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Call Centre Monitoring

Merging compliance and service excellence

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:10

While the new Consumer Protection Act and other existing legislation, such as the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, has ensured that compliance features high on the call centre management agenda, call centre Human Resources managers continue to face familiar challenges: increasing employee productivity, improving the service levels offered by call centre agents and boosting company profits through customer retention and data mining.

To achieve the often-conflicting objectives of strict legal compliance and responsive customer service, call centre HR managers need more than just a partial call recording solution, in which a call ‘may’ be recorded. They require a turnkey voice logging solution that will not only address compliance issues, but will also enable effective call centre agent evaluation and quality monitoring.

Logging and monitoring the telephonic transactions of its call centre with its customers is a key aspect for organisations to achieve legal compliance, protect their reputation and minimise their liabilities. “To drive compliance management, the industry is experiencing a shift from partial call recording to 100% recording,” explains Matthew Balcomb, director of Majuda Software Southern Africa. “Mitigating risk can only be achieved by recording all telephonic interactions with customers.”

Recording and storing of conversations with customers enables organisations to monitor their employees in accordance with the law and provides organisations with proof that can be used to avoid potential disputes - both on the part of the employee and consumer.

“But beyond complying with business and legal regulations, a strategic long-term application of the right voice logging technology is about far more than compliance. It enables call centre HR managers to monitor the quality and performance of their employees, to track the quality of customer service and to determine how best to improve call centre agents’ skills.”

Call centres are becoming increasingly important as a customer touch point in the 21st century. “Contact centres connect companies directly to their customers and, as such, a wealth of customer interaction data is hidden within an organisation’s contact centre,” explains Balcomb. “Organisations need to be equipped with the right tools to unlock this data and transform it into actionable information to help retain customers, decrease defections and continuously improve its customer service operations.”

Recording all telephone calls - incoming and outgoing – using the right voice logging solution, enables organisations to gain insights into their customers’ experiences with them, to improve customer service levels and retention, to develop corporate best practices and procedures for the organisation and to create effective training programmes for agents.

“While a turnkey voice logging system will involve some investment, the legal and public image risks associated with non-compliance and customer defections may be even higher,” concludes Balcomb. “An investment in the right technology can ensure that call centre HR managers not only maintain strict legal compliance, but simultaneously achieve increased employee productivity, improved service levels and increased profitability.”