This Call - or Email, or Chat, or Social Media Post - May be Monitored

Most people today are accustomed to having their calls to contact centers recorded. We know that companies use these calls to verify disputed transactions, train new agents or spot-check more experienced agents’ skills, or to evaluate agents for raises or promotions (or demotions). But call recording is about more than agent evaluations. Today, many companies use call recordings in conjunction with data analytics so they can mine intelligence from the calls. Are customers mentioning competitors’ names? Are they making similar complaints? Are they raising more issues than usual with shipping or returns problems? Analyzing call recordings can yield a whole new level of insight into operations.

Today, however, customers aren’t only using telephone calls to connect with contact centers. As a result, wrote Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software, monitoring needs to go “multichannel.”

“Today, quality monitoring must also consider forms of digital communication – emails, social media, web chat – while keeping pace with breakthroughs in call monitoring solutions such as speech analytics,” he wrote. “Contact centers need to monitor these channels as well, preferably via a single platform. The evolution of online communication has, if anything, only amplified the need for quality monitoring so that customers are receiving optimal service, agents that provide outstanding service can be recognized and rewarded, and contact centers are able to eliminate unnecessary processes and improve best practices.”

The “single platform” is critical to multichannel quality monitoring. Otherwise, insights gathered via phone channels might never be connected to digital or mobile channels, causing companies to miss problems that occurred in multichannel transactions.

“Star Trek fans are familiar with the phrase ‘open all hailing frequencies.’ On the show, that means making sure all communication channels are open and being monitored, so no messages are missed,” wrote Ciarlo.

Customers are not hesitating today to start a transaction in one channel and continuing it in another. Younger customers from the so-called Millennial Generation are particularly fond of channel-jumping in customer interactions. Companies that aren’t ready for this by “opening all hailing frequencies” will be left behind. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi