3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

If you run or manage a contact center, you know at least one universal truth: Some agents are simply better at pleasing customers and getting them to spend more than others. While you may have a number of agents that do an acceptable job and cover all the bases, they can’t quite replicate the magic that these super agents seem to have. You may have tried to determine what it is that these agents do that average agents don’t, but it’s often not easy to pinpoint these qualities.

While most companies subject agents to classroom training to learn basic skills, it’s the more personalized, hands-on training, involving listening to examples of best practices, that help them really flourish. Understanding what makes a great call can help managers and supervisors lead agents in the right direction.

This is critical today: more companies are finding it’s not enough to run a call center that simply breaks even. They want to run a profit center that produces revenue for the organization. According to a recent article on LinkedIn (News - Alert) by Michael Fertik, CEO and owner of Reputation.com, great customer service teams are able to become “little profit engines that could.”

“A member services team helps grow the business by virtue of taking excellent care of your customers,” wrote Fertik. “They do the obvious: answer questions, listen to concerns, resolve problems, explain a lapse or lag. They do what’s practical: walk customers through how to use your product, help them log on, troubleshoot. They do what’s useful: upsell a customer or connect that person with the relevant team. Internally, they are the heralds, trumpeting the news that a product feature or service is very well received so you can continue giving the customer more of what they want.”

But uncovering the specific practices that lead to greater sales is the tricky part. There are some clues in recent contact center research: A LivePerson (News - Alert) study found that 82 percent of consumers said the number one factor that leads to a great customer service experience is having their issues resolved quickly. A McKinsey study, meanwhile, found that 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.

In other words, it is fast, effective and personalized service that induces a customer to buy more. How can you find examples of this customer support behavior in your contact center? How can you identify the practices that are leading to greater sales? (After all, every business is different.)

One answer may lie in third-party monitoring solutions. Third party organizations can examine your interactions and look for those factors that succeed. They can help you understand which behavior you most want to replicate across all customer transactions. Services such as BPA Quality’s BPABuilder.Remote Call Monitoring provide accurate and actionable feedback to your agents and supervisors, sampling recorded or live calls and measuring customer interactions based on either your company’s standards or standards developed by third-party experts.

This feedback can be used to boost the performance of the agents on the front line of the call center, allowing companies to turn what might have been a cash sink – or at the very least a cost-neutral function –into a revenue generator.