Third-Party Remote Call Monitoring Covers Chat and SMS, Too

In years past, seeking customer support was either a matter of picking up the telephone, or speaking with sales representatives in a store. While these are still active and viable channels for customer support, the number of choices customers have for channels through which to reach out are more numerous than ever. This is makes it difficult to monitor the quality of the customer experience being provided, because customer touchpoints are so widely spread across digital, mobile and telephone media.

SMS (mobile text messaging) and chat are increasingly the channels of choice for customers. Unlike telephone and in-person retail visits, text and chat require a minimum of “small talk,” and customers can engage in a support session while doing something else (like sitting in a meeting, watching television or waiting at traffic lights). Chat and text are informal channels, and customers like that they can “get to business” quickly and retain a transcript of the exchange. But as they are informal channels, it’s important that companies monitor the quality of the customer support happening via SMS and chat to ensure that it keeps to the same high standards of customer engagement as more traditional channels.

A recent survey conducted by Convergys (News - Alert) and highlighted in a blog post by Kathy Juve writing for RIS, found that chat is, by far, the fastest growing channel for customer service.

“This growth is directly tied to customers’ expectations that companies should value their time,” wrote Juve.  “Customers are less concerned about niceties; they want results, and chat has proven to be an incredibly effective means of solving customer problems. Interestingly, it’s not just millennials looking to chat to handle their customer service needs.  While the younger generation undoubtedly prefers chat over voice, more than a third of customers over the age of 57 already use chat for customer service, and usage among this group continues to grow.”

So how do companies give customers what they want yet retain the high standards of customer excellence they strive to maintain? They need to monitor chat and SMS in the same way they monitor phone calls. Many multichannel contact center platforms provide them with the opportunity to do so. Another alternative is third-party call monitoring, which can be widened to support channels such as text, chat and social media. Third-party companies can actually help not only with the monitoring, but can help organizations develop benchmarks and standards.

“Establishing the required standards and developing them into something a business can use to improve efficiencies is a critical piece of the puzzle,” wrote Juve. “Working with a company whose sole focus is customer service can avoid costly mistakes and make the vast amount of data that exists in chat interactions actionable.”

Solutions providers such as BPA Quality offer companies a full range of independent contact center quality monitoring and evaluation solutions that include the monitoring of chat, email and social media. They can then provide clients with the data, trends and actionable items needed to make crucial business decisions regarding customer engagement, in the same way most companies have been doing for years for telephone support.  

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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