail a copy to their supervisors. If disputes arise, the conversation can be reviewed by all interested parties and resolved.

 

In a sense, Apache was concerned with a particular type of quality monitoring: ensuring that sensitive transactions were handled appropriately, and disputes resolved efficiently. This ability to maintain quality helped the company achieve higher revenues.

 

“The Co-nexus team was always there for me,” said Apache representative Jeanne Gibson, in the Co-nexus case study. “They worked extremely well with our IT department and kept them informed and updated throughout the entire process. We asked them to solve our problems, and they did. And the CXM system accomplished the task we required without any unnecessary and costly extras.”

 

Another company concerned with serving customers in a respectful manner was Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable. The company needed a way to monitor interactions between its customers and agents at contact centers in Houston, Greensboro, Syracuse and Portland—centers processing thousands of calls each day from customers purchasing services and submitting repair requests.

 

Quality monitoring of agents, the company realized, was critical to increasing revenues through maximizing customer satisfaction. Time Warner chose to go with CXM because it not only captured phone conversations between customers and agents, but also PC activity on the agent end during the session. Going with CXM meant the company could capture entire customer experience sessions and present the information to managers in an easily-accessible format.

 

Result? Increased revenues and improved customer retention.

 

“Since the implementation of the Co-nexus CXM solution, we now have the tools to review and evaluate the interactions between our agents and our customers,” said Time Warner Cable senior director of customer care John Cappi, in the Co-nexus case study. “This technology has enabled us to decrease the amount of time on the phone with customers, enabling agents to handle more calls during each day and increase productivity.”

As these three examples show, quality monitoring is a useful and even vital tool for call centers in many industries. To learn more about Co-nexus and its CXM solution, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channel, Quality Monitoring.