Did you know that 91% of customers reported poor customer experience in 2021?
Around 81% of customers believe that customer experience is as important as the products and services offered by your company.
As such, every company wants its call center to offer the best experiences to its customers.
While many companies train their agents for customer interaction, some still find trouble satisfying and resolving customer issues.
One of the best ways to solve this problem is through call monitoring and call listening.
In this article, we will take a closer look at call listening and its importance. Alongside this, we will also examine what is call monitoring and the benefits of call monitoring to the business world.
What is Call Listening?
Call listening refers to when managers listen to real-time calls between their customers and agents. They do so for various reasons including training purposes, resolving issues, and evaluating the agent.
Your managers listen to calls based on the agents’ past performance or when call time is higher than usual. Furthermore, a call listening session is done to evaluate your agent and use the same messages to train others.
The Importance of Call Listening
Call listening is an essential feature for any company to have. It’s similar to conducting an informal survey on how happy your customer is with your product and services.
Listening to your customers can help you understand their experience with your customer services. Moreover, a call listening session can even help understand how well your agents can assist them.
A few other purposes of call listening include:
1) Enhancing metric analysis
Call listening can help a company analyze the real reason behind metrics like CSAT, FCR, and AHT. All of these can provide you with a good understanding of your call center performance.
Additionally, call listening activity can also help you figure out where and when your metrics have to be less rigid. For example, not all calls that take a long time are ineffective.
Call monitoring can also help you figure out what your script is missing. This is especially useful when an agent deviates from the traditional script and goes for something else!
2) Improves First Call Resolution
Call listening can improve the customers’ trust and confidence in your company.
This is especially true when agents are aware that their calls are being recorded and monitored. As a result, they will work hard to resolve the callers’ problems in the first call.
3) Improves customer satisfaction
Call monitoring and call listening helps companies take instant steps to resolve customer satisfaction scores whenever they’re solving queries.
4) Ensures timely intervention
Whenever an agent cannot solve a customer issue, it can be of great assistance. During call listening sessions, your manager can interfere and help the agent with the next steps.
As such, a lot of time is saved for your customers. Moreover, it will reduce your customers’ requirements to go through the entire process again.
5) Ways to monitor a call
Calls can either be monitored in real-time or recordings, and there are several ways to monitor these calls. Historical calls can be monitored through the recordings from the cloud contact centers.
Live calls, however, can be monitored in three different ways. These include:
1) Barge-in
Barge-in is a method that allows the team leader, supervisor, or a third party to silently join the call. This occurs while a customer and an agent are talking.
During the barge-in session, no participant on the call would be notified. Therefore, the best time to use this method is when you require a less intimidating call monitoring method.
This is because nobody on the call would know you are listening to them.
2) Whisper
This one-way communication technique allows the manager to speak to the agent in private. It does so without letting the customer know or hear what they are saying.
This is usually done when a manager sees a situation that requires intervention. This intervention is done without letting the customer know.
Whisper can be very effective in helping agents continue whenever they find themselves in a pinch. For example, when they have a question, are stuck between calls, when the situation is getting heated, etc.
3) Snoop
The Snoop Call Monitoring technique allows your supervisor to talk to your agent and the customer when required.
This method is usually used to resolve customer queries faster. But, it can also help develop a sense of importance in customers when a senior staff member takes over.
Also read, The Complete Guide To Outbound Calling
What is Call Monitoring?
Call monitoring refers to almost all call-related activities that supervisors do to improve the quality of customer services. As such, it also includes call analytics.
Thus, call monitoring includes generating reports of call history, viewing the number of calls that are currently ongoing, and more.
With call monitoring, you can ensure that customer service reps are delivering top-notch service, following company policies, and using their charm.
By listening to calls, companies can identify areas for improvement, provide feedback, and ultimately, make customers happier. In this way, call monitoring is like the secret sauce for delivering awesome customer service.
Also check out: Call Masking
The Benefits of Call Monitoring
An important part of creating your customer experience strategy is to ensure proper training and support of your agents. Call monitoring acts as the perfect way for you to ensure agent performance is up to the mark.
A few popular benefits of call monitoring include:
1) Increasing agent performance
Call monitoring allows the supervisor to focus on the proficiencies and deficiencies of their agents’ performance.
For example, say an agent is struggling with interactions with customers about certain aspects of your business. This may be due to lack of knowledge or training.
In such a case, you can then train them in that specific area and increase their performance.
2) Facilitating employee development
It allows the manager to create a goal-setting process and develop a more detailed action plan for individual agents.
For example, a manager can address specific issues and develop solutions for agents constantly falling below expectations in specific areas.
Tip – Foster a culture of development by providing personalized feedback and tailored training, enabling agents to reach their full potential.
3) Easily track your progress
Call monitoring allows supervisors and companies to track the company’s progress and individual agents through data and scoring.
This is a very useful feature of call monitoring. However, it might require them to listen to many call recordings and live calls, especially those targeted.
4) Provides you with useful feedback
Call listening activity can help managers understand the deficit of an agent and provide unique feedback through recordings.
This helps your agent understand exactly where the problem lies and enhances the feedback process.
There are many more advantages to call monitoring and call listening. But overall, the result of both is enhanced customer satisfaction and service quality.
Tip – Receive actionable feedback to pinpoint strengths and areas for improvement, fostering agent skill development.
5) Improving employee satisfaction
Call monitoring provides a structured platform for feedback and coaching.
Agents receive constructive guidance, helping them enhance their skills and boost confidence. This, in turn, leads to greater job satisfaction and reduced turnover rates among call center employees.
6) Identifying problems quickly and systematically
By actively listening to customer interactions, supervisors can swiftly identify issues or challenges faced by agents.
Timely intervention allows for problem resolution, preventing customer dissatisfaction and ensuring smoother operations.
Tip – Swiftly identify and resolve issues, minimizing customer dissatisfaction and maintaining smooth operations.
7) Identifying inefficient and broken procedures
Call monitoring highlights inefficiencies and broken processes within the call center.
When supervisors detect bottlenecks or outdated procedures, they can initiate improvements, streamlining operations and reducing unnecessary delays.
8) Increasing quality standards
Consistent call monitoring establishes and maintains high-quality service standards. Supervisors can evaluate calls against predefined criteria, ensuring that every interaction meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Tip – Swiftly identify and resolve issues. This minimizes customer dissatisfaction and maintains smooth operations.
9) Increasing service quality
Customer service quality experiences a significant boost through call monitoring.
Agents receive real-time feedback, enabling them to make instant adjustments and deliver superior service. This positively impacts customer satisfaction and loyalty.
10) Improving call center performance
Overall call center performance benefits from call monitoring. Monitoring data helps in setting performance benchmarks, evaluating agent efficiency, and optimizing resource allocation.
This leads to increased productivity and cost-effectiveness.
Tip – Optimize resource allocation, boost productivity, and reduce costs by effectively managing and enhancing call center operations.
Also read: The A-Z of Call Tracking
Call Listening Vs Call Monitoring: What is the difference?
Ever wondered how businesses keep an ear on their customer service calls? Well, they use two key techniques: call listening and call monitoring.
While they might sound similar, there are some important differences between call listening and call monitoring:
1) The Focus
Call Listening
Think of it like eavesdropping, but in a good way! Call listening involves supervisors or managers quietly tuning in to a random call to understand how their agents handle customer interactions. It’s more about getting a snapshot of the conversation.
Call Monitoring
Call monitoring is a more active process where supervisors actively participate in the call, providing guidance and support to the agents in real-time. It’s all about actively shaping the conversation.
2) The Purpose
Call Listening
The goal here is to evaluate agent performance, gather insights, and identify areas for improvement.
Call Monitoring
In contrast, call monitoring is about ensuring a high-quality customer experience during the call itself. Supervisors step in when needed to guide the agent and address customer concerns promptly.
3) The Interaction
Call Listening
In a call listening session, supervisors typically stay silent and invisible, taking notes and making assessments. They do this without the agent or customer knowing they’re there.
Call Monitoring
Here, the supervisor actively interacts with the agent, providing live feedback, suggestions, and solutions to ensure a successful call outcome.
In a nutshell, both call listening and call monitoring help improve customer service, but they serve slightly different purposes.
4) Frequency
Call Listening
It’s often done on a random or occasional basis, where supervisors select and listen to specific calls as needed for evaluation.
Call Monitoring
Typically, this is done in real-time or at predetermined intervals, ensuring continuous oversight of agent-customer interactions.
5) Agent Awareness
Call Listening
In call listening sessions, agents are usually unaware of when their calls are being listened to. Thus, allowing for a more genuine representation of their performance.
Call Monitoring
Agents are aware that they are being actively monitored, which can influence their behavior and lead to a more controlled interaction.
Conclusion
As you can see, call listening and monitoring is very useful for any business for various reasons. Call listening activity allows supervisors to monitor calls, listen to them, and even intervene if need be.
Effective call listening sessions can also help quickly find areas of improvement and better evaluate your agents’ performance. Moreover, the various benefits of call monitoring truly help perfect your customer experience strategy.
Overall, you should always use call listening and call monitoring to improve customer experiences with your company!