Call monitoring programs are a necessity in today’s contact centers. Especially in the Asia Pacific region where call quality measurement practice is still in its’ infancy. To ensure the quality of interactions of its contact agents, calls are recorded and assessed by team managers, supervisors or quality personnel.

The basic areas agents’ calls are assessed on are the essential requirements of accuracy, courtesy and call management. These 3 elements establish the basis of a solid call monitoring program.

Picture this - you have just bought a brand new mobile phone and are trying to figure out how to transfer your contacts from your existing phone into the new one. You are unsuccessful after numerous attempts. Your frustration has pushed you to the verge of giving up however, there is one last thing you can do. Call the customer service number on the packaging. When your call gets connected a pleasant and courteous voice of a contact center agent welcomes you with a standard greeting, “Thank you for calling, this is Mary speaking. How may I help you?”. The agent then asks you a few questions and in less than 2 minutes the agent has also provided you with clear explanations on how to manage your contacts in your mobile phone. You try making a few calls to your friends and there are no hassles at all and your problem has been solved.

During this call’s assessment, call courtesy was reflected in the agent’s usage of a standard greeting accompanied by pleasantness and courteousness. Where else call accuracy can be measured through the agent’s usage of his or her knowledge in being able to solve the customer’s problem in the shortest time possible. The area assessed which is for call management proves to be the most challenging one. Why so? Simply because it requires a lot of the agent’s patience. . Agents should use relevant questioning techniques to probe for details and apply active listening while attending to calls.

During each monitoring program, the agents will be notified of their scores and it is recommended that this be coupled with coaching sessions. During coaching sessions, the assessor will commend their areas which the agents have done well and highlight areas which needed improvements. It is important that the coaching session is not taken as a fault finding session but rather an interactive session for development.

In order to maintain the standard of call quality, call monitoring should be done frequently. A realistic number of calls for monitoring should be between 3 to 4 calls per agent per month. The number of coaching sessions should be mirrored with the total sessions done for call monitoring for effectiveness.

In summary, a good monitoring program should be accompanied by a coaching session which will assist the contact agents to continuously improve the standard of their call quality.