Call Quality Monitoring

Here is our ultimate guide to call quality monitoring, with key definitions, information on call quality parameters and triggers, as well as much more.

Silent monitoring

For a long time, a widespread method for checking and therefore for evaluating quality has been so-called “silent monitoring”. In this case, the supervisor or trainer accompanies a telephone conversation between agent and customer as a silent third party of a conference call. This method has the advantage that the agent can continue talking to the customer without being disturbed, but for the supervisor or trainer the following problems remain unsolved.

Agents and supervisors/trainers both have to be at their workplace to allow “live” monitoring. This could cause problems, especially for businesses that run 24/7. The monitoring is limited to the current call, no information about the process of quality is provided throughout an entire week (e.g. “Monday morning syndrome”) It is not possible to analyse critical conversations because they are not available and cannot be selected respectively.

Quality Monitoring Solutions

Quality monitoring solutions are used all over the world.

They have been developed in order to enable evaluation of all business conversations regarding criteria of quality determined by the company in a standardised and comparable way.

The following functions are provided to supervisors/trainers:

• Selective recording of calls (voice and screen) according to a variety of user-defined or project-specific parameters
• Easy and comfortable search for calls according to user-definable criteria (agent, content, time of day, CTI event)
• Highly flexible generation and use of evaluation templates
• Easy creation and distribution of management reports
• Conversion of calls into instructive examples using additional functions (eCoaching)
• Integration of agents as active parts into the Quality Monitoring process
• eLearning and eCoaching capabilities to close the loop between recording and evaluation of agents

Agent Feedback

Quality monitoring lets agents evaluate themselves or fellow agents. This capability double-checks the supervisor’s opinion and motivates agents through increased involvement in the evaluation process.

Active Coaching

Quality monitoring lets the supervisor use authentic voice files for instant coaching.

Remarks or additional advice can be added to recorded calls and provided to
agents. “Best/worst practice“ examples may be created by trainers or supervisors and rapidly distributed.

With agent assistance tools the agent can contact the supervisor in real time
without the customer’s knowledge. Supervisors may respond with instant
messages (via the chat window), take over the call or even take control of the agent’s PC.

Typical call recording triggers

To complete the definition of the parameters, numerous decision criteria for the recording are available.

Number of calls per agent per month

The most widespread trigger is to record a set number of calls per agent per month.

Percentage triggers

It is also possible to define static criteria, e.g. “Record ten percent of the sessions per agent”.

CTI parameters

By integrating quality monitoring into the PBX or ACD system, further triggers become available.

In some situations it could be beneficial to trigger monitoring at the start of the recording process, e.g. “record exclusively transferred calls”.

In VoIP environments the recording can be triggered according to IP addresses.

Phone number list

Phone numbers (internal, external or additional) can be used as recording criteria, e.g. a ‘white list’ (callers on these phone numbers have to be recorded) or a ‘black list’ (callers on these phone numbers are not to be recorded) could be defined.

External triggers

You could determine if an agent will be able to manage (start/stop) the recording. This operation could either be executed by software on the agent’s computer or by pressing a key on the system phone.

Schedule parameters

These parameters help to fix temporal rules for the recording, e.g. record exclusively on Mondays from 8 am to 9 am.

It is also possible to trigger the recording according to the length of a call, e.g. “record only calls that are longer than 60 seconds”.

Typical Quality Monitoring tasks

• Definition of evaluation templates
• Initiating measures for quality evaluation
• Evaluating the quality
• Interpretation of the individual evaluations
• Definition of training package templates
• Allocation and administration of training package templates
• Consolidated analysis of quality measures
• Targeted planning of speech analytics

Benefits of Quality Monitoring

Customers

• Improved customer service
• Personalised relationships
• Reduced hold times and transfers

Agents

• Effective training and coaching
• Improved job skills
• Increased motivation

Supervision

• Effective management
• Sensitivity to service quality
• Transparent communications

Companies

• Increased loyalty
• Reduced employee turnover
• Improved productivity
• Continuous improvement process
• Reduced training costs

Click here to try out our Free Call Monitoring Form

Further reading

• 19 Golden Rules for Call Monitoring
• Typical Quality Monitoring features
• Using Call Recordings To Coach Staff
• Top tips for Call Quality Monitoring
• Call Center Quality Assurance
• Call Quality Evaluation
• Recording Customer Surveys
• 30 Tips to Improve your Call Quality Monitoring

Contributors

• Mike Murley of ASC Telecom