Quality monitoring is in customer contact usually the process of evaluating conversations, focusing on the qualitative aspects of conversation. Monitoring is also called quality monitoring or quality monitoring (QM).
Monitoring programs include tracking and analyzing data to gain visibility into individual contact center agent and overall contact center performance trends, anticipated issues, and training and guidance needs.
Monitoring often measures several things: the quality of the interaction and the accuracy of the information provided, the involvement in the customer contact (empathy), customer focus, analytical skills, ability to handle the conversation efficiently, compliance and confidentiality, etc.
The results of monitoring include: coaching opportunities through the creation of concrete examples for feedback; insight into additional training needs of individual agents; insight into the effectiveness of training; insight into customer wishes and expectations. Monitoring can also contribute to refinement of the selection process, because monitoring increases insight into skill and knowledge profiles. The benefits are usually translated into the form of a decrease in errors, repeat work, complaints, repeat traffic, etc.
Effective programs are well tailored to individuals coaching and general quality improvement programs. There are several ways to monitor agent performance:
- Silent Monitoring: the person responsible for monitoring listens remotely in another room. Sometimes it is possible to also follow the screen operations ('screen monitoring') so that one can see the system navigation while the agent handles the call.
- Call Recording: Of supervisor or a system records a number of conversations. After this, the person responsible for monitoring randomly (randomly) selects a few conversations for evaluation.
- Side-by-Side monitoring: the person who has to evaluate sits next to the agent and listens in when the agent handles a conversation.
- Peer Monitoring: buddies, coaches or agents listen to a colleague's conversations and provide feedback to this colleague.
- mystery shopper: a form of unobtrusive observation, in which a designated 'mystery shopper' (an employee of the organization, for example another agent or and supervisor) establish a telephone conversation with a agent from the contact center and at the same time the skills of the agent evaluates. The mystery shopper calls in according to the regular channels and often works with a script. The task of the mystery shopper can also be carried out by an external company. Mystery shopping can also be part of customer satisfaction research.
Software is available to automate quality monitoring, both on the fly (during the work of the agent) as well as afterwards (by using speech analytics). Think about:
- logging: recording every incoming call within the organization;
- a certain percentage of the conversations are recorded in order to improve the quality evaluation process. The percentage of calls can be determined as desired or linked to certain call types;
- scheduled: allows the user to schedule for a specific agent to record conversations during a certain period;
- on demand: sets the agent of supervisor able to record conversations directly.
Organizations that have implemented quality monitoring systems aim to... call quality to improve: to make discussions more consistent and to gain insight into process and system improvement opportunities.
Some organizations also indicate that a reduction in average call time is possible as a result of monitoring identifying which agents are struggling with inefficient call techniques. Other organizations have been able to reduce call times by reducing the amount of documentation required for a call (but this is only possible when all calls are logged).
See Call quality, Monitoring, Ca/I/Screen Recording