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Companies invest heavily in their call centers, from infrastructure and technology to workforce costs and benefits, so it’s important to make sure the call center department and its employees are operating efficiently and providing customers with an exceptional experience in order to see a return on this investment. Equally important, if not more important, it is in the company’s best interest to ensure their call center agents are satisfied with their role, that they feel empowered to positively impact the customer, and valued as part of the customer experience process.

Happy employees can be the strongest asset a company has – the brand ambassadors. With call center agents interfacing over the phone every day handling important customer issues, it is critical that these employees be satisfied with their position in the company so that they project a positive attitude and image.

However, monitoring call center agents can be tricky. Manually monitoring conversations with customers in order to assess and come to conclusions on their performance is not practical or cost-effective. This makes it very difficult to truly understand and quantify what takes place during an agent-customer call, so it becomes important, critical really, for companies to rely on technology to capture and deliver precise, consistent data they need to effectively and accurately monitor agent performance, customer satisfaction, and the implications these factors have on business performance.

To do this, it is essential for companies to have the infrastructure, technology, and process in place to monitor call center agents while they are fielding customer calls. There is an unlimited amount of data contained in these conversations, which can be leveraged to evaluate and improve call handling procedures, improve the customer experience, and impact the bottom line revenues in a positive way. Not to mention the reputation and credibility of the company, an area of intense scrutiny and focus.

Reasons to Monitor Conversations between Agents and Customers

Businesses of all sizes and throughout all industries can access and extract critical business insights contained in the conversations taking place between their call center agents and their customers. There are many reasons why this information is valuable to the employer/employee relationship.

By monitoring calls between customers and agents companies can:

1. Track agent performance and use the knowledge to improve productivity.

2. Establish clear and measurable goals for employees and evaluate them based on those goals.

3. Easily identify agent training opportunities to improve adherence to company procedures and policies.

4. Identify top-performers and reward those agents to motivate them to continue their good work, and use these examples as motivation for mid-low performing or new agents.

By motivating and rewarding agents, companies are sure to achieve a higher overall quality of transactions due to the foundation of a happy, satisfied, and empowered workforce.

To do this effectively, technology is a necessity. Only an automated call quality monitoring solution can capture the agent-customer conversations, and extract business insights automatically; insights like agent performance based on KPIs, script compliance, and workforce training opportunities, to name just a few.

Once an efficient call recording and monitoring technology is in place, it makes it much easier to monitor call center agents and identify the top performers, which also tend to be the most satisfied and happy employees. On the other side of that equation, call quality monitoring tools will also reveal the agents that may need to improve their call-handling process, script compliance, and other company-specific goals.

Techniques to Improve Agent Performance

Fielding incoming calls all day is a tough job. Call center agents are handling customer issues that range from trouble-shooting product issues, answering billing questions, and trying to diffuse unhappy customer situations. With a little investment of time and energy dedicated to these motivational techniques, you can ensure that your agents understand that you are on their side.

Motivation Techniques:

1. Ask call center agents how you can improve the working environment. Is there a tool the agents need to do their jobs more efficiently?

2. Ask how the company can improve service to customers. Are agents noticing a trend in what customers are calling about? Is there a way to anticipate the customers’ needs?

3. Say thank you whenever you have an opportunity and recognize the difficult job your agents are facing every day.

4. Praise well-performing agents any time you can, and reward them publicly so that they become role models and benchmarks for other agents.

Extract Value from Customer Conversations

Your customers and agents have a lot to say while handling hundreds and thousands of phone conversations. Make sure you don’t miss it. With call center monitoring tools like call recording and speech analytics, you’ll gain immediate and automated access to the data you need to analyze the customer experience, understand their needs, and take the initiative to make changes within your organization.

Laura Noonan has 20 years of experience working with the SMB market. She leads the marketing teams at CallFinder and 800response, delivering telecommunications solutions and cloud-based marketing technology tools including call recording and speech analytics, sophisticated call routing platforms, call tracking metrics, and vanity 800 toll-free number service. Contact Laura at 1-802-860-0378 or email lnoonan@mycallfinder.com.

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