How to Know What Agents are Saying to Your Customers

If you are running a call center, you may be wondering how to know what agents are saying to your customers.  With VoIP solutions,  companies around the world are using valuable features that help monitor and improve their daily operations.  In this article we will describe an effective way to monitor telephone calls involving your customers and agents.

How to Know What Agents are Saying to Your Customers

Once your toll free number and cloud PBX are activated, you can start using features that will help streamline your communication process.  Many VoIP providers include value-added features at no additional cost, with their service.  One important feature is call recording, which allows you to record all incoming and outgoing calls for your extensions.  Most providers’ call recording feature allows you to see the date and time, telephone number of the caller, the duration of the call and the total cost of the call.

 How Can I Listen to My Call Recordings?

Recordings can be enabled for an individual and multiple users and can be played back in a self-care portal online, as provided by your VoIP service provider.  This makes reviewing your calls extremely convenient to do.  Recordings are typically stored in the online portal provided with your cloud PBX or your virtual call center software solution for up to 15 days.  Recordings can usually be downloaded and saved as well.  This allows you to have the option to listen to recordings at your leisure or for later review.  Typically, VoIP providers that offer call recordings, but only allow you to listen to your calls for a certain amount of days, unless you pay extra for extended time.

Why Should I Review My Agents Calls?

Quality Assurance

One of the number one reasons for call recording is to make sure your representatives are delivering the level of quality service you expect.  When managing a call center, you want to make sure that your cloud call center solution allows you to review your calls live as well as after the agent has completed the call.

For example, agents may forget what they discussed with a particular customer on a call, or forget what they promised.  Having the ability to go back and listen to calls in this instance is critical to ensuring both customer satisfaction and remaining compliant with company expectations.

Training and Performance Issues

Call recording is often utilized for training purposes as well.  If you have an agent with who gives superior customer service and has a high conversion rate, you can use the call recordings of that particular agent and enhance your training programs.

If when assessing the call recording for an agents skills, you may notice an issues with their service quality, efficiency, or their ability to convert sales. In this instance, call recordings can help identify specific problems and help remediate the issues.  Then, keep tabs on the agent’s performance and provide feedback when necessary.  This will help expedite the remediation process and ensure that the agent meets all requirements of the company.  The agent on the receiving end of the feedback will also be more motivated to address the issue and be more aligned with the goals of the company.

Further, call recording can help you stay complaint, provide a record of a conversation in the case of dispute, help train your agents on the best practices and allow them to review calls on customer inquiries.

Examples of Call Center Agent Problems You Can Hear

• “We don’t have that in stock right now.  Don’t know when it’s coming in.”   Your agent might as well have told the customer to just go away with this hopeless response.  Offering a substitute or a superior quality item that is in stock would be a better way to handle this.
• “Sorry, we’re closing soon.  You can call back Monday.”   The customer will probably lose interest over the weekend, or get another solution to the problem.  Certainly the customer will not lose the dislike of your call center.
• “Thanks, if that’s all you need, we’re all done.”   What, no up sell?  No consultative selling? How about asking the customer if there’s additional items needed?  Why not suggest some add-ons that other customer frequently buy along with the item this particular customer is buying?
• “Please leave a message.”   Non-stop ringing and eventual voice message situations happening when you have agents on duty is a disaster.  This happens more often than you would expect.  Customers get routed, often by error, to the agents who are not on duty and end up in voice mail hell.  Listening to your recordings is a great way to catch and fix this issue.
• “I’m not sure I can explain how it works over the phone”  Well if we can’t explain it, who can? This is either a call center agent training issue or lack of initiative.  Is there a guide with details that we can send or have the customer download?