monitoring

[hunter]

do you tell your employees they are being monitored. if so, how and if not, why not?

if calls are being taped, can the tape be altered in any way?

[dlexmond]

My personal opinion: have your supervisors do side by side monitoring. It is the best opportunity for coaching, real time feedback, bonding, relationship building, and so on. It may be a bit more time consuming than recording calls and feeding them back later, but you lose the real time benefits.

In the long run you are much better off building trust with your employees by being upfront with your agents than using stealth - ithat creates the impression that they need to be watched and that monitoring is a method of catching them when they do something wrong. No one likes to have to work in a fishbowl all the time.

The key to improving your agents' performance is the quality of your supervisors and their willingness to spend as much time with their staff, instead of working on projects and spending time in meetings. I have seen so many call centers where supervisors are administrators and not coaches and developers; it is the misplaced emphasis of the supervisor's role that causes a lot of performance issues at the agent level. In the end, call centers are about people not technology.

[lhastings]

We monitor and "silent shop" our reps for Quality purposes. In order to make it more positive, we circulate the standard checklist that used by our QA to staff so that they know how they are being rated. Whoever scores perfectly is entered in to a drawing for $50.
Our QA and Client Services managers keep the tapes, which are erased after 30 days.

[santunes]

The reasons for monitoring are two-fold: 1 - it helps a company keep an eye on how calls/complaints are being handled 2 - it creates an incentive for reps to self-discipline. I think reps need to know management is going to monitor their calls occasionally. I have to say (from experience) reps don't handle calls the same way when you're sitting beside them as they do when they're being blind monitored.
In society we instill consequences to negative behavior - such as going to jail or fines. The reason for this is to discourage people from commiting these actions. Blind monitoring keeps reps on their toes 100% of the time - which is what mgmt wants.

[Steve Turton]

In Canada, this is a law. You can not monitor callers or employees without their knowledge.

[erangel]

We tell our CSR that as part of the job requirment is that supervisors will monitor their calls, at least 3 times a week.

We explained that the monitoring is with the purpose of helping them learn what they don't know so they can serve better our clients. I use it as a tool for coaching, instead of a tool of checking how bad they are doing.

The incentives are always welcome, and we seen how the prize or extra money make the competitive spirit become alive, and makes the work place more fun.

I also have noticed that if they know I'm monitoring them while they are at the call, they become more aware of me than the callers need.

[Kelly]

Hey erangel... Where in VA are you?

Southwest here!

[erangel]

Northen Virginia

[Monty]

We have our ee sign a form when they are hired telling them that they will be monitored. The form essentially gives their consent.

[felix]

We do both.
We use real time monitoring, and also recording without their knowledge.
Since we use Witness systems, they are aware that they could be monitored at any time.
Both are used here to develop agent quality, although both methods might be used for different purposes.
Real time, side by side monitoring might serve as a real time feedback session with supervisor to improve agent skills.
On the other hand, recorded calls will serve as a benchmark for quality performance, and also as feedback to the agent afterwards.

[Sumit More]

If you want your agent to perform and have better productivity with increased standard of delivery per call then adopt all kinds of monitoring.

Remote Monitoring-As a best practice make sure atleast 2% of the call volume is covered in the monitorings.

The forms have to be as comprehensive as possible.

Side by Side Monitoring cannot be replaced by Remote monitoring coz it helps in tracking down the process issues.

Make sure the QLs and the supervisor understnad the usage of the Quality Monitoring tool to enhace the performance.

It is always a good practice to let the agents know that they will be monitored.

As an interesting fact which was tried in our company was to increase the share of the Quality scores and FTR's in the agent monthly performance bonus.

This actually resulted in higher performance and increased customer satisfaction

[ctaylor]

First let me address the topic of recording calls and whether or not you should inform your employees;

Federal law in the US allows recording of phone calls and other electronic communications with the consent of at least one party to the call. A majority of the states and territories have adopted wiretapping statutes based on the federal law, although most also have extended the law to cover in-person conversations. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia permit individuals to record conversations to which they are a party without informing the other parties that they are doing so. These laws are referred to as "one-party consent" statutes, and as long as you are a party to the conversation, and aware that recording is taking place, it is legal for you to record it. (Nevada also has a one-party consent statute, but the state Supreme Court has interpreted it as an all-party rule.) This means that if you inform your employees that their calls are being taped, you are likely in compliance with the law, though you should likely confirm this opinion with your lawyer.

Twelve states require, under most circumstances, the consent of all parties to a conversation. Those jurisdictions are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Be aware that you will sometimes hear these referred to inaccurately as "two-party consent" laws. If there are more than two people involved in the conversation, all must consent to the taping. This means that not only the agent, but also the caller must know that recording is taking place. This can be achieved through informing the staff of the recording and announcing that calls are/may be reorded on all in-coming calls. To comply with the law you will likely need to offer caller the option of having the call not recorded.

Regarding monitoring of agents, as other have mentioned this is an essential aspect of ensuring the quality of the call mets corporate standards. I would cousel however that you ensure that your standards are aligned with the customers expectations and what they would define as 'good service'. Unfortunately this is not always the case. This article outlines the challenges and pitfalls associated with aligning these objectives http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/n...713_115949.txt

I hope that I have added value to this discussion. if I can be of any further assistance please email me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin