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The Best Practices for Effective Call Monitoring
When thinking about your customer support center and the quality of calls, you should think about it from the point of view of the customer calling; this way you can ensure the best results in terms of customer satisfaction. In the business jargon, this is referred to as “call center quality assurance.” Quality assurance is a process in which calls are analyzed to make sure that agents are helping customers and solving their issues efficiently, to avoid mistakes that lead to customer frustration which leads to losing your customers.
Call center quality assurance can be achieved in many ways, mainly through call monitoring. When you monitor calls and gather data, you will be able to identify any existing problems to find a solution for them right when they happen.
Call monitoring also allows you to give feedback and provide guidelines for future calls, which will lead to better performance and higher levels of customer service.
There are a few tips that you can follow for call center quality assurance for effective call monitoring. We have compiled a list of tips for better call monitoring to help your business grow.
Set Your Own Goals
You should think of your goals and desired outcome before starting with the call monitoring process. This will give you a clear idea of what to expect and what to focus on when monitoring calls so that you don’t get lost between the unimportant details that will only waste your time.
You can decide how many calls you want to monitor per department or per agent, how often you want to do it, which departments need more monitoring, what criteria you set for a high-quality call, and so on.
Pick Your Criteria
This is a more detailed step in which you pick the metrics upon which you will decide if a call is good. Picking the criteria can also help you focus on what you want to analyze in a call so that you don’t waste time on other unimportant information. You can decide your own key performance indicators for a good call; for example, you can decide on the following:
- Length of a call
- Length of wait times in a call
- Clarity and speed of speech
- Using appropriate language
- Using the right tone of voice
- Active listening to the customer’s needs and complaints
- Using probing skills
Use a Robust Call Center Quality Monitoring Software
Business phone systems provide software solutions with features specially made to help in call monitoring and quality assurance. So if you want to have high-quality calls, you need to invest in a call center software.
You can record calls through your system to listen to them whenever you want, as they will be stored for a certain period of time that differs in each plan.
Before choosing the right software for this purpose, there are a few things you need to consider:
- Ease of Use: You should find a business phone system that is easy to use by your employees and that works well with your system.
- Scalability: Your company will keep growing; pick a software that can grow with you.
- Customization: A good business phone system will allow you to customize and adjust it according to what your company needs. For example, you may want to customize greetings and directories, and so on.
- Security: Pick a system that encrypts your data and keeps it safe and protected.
- Costs: Business phone systems offer different plans and features; think about your budget and pick the system that you can easily pay for.
Create Scripts for Different Calls
If you create a solid script and tell your agents to follow it, you will make sure that everyone will deliver similar levels of performance. This way, your agents will have a framework to know where to begin, which will make it easier to detect calls that go wrong.
It is true that agents need to treat every call and customer differently and individually according to their needs, but at the same time, it would be helpful to have general scripts for each department or type of calls as a loose framework to follow.
From there, you can start monitoring calls to make sure all agents are following the guidelines. You can start analyzing calls and interactions between agents and customers so that you can detect mistakes and work on solving problems. When you suggest and implement changes, you will notice the increase in customer satisfaction.
Filter Through Calls
You cannot listen to and monitor every single inbound and outbound call, especially if you have a big company. You can choose random calls to listen to at any given time or you can develop a strategy of monitoring calls by certain agents and departments at different times in a pattern.
Create Quality Assurance Forms or Surveys
You can create forms and surveys for quality assurance and have them filled by managers, supervisors, agents, and customers. These forms can ask questions about the quality of a call and the areas of improvement.
You can implement the form on your website or you can have it automatically sent to customers after any call either to their phone as a text message or to their email. This way, customers can give immediate feedback for every call and it can be used as constructive criticism for future calls.
Train Your Agents
Make sure your agents understand how important call quality assurance is for the success of your company. Hold introductory and regular training for your employees to make sure everyone is on the right track. You can provide courses and quizzes to enrich their knowledge and skills.
After creating a list of goals and KPIs and providing your agents with the scripts that you have written for calls, you can start judging their performance against these standards. Without having standard criteria to look at, it will be quite difficult to tell how well agents are doing.
You can also come up with a self-assessment system for agents to judge their own performance and work on any areas of improvement.
Give Constant Feedback
Make call monitoring a consistent process and provide feedback to your agents regularly. This does not only mean telling your agents about their mistakes and areas of improvement, but it only includes praise for the good qualities you find in them.
Provide Rewards and Incentives
Even if good work should be the standard, it should never go unnoticed; you should provide rewards and incentives for agents who deliver the best performances and those who get the best feedback form supervisors and customers. This will give everyone motivation to do better.
The Best VoIP Systems for Call Monitoring
Choosing the right VoIP system can help you monitor calls easily and efficiently. As mentioned before, there are a few factors to consider before choosing a system for your business. Based on these factors, we have created a list of the best VoIP providers that can help in call center quality assurance:
1. Ooma
Ooma offers multiple plans and features; the Ooma Office Pro is the best plan for call centers, as it provides the best features and the most affordable prices:
Ooma Office Pro
This plan starts at $24.95 per user per month; it is perfect for call centers, not only for its call monitoring tools but also for all the other features it offers. Below are some of the features associated with call centers, but the plan offers a lot more.
- Call forwarding (helpful in power outages)
- Call queuing
- Business SMS texting
- Virtual receptionist (attendant)
- Music on hold
- Call log
- Multi-device ring
- 24/7 support
- Call recording for monitoring purposes
- Caller info match
- Call analytics
- Call through Ooma's desktop app
Once you sign up, you can enable the call recording feature. All calls will be recorded (inbound, outbound, transferred, or conferenced); each call can be recorded for up to an hour, and recorded calls are stored on the system for 90 days. Each user will be able to review their own recorded calls while the admin of the system will be able to review all recorded calls in all departments.
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2. Dialpad
Dialpad offers three plans: Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. The Pro and Enterprise plans allow call recording and monitoring as well as a list of other features that help call centers.
Dialpad Talk Pro Plan
This plan starts at $25 per user per month, and it includes all the features in the basic plan plus:
- Unlimited calling
- Unlimited SMS and MMS
- Call controls
- Call routing during off-hours
- CRM integration
- Local number supported in over 50 countries
- Hold ques
- International SMS
- Desk phone support
- 25 ring groups
- 24/7 phone support
Dialpad Talk Enterprise Plan
This plan does not advertise its costs, which means you need to contact Dialpad’s team to get a price for your company. It includes all the features in the basic and pro plan as well as:
- Unlimited office locations
- Retention policy
- Extensions
- Unlimited ring groups
- Enhanced 24/7 phone support
- Azure, IAM/SSO integration
- Enterprise service level agreement
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3. RingCentral
RingCentral is one of the biggest providers of cloud-based communication solutions. It provides a great VoIP system for business with all the features it provides and the flexibility it allows. RingCentral offers four plans with different features and costs. All plans come with varying call recording features; below are the features of the most popular plan and the plan with the best value:
Essentials (most popular)
This is the most basic and popular plan, and it allows up to 20 users only. If you pay annually, you will be charged $19.99 per user per month. However, paying monthly will charge you $29.99 per month per user. With this plan, you get the following features:
- Call recording
- Team messaging
- Unlimited calls within the United States and Canada
- Unlimited business SMS
- Voicemail-to-text
- Document sharing
- Toll-free and business phone numbers
Premium (best value):
This plan has a monthly subscription that starts at $34.99 per user and for up to 20 users when paid annually. However, if you pay on a monthly basis, the cost changes to $54.99 per month. Premium has all the features in the Essentials plan plus the following:
- Call recording
- Business phone numbers in more than 100 countries
- Unlimited internet fax
- Unlimited audio conferencing
- Video meetings with up to 100 participants
- 24/7 service support
- Quality-of-service reports
- Collaborative software integrations such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Microsoft 365
- High-definition video quality
- Up to eight-digit extensions and site codes
- Automatic call recording
- Single sign-on
- Admin and management for multiple sites
- Advanced call handling
- Video meetings with up to 200 participants
- CRM integrations like Zendesk, Salesforce, and Canvas
- Custom integrations and platforms for developers
RingCentral provides two options for call recording: on-demand call recording and automatic call recording. The first one is available to all MVP subscribers and can be done for any call at any moment; the latter is only available to Premium and Ultimate users and allows you to record all incoming and outgoing calls automatically.