5 Best Practices for Call Monitoring

Elevating the customer experience is a huge responsibility for the call center manager. How your customers feel after talking with agents could influence their decision of whether or not to give your company new or continued business.

A successful call monitoring strategy is what all call centers strive to achieve. It’s finding that balance of agent efficiency without sacrificing service quality.

Call monitoring is a practice used for the purpose of customer service and communication. It’s the process of listening in on agent and customer exchanges and then recorded for analysis and strategy improvement.

Need some assistance in this area? This article will help guide you on the 5 best practices you can leverage to improve your inbound and outbound call monitoring.

1. Write an effective script for agents
2. Stress the importance of service (not just metrics)
3. Establish agent self-assessments
4. Select the right call monitoring software
5. Form a call monitoring taskforce

Write an Effective Script for Agents

An effective script needs to be helpful, written in natural language and tone, and consistent in messaging for it to achieve desired results. Call center scripts set a quality of service standard for the organization.

When drafting your call scripts, start with a couple of variations to measure their effectiveness and overall buy-in from your top agents. Your top performers are on the front-lines every day so including their feedback will be incredibly helpful. As you get started, have them test the scripts on a handful of calls and then share feedback on the strong and weak points of the messaging after their phone calls.

In order to provide the most meaningful and transparent interactions with your customers, here’s what we recommend you have within your call script:

• A clear introduction. The introduction can set the tone for the entire conversation. After being connected, the agent should clearly state their name, department, and how they may assist the caller.
• Create a connection. Empathy can help agents create a connection and establish rapport with their customers.
• Relay a resolution response. Whether it’s troubleshooting a product over the phone or transferring a call to the appropriate person, always state to the caller the resolution you have the authority to provide them.
• Closing statement. Ending the call with a sincere “Is there anything else that I can assist you with?” and a “Thank you for calling, and have a wonderful day!” can go a long way.

After you’ve created your preferred call scripts, consistency will be critical. We strongly recommend using a call center software and their call monitoring features to track ongoing script adherence. Need help? Learn more about our call monitoring, call whispering, and call barge features here.

Stress the Importance of Service (Not Just Metrics)

Call center managers that are too heavily focused on the data could be missing out on delivering an exceptional customer service experience. It’s important to track agent performance, but not all metrics are created equal.

Average handling time (AHT) is a metric used to calculate the amount of time a customer and agent interact. Data-driven individuals see this low number as good: the lower the rate, the more calls that are being connected.

But, there’s also another way to look at it. Agents with higher AHTs may be delivering a more impactful customer experience by putting in more time and effort into their customer’s inquiries. Instead of basing your assessments on just the number, listen to the quality of the interaction too.

Agents prioritizing service and working toward first-call resolutions for their customers can yield better results for the company over time. Metrics are important of course, but so is a great customer experience!

Establish Agent Self-Assessments

A work environment that promotes education and professional development can greatly improve the performance of your call center.

Agents given the opportunity to self-assess their previous interactions can enhance their communication skills and define areas that need improvement. Provide your team with self-assessment evaluation sheets, learning tools, and training sessions to improve their soft skills and gain more confidence with each customer exchange.

Select the Right Call Monitoring Software

Communication software with dynamic capabilities can add significant value to your business processes. AVOXI, for example, provides call center managers with top-of-the-line tools like call barging and call whispering to coach your agents discreetly while they’re assisting customers.

These features allow you to track the quality of the conversation, and keep your agents confident on the phone lines!

Intuitive dashboards, system integrations, and enhanced security are additional features you should think about when selecting call monitoring software. It’s about having a tool that can help your team do the job efficiently, can scale with the growth of your company, and is accessible anywhere.

Form a Call Monitoring Task Force

Call center managers oversee a lot day-to-day. Agent support and customer retention strategies are high on the priority list, but sometimes other responsibilities like internal initiatives can fall through the cracks. Fortunately, a call monitoring task force can help by providing you the bandwidth needed to focus on those revenue-driving operations.

You might be asking yourself, “What’s a call monitoring task force?” It’s a task force that’s made up of an intimate number of agents who’ve been selected to make decisions and implement processes on behalf of the acting manager.

Look to them to schedule training sessions, update resources and performance scorecards, and implement incentive programs. It’ll give them a voice within the company and free up your workload to focus on more pressing matters. Recruit agents who’ve consistently shown outstanding performance, but remember to rotate so others who've improved their scores can join in and share ideas.

The Take-Away

Call monitoring can help you make improvements in the way your team operates - and most importantly - improve your customer experience.

Crafting effective scripts for your agents, stressing the importance of quality over quantity conversations, encouraging agent self-assessments, selecting the right call monitoring software, and starting a call monitoring task force can easily improve your team’s performance and approach to speaking with customers.