Summary: Call recording and call monitoring solutions can deliver dramatic benefits to contact centers of all types and sizes. This article highlights the key features and capabilities of today’s leading call recording and call monitoring software packages.

How Listening In Improves Customer Service

The deployment and use of call recording and call monitoring solutions are on the rise. Because in today’s contact centers, there are many important reasons to collect, store, review, and analyze agent interactions.

For example, recordings captured by a call recording software package can dramatically enhance quality management, giving supervisors insight into agent performance, and allowing them to rapidly identify and correct any skill gaps that may require additional training. Additionally, recorded interactions can become valuable evidence in customer disputes, or provide timely and vital intelligence about competitors and marketplace conditions. And, by making it easier for managers to listen in on interactions as they occur, call monitoring applications can facilitate more rapid and effective problem resolution by allowing managers to “guide” representatives through problematic calls.

The call recording and call monitoring solutions that are currently on the market offer a broad range of features and functionality, including:

Selective Recording
Many call recording packages offer the ability to record all calls, or to record calls at random intervals. Additionally, some of the more advanced solutions will dynamically record interactions based on specific events, such as the use of certain words or phrases, or pre-defined thresholds, such as calls that extend beyond a specific length of time or are transferred more than once.

Integrated Agent Scoring and Evaluation
In cases where quality management is the primary purpose of call recording, many solutions will provide the ability for managers to assess agent performance as they are playing back the interaction, include their feedback with the call, and send it back to the agent for review.

Real-time Alerts
An interaction that goes way beyond average handling length. A call that has been transferred numerous times. These and other situations often require immediate intervention from a supervisor. Many call recording and call monitoring packages include real-time alert capabilities. So, managers can be instantly informed of the events that can negatively impact customer satisfaction and loyalty, and take immediate corrective action as needed.

“Live” Monitoring
There are many instances when agents find themselves in trouble. An irate customer, a question they can’t answer, a problem they can’t solve, and other issues can leave them confused and nervous, and unable to provide an appropriate level of service. With call monitoring solutions, managers can actively listen in on calls to ensure they are handled properly. As the supervisor is monitoring, he/she can communicate with the agent via an IM-type facility, providing guidance and advice to help them to reach the most effective resolution possible.

Screen Capture
The audio portion of an agent interaction often tells only a part of the story. As they are talking to clients, they are usually also retrieving or entering information on their desktops.That’s why many call recording applications also capture screen activity. So, the supervisor gets the complete picture by understanding not only what the agent was saying, but what they were doing during the interaction.

Training
With many call recording solutions, interactions that represent “best practices” in call handling can be saved, stored, and used at a later date for training purposes.