| George Orwell's vision of a world where Big | | | | If agents are seen to be having difficulty finding |
| Brother is watching and listening to everything we | | | | the right information on the screen for example, a |
| do seems to becoming more and more a reality | | | | decision can be made as to whether it is smarter |
| as technology enables all sorts of people and | | | | to provide further training for agents or redesign |
| organizations to monitor the activity of others. | | | | the screen instead. |
| Although this may be disturbing in some aspects, | | | | Having every single customer call recorded can |
| for a business trying to keep tabs on what staff | | | | provide a wealth of information about what |
| are doing and how well they are doing their job, | | | | customers are calling about and lots of other |
| these new technologies are a godsend. | | | | valuable insights. But how do you easily find the |
| One of the most cost intensive operations in | | | | information you need from so many calls |
| businesses today is the contact centre. Despite | | | | recorded over a period of time? Some vendors |
| the introduction of much automation of customer | | | | now provide features that look through all the |
| transactions, there is still a significant requirement | | | | recordings and search for certain words or |
| to have people at the other end of a phone to | | | | phrases. SO fro example if you are trying to find |
| respond to customers needs. The cost is primarily | | | | the customers that called and were frustrated or |
| wages of those contact centre staff, but in | | | | angry, you can ask the system to search for |
| addition there are significant investments required | | | | words such as "frustrated", or swear words and |
| in IT systems such as CRM which the contact | | | | so on. One system I have seen in use at several |
| centre agents use as they interact with their | | | | call centres even transcribes all calls into text so |
| clients. Clients are also demanding higher levels of | | | | you can read the content of the calls and |
| customer services, and organizations that don't | | | | understand the context of the identified problem |
| provide it often pay the cost in lost business. The | | | | calls. |
| quality of interactions customers have with the | | | | Data Mining is also a valuable time saving tool that |
| contact centre is one important way that they | | | | is available on some call recording platforms. The |
| evaluate the business they are dealing with and its | | | | value of data mining is that it automatically |
| worthiness to continue to have them as a | | | | surfaces actionable trends without wading through |
| customer. | | | | lots of reports or screens full of KPIs. Suppose |
| One technology that is proving very useful for | | | | for example you wanted to find out why the |
| contact centres is transaction recording systems. | | | | average handle time (AHT) in your call centre was |
| These systems record all or a sampling of phone | | | | increasing. A good data mining product will show |
| calls into a contact centre and archives these as | | | | the correlation of all call metrics that are directly |
| digital files for later retrieval and review. Recording | | | | and most significantly impacting AHT, visually |
| of calls goes back many years, and was originally | | | | showing you by how much you can improve and |
| done using magnetic reel to reel tapes for storage | | | | providing a list of prioritised calls that help you |
| before someone came up with the bright idea of | | | | realize what you need to impact AHT. All this is |
| .wav files. Recording was originally done for legal | | | | done automatically by the system generating |
| compliance reasons, such as for financial | | | | hundreds and thousands of "reports" and |
| transactions where a record of the transaction | | | | presenting to you only the ones that have |
| was required to be stored for several years. | | | | significant impact in that specific metric (like AHT). |
| More recently recording of calls has been carried | | | | As a side point if you are operating on an IP |
| out as part of a training and quality assurance | | | | based call centre platform or are planning on a |
| exercise. | | | | migration to IP, the introduction of call recording |
| Training and quality assurance are now the | | | | will be easier than for non-IP platforms. Call |
| primary business reason for recording calls. | | | | recording systems have traditionally tapped into |
| Contact Centre managers and supervisors are | | | | the calls coming into a call centre by physical |
| able to listen to individual agents as they talk to | | | | connection to either the telephone lines or else |
| customers and evaluate the quality and | | | | the agents phones. With an IP based system the |
| professionalism of the call, including the greeting, | | | | call recording system can just receive the audio |
| handling difficult customers, closing sales, politeness | | | | from the calls over the LAN because that is how |
| and so on. Many systems provide specially | | | | the calls are transported within an IP based call |
| designed software tools for scoring agents and | | | | centre. This actually saves you money because |
| even assigning training modules for specific agent | | | | there is less hardware required. |
| weaknesses. | | | | If you are running a contact centre with anything |
| Another fairly recent innovation was to include | | | | over a few agents I would strongly encourage |
| recording of the agents computer screen along | | | | you to consider call recording if you haven't done |
| with the actual audio from the call. This way | | | | so already. It has the potential to make your job |
| supervisors can watch what an agent is doing on | | | | as a manager much easier and the introduction of |
| the screen while they are talking to a customer. | | | | this "Big Brother" technology could make a |
| This provides the added advantage of being able | | | | significant impact on the quality of service being |
| to not only evaluate the effectiveness of agents | | | | provided to your customers over time. |
| but also the useability of the desktop applications. | | | | |