Improve Customer Conversations with Call Monitoring and Call Listening
Prashanth Kancherla
Jul 19, 2023
How should you keep track of your customer support quality? Or the quality of your sales calls? The answer is simple: you listen.
Sure, there are a lot of metrics that can help you figure out customer satisfaction and agent performance. But once you have the metrics, listening is how you begin improving those conversations. This article outlines the various tools that are available to a call center supervisor to monitor their agents better.
In this article, we will explore:
What Is Call Listening?
“Call listening” is a call center terminology. It refers to a process where supervisors listen to their agents while they are speaking to customers in order to resolve issues before they escalate, monitor conversations in real-time, and identify agent training needs.
Supervisors can listen to calls by going to the “reports” section of their call center software. Here, they can use the “barge” button to listen to any ongoing conversation. They can select which agent’s conversation they need to listen to based on multiple factors such as agents’ past performance or a higher-than-usual call handle time. Tools such as real-time sentiment analysis help them know which calls need their attention.
Supervisors can also listen to past calls by going through call recordings. They can do this in order to more deeply analyze agents’ performance issues, or even to analyze a star performer’s secret to great conversations. They can then use these recordings to improve the agent’s performance or to train others.
Also read: How to use speech analytics dashboard to monitor call quality in real-time
What Is Call Monitoring?
The terms “call listening” and “call monitoring” can be used interchangeably. However, call monitoring can also refer to all activities where supervisors in a call center monitor the quality of the phone conversations their agents are having with customers or prospects. While it also includes call listening, there are a number of other activities it could include such as viewing how many agents are logged in at a given moment, how many calls are in the queue, how many calls are being abandoned, and service level adherence. Supervisors can usually access all these reports by logging in to the “reports” section of their cloud call center software.
Why Do You Need Call Monitoring?
Call monitoring is one of the most potent quality assurance tools. It’s almost like conducting a survey about how satisfied your customer is but in real-time instead of in retrospect. When you listen to an agent talking to a customer as the conversation is happening, you understand the customer’s experience and your agent’s skills.
Call monitoring serves several purposes:
- Lets You Analyze the Real Reason Behind Your Metrics.
Your metrics such as AHT, FCR, and CSAT can give you a good measure of call center performance. But to investigate what’s behind the metrics, you need to use call monitoring and call listening tools.
For example, If an agent’s AHT(Average Handle Time) is higher than usual, you can investigate why the agent took longer to close a call. - Helps Figure When Your Metrics Aren’t Showing You an Accurate Picture.
Call monitoring can also tell you when you need to be less rigid with your metrics. For example, a call that lasted longer than your AHT does not necessarily mean it wasn’t effective. It could mean the agent went the extra mile to resolve a customer’s query. Similarly, you may find an agent who deviates from the telecalling script only to ensure a customer is satisfied with the response or solution. This way, call monitoring can also tell you when it’s time for introspection regarding how you use metrics. - Improves Customer Satisfaction.
Whenever customer satisfaction scores are dropping, call monitoring lets you take instant steps to arrest the fall. - Helps Training.
You can use recordings of well-handled and poorly-tackled calls as case studies when training contact center agents. You can also intervene during a call if you think it is not going in a positive direction and offer the agent constructive solutions. - Boosts First Call Resolution rate.
When an agent is aware that the call is being listened to, he or she will do their best to ensure the caller’s issue is resolved during that first call. This instills the kind of confidence in a customer that no paper warranty can. - Ensures Timely Intervention.
When a manager is listening in on a call and notices that the agent is unable to solve a problem, he or she can intervene right then and advise the agent on what to do next. This saves the customer time otherwise spent on hold while the agent is consulting the manager. It also saves the customer the trouble of calling back at a later time and going through the entire process all over again.
How to Monitor Calls
As we mentioned earlier in this article, call listening and call monitoring can be done in real time and can also be conducted in retrospect. We’ll examine how each type of monitoring works.
Monitoring Live Calls
Monitoring live calls allows a QA manager or team leader to listen to calls as they happen. This enables them to closely monitor and guide agents as they attempt to resolve customer issues.
Live call monitoring can be done in three ways:
- Barge-in: Though it sounds a bit rude, “barge-in” is really a helpful feature that allows a third party – usually a supervisor or team leader – to silently join a call between an agent and customer while it is ongoing. Neither the agent nor the customer can tell that someone else is privy to their conversation.
Use this method as a less intimidating way of monitoring calls because the agent is not conscious of the superior’s presence all the time. - Whisper: A team leader or manager listening to the call can speak to the agent in private without the customer hearing their conversation. It is the tech equivalent of a manager whispering into the agent’s ear. This is a one-way (uni-directional) communication from the manager to the agent, used when the manager feels the need to intervene and give the agent key inputs during the conversation.
This method is effective when an agent is stuck mid-call and isn’t sure how to proceed further, or if a conversation gets heated. The manager can help the agent deal with the customer’s annoyance. - Snoop: This is a tripartite conversation – the manager or supervisor who has been silently listening in can join the call and communicate with both the agent and the customer to address the query.
This method helps resolve issues faster. Customers also end up feeling important when they know a supervisor has personally intervened and taken interest in their problem.
Monitoring Historical Call Recordings
Cloud contact centers generally enable call recordings. Supervisors or managers can use call recordings to monitor and improve performance, as well as for training purposes. If an issue resurfaces or a customer claims an ineffective call resolution at some later date, the call recordings can prove handy.
If your call center is integrated with your CRM solution, you can view these call recordings against the customer ticket. Even if it isn’t, the manager can access these recordings in a few clicks.
Also read: What is a call center CTI Integration? And how does it improve performance
Correlating Performance Metrics and Call Recordings for Effective Monitoring
It isn’t possible to monitor all your calls or go through every single recording. Use your reports to help you select which calls to monitor.
- CSAT: CSAT, or customer satisfaction, is often considered the most effective metric. CSAT can easily be collected at the end of each call by diverting your caller/customer to an IVR that collects feedback in the form of a score or a yes/no answer to a survey question. You can then filter CSAT by agent and listen to the underperforming agents’ call recordings. You can also use high-performing agents’ call recordings for training purposes.
- AHT: Average Handle Time tells you how fast an agent wrapped a call. A low AHT is desirable. By filtering for calls that go above a certain AHT in real-time, you can barge in to help or listen whenever a call exceeds a certain handle time.
Advanced Call Monitoring Tools to Manage Effective Monitoring at Scale
As your business grows, you’ll need to scale up all your systems. So how do you monitor calls when your number of agents grows from say, 5 to 50, or even 500? An efficient agent could end up physically monitoring more than 150 calls a day. A two-minute call can take at least three minutes to analyze. At this rate, when call volumes are large, the QA team can monitor only 5 percent of the total calls. Conclusions drawn from this kind of sample may not be representative of the entire data mine you are sitting on.
Many cloud telephony systems (like ours) offer advanced tools to monitor a large number of calls. Here are two we think you’ll find interesting:
Speech Analytics
Speech analytics helps you gauge how your agents are performing on calls 15 times faster than manual monitoring. It can detect greeting, interruptions, and even sentiment during calls. It can alert supervisors when sentiment dips on certain calls so they can “barge in” and prevent escalation.
Customized Reports
Ozonetel has worked with some of Asia’s largest startups for over a decade. As these startups grew and scaled, they found that their call centers faced a unique problem. Some agents would digress from official duties and spend time chatting online or surfing the internet for entertainment. The problem was that while floor managers could initially view every agent on a report that occupied a single screen, as the number of agents grew, this report would run into multiple pages. By the time the floor manager (who was often handling nearly 100 agents a day) would zero in on the slacker, valuable time was lost. Ozonetel created a customized tool to help.
Our system can track inactive agents and put them at the top of the list on the manager’s screen. This way, the manager can immediately identify who the slacker is and pull him or her up.
Conclusion
You can use a system with call monitoring to help avert crises and improve resolutions in real-time. Of course, every business has its own limitations and requirements. Speak to a contact center software provider to get the right tools to help your business today.
