This call is being recorded

The new technology can also be used not only to monitor agents but also to understand where there are glitches in a process, according to PowerHouse's Peterson. “I think sometimes the voice and data recording actually facilitates more than just a quality interaction at the agent level. It is, in many cases, a great way to demonstrate the impact of systems that are unfriendly or cumbersome,” she says. “Now I might have some evidence that I can take to IT to say, ‘Look, this is taking us too long, this is really stupid, here's how much money we can save if we could do this more easily.’”

While contact center analytical tools can be run inhouse, some companies prefer to outsource that kind of data collection and analysis. Kathryn Jackson, a consultant at Response Design, an Ocean City, NJ-based contact center consulting firm, says that Verint and eLoyalty, among others, offer third-party services that are giving small and midsize companies access to much better analytics than they had in the past.

Other kinds of monitoring technology help with the simpler, but still crucial task of making sure that there are enough bodies in chairs. For example, it is getting easier to monitor agents' adherence to schedules in real-time, even if the agents are dispersed in several locations or working out of their homes. One such solution, by Pipkins, a St. Louis-based maker of workforce management software, is able to track whether agents have logged in on time or are spending too long on their breaks, as well as how many agents will be needed to meet demand. It can also encourage agents to work harder during peak seasons, through settings that allow reps to get credit for logging in early or cutting a break short.

	COSTS

Costs for systems vary widely. Some of these new surveillance components can cost relatively little compared with the overall system. The FrontRange Agent Dashboard runs $1,495 for a single agent-seat license, while supervisory-seat licenses run $1,290 each. The optional quality management suite, by contrast, costs $2,980 for a center and includes a touch-tone audio survey component for the customer. A recording license is relatively inexpensive as well: $200.

David Peterson, the president of PowerHouse Consulting, estimates that VoIP monitoring systems range from $500 to $2,000 a seat, with the high end including advanced analytics that can track words or stress levels. Typically, he says, such systems also require an ongoing maintenance fee that amounts to 20% of the initial price. Smaller contact centers, however, may find that a high-end solution ends up costing them twice the ticket price, Peterson warns, because the analytic systems require a lot of computing power that they would have to invest in.

Response Design's Jackson says now is probably a good time to buy a new system. “There are a lot more vendors and different styles. You can not only buy your equipment these days, but you can also have somebody host it for you. The pricing is changing these days, and even the model for the pricing is changing.”

	TRAINING IS KEY

One important element in getting monitoring right is working on how to integrate the data with feedback and training, consultants say. “I can't go to an agent and simply say, ‘Try harder and do better,’” says Jackson.

Some systems, such as those offered by VPI, feature dashboards that allow both agent and manager to see how they are performing. This way, says VPI marketing manager Lynn Grogan, the agents don't have to wait for weeks until a supervisor says to them, “You know, you're not doing this right.” Quality scores enable agents to see where they stand with regard to their group, their team, and other agents.

Agent coaching in some of these systems ranges from instant messaging, which can allow the manager to give the agent new information or specific instructions, to settings that during slower periods send agents training modules that cover particular skills they should work on.

	GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

It's easy to simply install a program that creates “an automated mess,” according to Jackson. A program installed without much thought behind it “takes a center downhill that much faster,” she says.

A monitoring system can also make things worse in an already ineffective contact center. The danger, Katherine Peterson says, lies in the manager's losing sight of the ultimate goal the system was intended to facilitate. One case she recalls: The leader of an organization demanded 12 observations per month, per agent. “That's a lot of observations to do when you have 15 people on your team. So what was happening was, supervisors who were responsible for this would offload some of the evaluation responsibility to senior reps, then they would start scrolling through the recordings and only listen to two-minute calls, which of course is ridiculous if your average call is three to four minutes long,” Peterson says.

Worse yet, Peterson continues, the mission of the program seemed to be to get the forms signed off and turned into management “so that we would be comforted by the fact that it had been done. So there was no real coaching associated with it. No one took it seriously — it was just one of an abundance of activities in this organization that were putting it at risk.”

Ultimately, Peterson says, contact center managers must make sure that their company's monitoring program truly serves as training and development, “not discovery and prosecution.”

---

New York-based business writer Bennett Voyles has written for Campus Technology and On Wall Street, among other publications.