"This call is being recorded for quality assurance and training purposes."
It's a message that most consumers have heard during their customer lifecycle. Business of all kinds in nearly every industry leverage contact center call recording, but only some of these organizations leverage these recordings in a way that provides the most value for their contact center agents and their business.
There are a few things to consider with contact center recording, and several strategies to keep in mind after recording ends and it comes time to use this information. If your enterprise uses contact center call recording, there are a few ways you can leverage this data to your advantage.
Ensuring agents use scripts and follow policy
Scripts are still a popular and important asset in many contact centers, allowing agents to use the most optimal language to connect with customers and resolve their needs. In fact, some organizations have policies in place to ensure that agents use the scripts provided for them, and call recording can be an important way to follow up on these policies.
This isn't to say that an experienced, talented customer service agent shouldn't go off script from time to time – an agent's background, skills and intuition should still play a part in customer interactions. However, when a business takes the time to create a script that includes researched language or other offers, it's important that agents make use of this information.
As Ameyo pointed out, some things to check here can include the customer greeting, evaluating and addressing caller needs, as well as other important elements of phone etiquette and customer relationship management.
Analyzing unsuccessful interactions
"It's important that negative interactions – or those that don't result in an optimal resolution – are analyzed as well."
When it comes to reviewing call recordings, managers often leap toward examples of beneficial interactions first – after all, these success stories can be considerably helpful in training to show how agents can move callers toward resolution.
However, it's important that negative interactions – or those that don't result in an optimal resolution – are analyzed as well. Just as reviewing a successful call can help illuminate best practices, examining unsuccessful communications can also highlight where things might have gone wrong. In this way, even calls that don't result in a sale can provide valuable training material.
Examining agent performance
In addition to recording and analyzing calls across the board and utilizing the results in a company-wide manner, recordings can also be leveraged to hone in on the individual performance of specific agents.
This may come into play as managers consider promotions or pay increases, and can offer a wealth of insight into the ways in which an agent approaches a difficult situation, and how often they can address caller issues and reach resolution.
Considerations for review
When analyzing recordings, there are a few important metrics to think about, as well as certain performance benchmarks to seek out. According to this Teo Technologies white paper, these can include:
- Average duration of calls, including those that resulted in sales, as well as non-sales calls.
- The percentage of total working time that agents spend communicating with callers.
- How long it takes an agent to identify a non-sales call and release the contact.
- The length of the agent's initial presentation, as well as how long it takes them to gather the appropriate data to respond to a caller's needs.
- Agents' overall tone of voice, as well as the appropriateness of their demeanor given the caller's requests.
- Whether or not the caller is given the opportunity and time to respond to the agent.
- Whether or not the information the agent provided to the caller is correct.
Looking for and examining these performance standard specifically can help managers determine the overall efficiency of their contact center workforce, as well as how successful agents are when answer questions or resolving service issues.
Contact center call recording can be a powerful asset for today's businesses. Check out our whitepaper to learn more about utilizing your call recordings to the fullest.