Companies Coming Up Short with Monitoring Call Quality

Despite the ubiquitous message Your call may be monitored to ensure quality service, companies generally don't devote sufficient resources to monitor customer calls or to work with call center employees to improve performance, according to a survey of more than 400 companies conducted by Aon Consulting and Verint Systems. While billions of dollars are spent on call recording technology, most recordings sit idle, the survey found.

More than 25 percent of organizations surveyed said their call monitoring efforts did not effectively lead to improved customer satisfaction or better business processes. Inadequate resourcing -- finding time and staffing required to perform robust monitoring -- is the single greatest challenge to monitoring programs, with 75 percent of companies reporting being under-resourced.

More than 40 percent of respondents also questioned the adequacy of their call sampling, the consistency of their ratings, and the usefulness of their findings. Coaching was cited as a challenge by 58 percent of respondents.

"Even though call monitoring systems are in place at most call centers, companies do not adequately turn those recorded conversations into lessons that make customers happier or make representatives more effective," saidMiriam Nelson, senior vice president of talent solutions at Aon Consulting. "Fortunately, fairly simple process changes are generally enough to give companies a better return on their investment of time and resources."

"Organizations have access to a gold mine of data hidden in their customer interactions," adds Mariann McDonagh, vice president of corporate marketing at Verint Systems. "By listening to the voice of the customer and utilizing powerful solutions such as quality monitoring and speech analytics to unlock this actionable intelligence, organizations can significantly enhance performance in the contact center and across the enterprise."

Despite the gap between the perceived value of monitoring and the results, 11 percent of respondents led the group in the benefits they derive from monitoring. These companies generally employed the following best practices:

Using an external quality-monitoring partner to listen to calls;

Using speech analytics technology to identify key opportunities for improvement;

Capturing customer satisfaction within the monitoring form itself;

Effectively using employee rewards;

Improving first-call resolution; and

Engaging business units with customer-call feedback.