Try implementing real-time monitoring in your call center and you'll immediately see changes. Keep it there for a couple of months and you'll notice overall productivity go up like a spaceship. No wonder at all!
In this article, we're going to explain why every business that has a call center and/or sales department needs real-time monitoring and discuss some of the best practices that helped many organizations achieve success.
What is Real-time Call Center Monitoring?
It's a bunch of software tools that lets managers and supervisors oversee how the agent interacts with the lead during the call as it happens. Such solutions usually create a solid basis for detailed call analytics, show call center user dashboards, record conversations, enable managers to listen to live calls, check whether agents follow compliance, whether they provide high-quality customer service, and more.
Also, real-time monitoring tools are often used for quality monitoring. A manager can evaluate the recording of the agent's call according to quality standards and leave a comment with recommendations on how it can be improved.
What are the Advantages of Real-time Monitoring in the Contact Center?
As you might have guessed, such software can bring numerous benefits for every business, but we've singled out our top five.
Simplified Agents' Work
One of the greatest benefits is that real-time monitoring creates a smooth working environment by enabling a few critical things – instant feedback, and coaching opportunities. As a result, the call center newbies get the chance to put themselves out there and get valuable experience without the fear of messing up. Similarly, more seasoned call center reps can have their performance analyzed and discover areas of improvement. It seems like a win-win situation for everybody.
Reduced Agent Churn
Turnover is a tremendous problem in call centers. It's always been there and unfortunately, it's not going anywhere due to the peculiarities of this job. However, real-time monitoring software can make things a little bit better. It provides managers with a better understanding of the internal problems that force agents to leave – what makes them confused, why they feel unvalued or overworked, and what can be done about it.
Simplified Managers' Life
Call center managers are probably the ones who get the most benefits. Upon implementation of the real-time monitoring, they instantly get a top-down view of everything that happens in a call center with each agent at any given moment during the shift. Moreover, they get to participate in a conversation when things go south and help less experienced agents handle any situation professionally. Besides, real-time monitoring completely takes the guesswork out of the call center operations. It's great for setting clear performance goals, detecting more specific areas of improvement, and ultimately, easier planning of resources allocation.
Higher Productivity
Such transparency and abundance of insights inevitably result in the better overall productivity of the entire call center and/ or sales department. Every employee has clear performance goals. They know they are being recorded by the system so they are more concerned about doing their work right. The managers don't need to stand behind everybody's shoulders, which creates a less stressful environment. Real-time monitoring is a perfect way to keep things under control, ensure that the standards are met, and maintain a positive organizational culture.
Greater Customer Satisfaction
A call center is one of the most important points of contact between the brand and its clients. Therefore, being able to clearly understand what makes them frustrated and fixing it should become a priority. Real-time monitoring tools are super helpful when it comes to agent training and compliance monitoring. As a good manager, you'll be able to immediately notice the weak points and help your agents fill in the gaps. Real-time monitoring can save the situation by helping you notice possible escalation and swiftly jump in when things are about to get worse.
Also, real-time monitoring allows you to immediately detect the line on which people are waiting in a queue and see its average and maximum waiting time. By assigning extra agents to this task, you can significantly reduce the waiting time for customers in the queue on the inbound line, and thus increase their satisfaction.
Real-time Monitoring Best Practices
How to get the most of the real-time monitoring software tools? Here's what Voiptime experts recommend:
- Identify customers at risk. A more experienced manager can always tell when things aren't right. Listen to live conversations and back your agents up whenever necessary.
- Don't just focus on standard metrics. Tunnel vision is not always helpful. Pay attention to minor things like the language used by top sellers and try to get a broader picture.
- Analyze violations from the norm, such as too long or too short conversations, too many carried conversations per day, too long stay in some status, etc. It will help you spot both problem areas and more successful strategies.
- Spend some time acknowledging achievements. If you use real-time monitoring tools solely for pointing out negative things and agents' weaknesses, they'll soon lose their enthusiasm.
- Share knowledge and best practices with the team. The most successful call centers and sales departments reward top dogs but encourage everybody's professional growth.
- Measure your company's data against industry benchmarks. If you're going to ignore what happens around you, you won't be able to set realistic targets and reasonable performance goals.
To sum up...
As you can see, real-time monitoring tools can become a great addition to your business. Hopefully, you'll make up your mind in 2020 and implement this software in your contact center.
