CALL QUALITY MONITORING

Dr. Jon, How can I estimate the number of calls by month to be monitoring by CSR? Which is the way that I can random the calls to be monitored? How is it correct to calculate the number of monitored calls, by the offered calls, the attendance calls or by the number of agents?

Great questions.

We have just completed our study on best practices in Agent Monitoring and Coaching which explains all of your questions and more. Please check it out on our Web site bookstore.

Thank you.

Dr. Jon

Does the time spent monitoring and coaching agents have any effect on key call center performance metrics? In this case, monitoring includes side-by-side coaching, analog call recording, and digital voice and data recording.

If our database is divided into two parts, that is, those that do not monitor, we observe the following differences among those that do monitor: a) average speed of answer is 19% lower, b) average talk time decreases by 29% and c) after-call work time is nearly three times lower.

Dr. Jon, we met at the STI meeting in Wash. DC. Could you tell me what the standard is for discarding abandon calls on a Tech. Help Desk? My Help Desk is trying to determine whether to use 5 or 10 seconds as the standard. Thanks very much. Robert Burkholder

Robert, good to hear from you.

We normally use 10 seconds, and this mostly screens for wrong numbers.

--Dr. Jon

We are outsourcing customer service contact center and back office operations to our data processing technology provider. We plan to review recorded calls already. What software tools, vendors, and products would you recommend that would enable us to monitor live calls from our remote location? Thank you.

Thank you for your question.

We have just completed an extensive study on the best practices in Agent Monitoring and Coaching. It includes the "how" and the "what" and also has a complete list of vendors that supply this solution.

Please check our Web site bookstore for details.


Dr. Jon

We hear a lot about the need to measure agent performance metrics to better conduct coaching sessions. From your industry research, what are the top three agent performance measures?

From our benchmark research, we have found that the most popular metrics used to measure and coach agent performance are: a) call quality monitoring (often voice and screen capture); b) attendance; c) call handle time; d) caller satisfaction results; and e) input accuracy.

What are the best practices benchmarks/performance targets for electric utility call centers, focusing on the following performance measures: -service level (i.e., % calls answered within X seconds) -abandonment rate -average time before abandoning -average time in queue -talk time, both per call and daily

We have a complete industry specific report on all benchmarks for utility call centers. Please check it out on our Web site bookstore. Good luck.

Dr. Jon

What are your thoughts on the impact of wireless headsets for the purposes of quality monitoring?

Wireless headsets are excellent for the purposes of quality monitoring. Highly recommend checking this out.
--Dr. Jon

What performance metric is the most likely to be improved if we add agent monitoring or coaching software to our call center? I am specifically talking about software that records a conversation between a caller and an agent and captures the agent's screen during the call.

Based on our research, call centers that use monitoring or coaching software show measurable improvement in average talk time, average after-call work time and the number of calls resolved on the first contact.