In many enterprises, the contact center is the most customer-facing department and at the heart of the contact center are the agents. Every interaction they have with customers could earn a new customer, retain a current customer or, unfortunately, lose a customer—providing the very reason to employ quality monitoring software. These tools help to closely monitor the agents’ work against a consistent set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), offer personalized coaching to help hone agents’ skills, and track the effectiveness of on-going coaching.

Some businesses use live monitoring, hand-written forms, and manual reports to evaluate agent performance. Businesses are finding that live monitoring is significantly inefficient compared to today’s new automated quality monitoring solutions.
Some of the issues found when using a live monitoring format are:

• Wastes time. If an agent is idle due to low call volume or the agent takes a break, so does the evaluator. Supervisors can take up to five times longer to monitor the same number of calls.
• Incomplete. Most supervisors monitor a minimum of 3-4 calls per session to reduce bias. But, this may lead to inaccurate evaluations. For instance, one agent may be working best in the first hours of the session where another agent is better at the end of the session. If the agent leaves during the session or the supervisor is not able to evaluate 3-4 calls, the entire evaluation session may have to be thrown out, resulting in wasted time for the supervisor.
• Inaccurate. Contact center supervisors are interrupted frequently. If an interruption occurs during a live monitoring session, the supervisor will most likely miss important evaluation information leading to an inaccurate agent performance review.

Automated quality monitoring software, with near-real time coaching tools, is the answer. These solutions offer the ability for contact centers to automate the monitoring function, and provide personalized coaching for agents. Often incorporated into existing contact center software suites, such as call loggers and real-time dashboards, automated quality management provides a simple, one-stop management application for the contact center.

If an agent has been having difficulty closing sales, the supervisor might receive a notification that shows the agent’s closing score has dropped below a certain level. The supervisor can then listen to the agent’s troubled recordings and create a coaching clip with an attached Best Practices example. The coaching clip is sent to the agent, via email, who opens the clip and learns how to improve the closing of a sale. The agent is now able to practice these new techniques immediately, on the next call received!

The top of the line quality management applications are built to support a contact center’s current CRM strategy and are flexible enough to accommodate and encourage growth in the contact center.

The following pages illustrate the cost savings offered by quality management, including five hard cost benefits and five soft cost benefits. If you’re looking to increase your customer base, reduce agent turnover, efficiently expand the knowledge base of your agents, and improve the contact center’s operations, read on.

• Cost Savings: Five Hard Benefits
• Value Added: Five Soft Benefits

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