Call monitoring Monitor your agent calls

In call centers, call monitoring refers to the practice where managers and supervisors listen in on the calls between agents and customers in real time. The main objectives of monitoring calls are to:

• Ensure that the agents maintain call quality standards
• Evaluate the performance of agents
• Improve the overall quality of customer support services
• Train and coach new agents
• Offer quick advice to agents during live calls

Call centers use monitoring tools and software to listen in and track agent calls. If you are using a cloud-based business phone system, you don’t need to invest in such tools and software separately – call monitoring is a feature included in their business call plans.

Evaluate the performance of your sales/support teams and ensure customer satisfaction by using the call monitoring feature of a business phone system. It enables you to listen to ongoing conversations, join live calls as a third party, give your agents help and advice in real time, and use feedback gathered through call monitoring to tailor your agent coaching.

Call monitoring can be of four types - live call listening, call barging, call whisper, and call recording.

• Live call listening, also called double-listening, is when supervisors listen to an ongoing call without the knowledge of the agent or customer. They listen to a live call, take notes, and provide feedback to agents later.
• Call barging is when managers and supervisors join an ongoing call as a third party and take over the conversation. They usually do this to help a struggling agent, prevent further escalation, or respond to a higher-order query.
• Call whisper is a type of call monitoring where supervisors talk directly to the agent during a live call without the customer knowing to offer quick advice or solutions.
• Call recording is the most basic form of call monitoring in which supervisors listen to recorded calls and offer feedback to agents. It doesn’t involve real-time monitoring of calls.

The call monitoring feature in a business phone system benefits companies, agents, and supervisors alike.

For companies:

• Stick to call quality standards and company values at all times.
• Cultivate a work culture based on constant learning and development.
• Boost sales results by improving the quality of sales pitches.
• Improve the efficiency of your sales and support teams.
• Ensure high levels of customer satisfaction by offering consistently excellent service.

For managers and supervisors:

• Evaluate the performance agents regularly and systematically.
• Identify the areas where agents need improvement and design skill-building and training sessions accordingly.
• Intervene and offer solutions in difficult situations or prevent escalations.
• Enrich feedback data and use it for coaching existing and new agents.
• Identify and rectify inefficient processes and compliance issues.

For agents:

• Improve the quality of their performance.
• Increase the rate of first-contact resolution.
• Get timely help when required.
• Improve productivity.

If you are a business owner who wants to monitor the business calls on company-owned cell phones, you could use a monitoring app or software. To do this, you need the permission of employees and should have clear monitoring policies in place. However, such apps don’t come with enterprise-level features. Moreover, the legality of using such apps is a matter of debate.

The best way to overcome this problem is to switch to a cloud-based business phone system that offers call monitoring as a feature. Most of these VoIP phone system providers have a mobile app that your employees can use to make calls from their smartphones using a business number.

You can access and monitor all business calls your agents and employees make through the dashboard. You can listen to live calls without agents or customers knowing, record calls, and intervene during active calls if required.