This article will cover the following areas:

• How Call Monitoring Data Can Enable Real-Time Training
• Determining Agents’ Average Talk Time
• Qualitative Data for Better Results
• Quality Control
• Highlight Deficits and Proficiencies in Performance

How Real-Time Call Monitoring Can Improve Productivity at Call Centres

When it comes to running an effective call centre, one of your KPIs is undoubtedly going to be customer satisfaction and ensuring support phone calls are not only handed in an effective manner but also without spending more time or resources than is necessary is going to be a the key in generating greater results at optimal efficiency.

A capable call monitoring system can go a long way in helping your call centre achieve its goals and improve KPIs and when used effectively, it can not only help you with quality control but also aid in training your employees and improving individual agent output.

Let’s take a closer look at the various ways a call monitoring system can help.

Enabling Real-Time Training

One of the basic features of call monitoring is that it allows you to listen and take part in live customer conversations. This can be hugely beneficial as not only can you get real-time feedback about the issue, customer input and the agent’s call handling capabilities but you also get to interact at the right moment should that be necessary.

Generally, you have 2 monitoring options: silent and active. With the silent monitoring option, you can easily train a colleague while another member of the team is in a support phone call. Alternatively, you can also assist a colleague who is dealing with a pertinent issue which requires immediate escalation. With an active monitoring platform, you can easily get involved in the discussion with only a few clicks.

Determining Agents’ Average Talk Time

Call monitoring can also help you determine whether your agents are utilizing too much time or not enough of it. Agents who may be rushing to get the call finished may end up making matters worse if the issue hasn’t been resolved in a satisfactory way and by using previously established benchmarks, you can compare the agent’s average call handling time to determine if adequate time is being spent on serving customers.

Qualitative Data for Better Results

Call monitoring can also help you to offer bespoke training to a team member who requires support in a particular area. For instance, if the person in question is not effective in handling customers’ refund requests and more often than not offers credit notes even when one may not be warranted, you can listen in on the next call and then provide specific feedback and suggestions on offering alternatives the next time around. This type of feedback is likely to be far more helpful than generic advice and guidelines.

If you are in the business of offering support of any kind through phone calls, you can also use call monitoring to train new recruits. No other techniques can help equip your team with the right knowledge of handling customers in the real world like call monitoring can. With all the client interaction data a call monitoring system gathers you can use this to as training material which is again, likely to be more helpful than generic guidelines in many situations.

Quality Control

As the person in charge of quality control, you can listen to the conversation involving both the customer and the agent to identify those areas of weaknesses that your agent needs to work on. From there, you can develop a plan for the agent which may include product training or communication training to improve the agent’s knowledge of the company’s products or enhance their communication skills.

Not to mention, call monitoring also comes in handy when taking down a customer’s information during an active call. For instance, if the agent forgets to note down a necessary piece of information during a conversation, you can jump in or give the agent a nudge to remind them. This will prevent you from having to call the customer again or be left with an incomplete database.

Highlight Deficits and Proficiencies in Performance

Call monitoring and scoring can help to accurately assess the performance of the call agents. When you have qualitative data from the interactions between the agents and customer, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the proficiencies and deficits of the call agent.

For instance, knowing why the agent always struggles with a particular issue by monitoring calls and checking records of their performance will help you understand why they are always having similar problems. Therefore, combining call monitoring with call recording is an effective way to identify deficits and establish solutions to agent’s weaknesses. These two approaches to analyzing performances will also enhance the precision of identifying the strengths of the call agent.

Hopefully, you can now see how a call monitoring system, when used effectively, can help your call centre improve productivity and deliver greater results.