Top Ten Ways A Call Center Quality Monitoring Solution Creates Better Trained Agents

The following list represents feedback from multiple quality monitoring clients when asked about the ways that their investment in quality monitoring has resulted in better trained agents.

1) A quality monitoring solution provides the ability for agents to hear themselves speak: Even the best agents make mistakes. Most don't even realize when they're making them. Playing back recorded interactions will enlighten them. When an agent first hears themselves going "Uhmmmm...", you can see the funny look on their face as they think, "that's what I sound like?". Chances are after they realize that there IS room for improvement, they will embrace the opportunity to do just that.

2) A quality monitoring solution's screen capture functionality allows for greater understanding of how agents use their applications: Screen Capture technology isn't only for nabbing solitaire players or web surfers during business hours - it can also be used to watch an agent navigate through a crm while helping a customer on the phone. Often time-saving process improvements can be made after observing CRM usage. Screen capture, and especially video-mode screen capture (where every on screen movement is captured, not just stills), can have a huge impact on ROI.

3) Evaluation functionalities speed up the learning curve: This one seems rather obvious - before the evaluation process was automated, supervisors had to sit side-by-side with employees, take notes, fill out spreadsheets, develop training material and provide feedback to employees and compile reports for management. If this process took three hours, the automated process takes three minutes. That's not an exact calculation, of course, but you get the picture. Even worse, recording calls without an evaluation element keeps you from improving at the rapid pace that is available to you.

4) Quality monitoring reports make it easy to identify employee strengths and weaknesses, and to identify where agents need training: Typical quality monitoring systems come with agent performance reports that can identify where employees are struggling, even where entire groups falter across the board. This is key in developing relevant training materials that focus on specific problems.

5) E-learning features allow supervisors to send targeted training materials to agents: Once you've completed some evaluations and identified where employees need training, you then will have to set out to work on the areas they need help on. Once you've created your training materials, deployment of the appropriate content to the specific employee can be automated via "E-Learning" functionality. Confirmation of completion is then sent back to the supervisor after the employee has viewed his training material.

6) Quality Monitoring "packaging" features enable you to create a "greatest hits" list of the best and worst call examples: If your system has a "packaging" feature you have the ability to grab your recorded events and organize them together for training purposes. You can then publish your package to the web, a shared network drive, or burned to cd. You can create a group of events related to a similar training theme, or even a "greatest hits" collection of stellar service calls sure to impress the executives.

7) Quality monitoring can reduce turnover and stagnation by providing a measurable means of improvement: A good quality monitoring system can provide managers with the ability to focus in on skill areas where employees need help. Implemented properly, a quality monitoring program can provide a continuous improvement of agent performance. Agents will grow less frustrated and stagnant. As their skills improve, so will their ability to get to the next level.

8) A successful quality monitoring implementation enables teams to work to common goals and expectations: No QA program should be implemented without first having everyone on board with both the concept and the goals. Both management and employees should have common goals, expectations and metrics - the momentum of a cohesive team effort will often empower the ability to exceed those goals.

9) Quality monitoring can affect your entire organization. Customized reports can allow you to determine if training needs are for individuals, teams, or the entire organization: Having the ability to focus in on training requirements for individual agents is one benefit of a solid reporting mechanism, but quality monitoring reports should also allow you to examine your teams' deficiencies, and organizational problems across the board. This will allow you to deploy individual, team and company-wide training programs and improve overall call center performance.

10) Quality monitoring can rapidly deliver a return on investment: Once a quality monitoring program has been implemented, the return on investment can be realized very quickly. This translates to the bottom line via more upsells, saves and new sales, less turnover, faster training cycle time for new hires, and much more.