Analytics will empower agent improvement

The initial training sessions scheduled for all new customers typically dive into basic system navigation, system administration, supervisor usage and agent usage, reports, dashboards, etc.

Additional training opportunities allow for unthrottled, pinpoint insight into particular processes, questions, new enhancements, or simply fine tuning what your team learned originally, to do as my son's karate dojo claims, "to make their best even better".

Are you looking for that extra report or piece of analytic data which can help you drive your quality assurance and training cycle time down...

Continue reading:
Taking training to a whole new level of analytic discovery

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Workforce optimization features and training can dramatically optimize and improve everyday business processes

Many customers end up incorporating process changes once they experience Virtual Observer's flexibility and full capabilities through our onsite training.

One recent example is the ability to send evaluations, calls, or recorded chats back to the agent via our Agent Portal and E-Learning feature set.

When customers learn this kind of automated coaching is available, they often incorporate it into their actual everyday processes, reducing a training cycle time from what used to be 3 days on average, to mere hours.

Another interesting process changes had a client utilizing the system's Agent Types and Agent IDs fields for KPI reporting.

They were able to create these Types and IDs to match their financial cost centers and then they ran performance reports by Agent Type in order to view KPIs into their reports by cost center.

This scenario shows the depth of our reporting as well as the ability to slice and dice the data in many different ways and also shows how users can customize the use of the Agent descriptive fields for many possible applications.

Of course, every user can customize their Virtual Observer dashboard layouts (see a sample screenshot above) in order to bring their important metrics to life.

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Power to the people: Agent Portal for Virtual Observer 4.0

Placing the quality monitoring process directly in the hands of your agents, essentially providing them with their own accountability, exposure of peer performance, and the ability for them to reach out for help when neccessary, can benefit the overall performance of your contact center in a way a simple, flawed negative scores will never do.

Check out the news release or the Agent Portal webpage itself for more on this exciting new workforce optimization feature.

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Create virtual training libraries from recorded events

Did you know you can create virtual training libraries using Virtual Observer?

You simply have to create a media list of your highest rated events and publish them to your company's web server. Make sure it's a secure server or directory, of course. You could then create several sub-directories from which to populate content: "Best handled cancellations", "Best upsells", "Best ways to handle irritated customers", "Best use of our CRM to locate customer information", "Five star calls", etc...

Using our E-learning module, you could set Virtual Observer to automatically deliver an email with a link to the website address for "Best handled cancellations" to anyone who does not score well on that specific evaluation criteria.

You can also publish media lists to cds or dvds and distribute them to new hires or present them to training groups. You may need to get your IT team involved in order to publish to your company's secure web server or intranet.

Many options exist to enhance your call recording system

I happened to be reviewing our list of add-ons, and I was surpised at how many different options and tools have been released since our last release of product, 3.0. Many enhancements and new capabilities are automatically added into the core version of product, such as our exciting "Live Desktop" feature which allows for supervisor-agent chat and thumbnail views of all agent screen activity.

Going along with our "Start Small and Think Big" philosophy, some functionality is made available as an optional add-on. Many customers start with a core random recording system for quality assurance to begin proving the r-o-i before they expand their budgetary requests for additional functionality. Many customers also move from random recording to logging, or from a standard analog or digital switch and then upgrade to VoIP, and we can make sure Virtual Observer moves right along with them.

One of the latest add-ons is our "Surveying" service, which works with your IVR system to provide your customers with an optional post-call survey. This brings the customer into the evaluation equation. With the supervisors, agents themselves, and now the customers, you can truly get a good mix of independent evaluation results. Make sure you ask your CSI sales rep about "VO Surveys".

Other add-ons include:

* Media Encryption, which can help companies comply with Visa payment card industry security standards.

* Auto-Archiving, which automatically backs up recordings to a NAS / SAN.

* CTI Integration, which allows for customer and call data to be saved with the recording. This is critical for bringing customer information into the evaluation process. SMDR integration does this to a degree, bringing in data from your phone system, such as ANI or DNIS numbers.

* E-Learning, which allows for automatic distribution of training materials to agents based on evaluation outcomes. Our web-based player allows for agents to play back calls and view evaluations right from their web browsers.

Use Virtual Observer to automatically distribute training material to agents

Virtual Observer's E-Learning module is an essential ingredient in any recipe for agent development.

Let's look at a practical example of how it may be used:

1) Your number one supervisor, Harliss Dondo, has just completed ten evaluations today. Five of them were exceptionally above the average, three were average and two below.

2) Harliss opens one of the exceptionally rated evaluations. He selects "package event" from the Virtual Observer menu. He highlights the call and exports the entire event (evaluation and screens included) to a network folder. He names it "Excellent Customer Greeting 001". He repeats this process several times, and soon he has his top ten evaluations all in one folder.

3) Harliss (or Harley for short) then chooses "Make Media List" from the menu. He then selects all the calls in the folder he just made. The system will then burn them to a cd or ftp them up to a webserver. An instant "greatest hits" compilation is born, perfect for training material for a new hire.

4) In Virtual Observer's E-Learning module, Harley had designated three training documents to be automatically delivered to any agent who scored below the par. The system has already emailed the training docs to the two agents who fared poorly and also included the link to the webserver that contains the greatest hits list, placing them on the road to improvement. On Monday, Harley will hand out a greatest hits training CD to 5 hires during new employee orientation.

Catalog industry ranks high in caller satisfaction

In a new article on Advertising Age, healthcare ranked tops among all the industries when call center customer satisfaction was measured.

The following industries were included in the study, followed by percentage of caller satisfaction:

Catalog retailers, 80%

Banking, 77%

Cell phone services, 69%

Cable & satellite television, 68%

Insurance, 68%

Personal computers, 64%

This is putting a positive spin on an article titled "Consumers Aren't Happy With Your Call Centers". It would be interesting to compare the percentage of the companies in each category utilize quality monitoring in their center. With the core objective of using quality monitoring is to improve the performance of call center agents and get those numbers higher with intergated evaluation and e-learning.

5 most popular Virtual Observer Add-Ons

5 - VO Surveys: This allows you to gain insight on customer interactions from your customers themselves and allows for calibration of your evaluation metrics by balancing survey results against supervisor evaluations.

4 - Auto-Archiving: This module allows companies to automatically archive their logged recordings to a network drive or DVD. When you are recording all of your incoming and outgoing calls, it is possible to archive your call history based on specific parameters.

3 - SMDR Integration: For T1 loggers, it's a necessity - it's the only way you'll be able to match up calls with agents and phone extensions. SMDR feeds can provide you with ANI/DNIS call detail. For extensive data capture, we can also provide CTI integration.

2 - Media Encryption: Using our Media Encryption module, companies that process credit card transactions over the phone or record confidential customer information are be able to encrypt their recordings, and it's a requirement for anyone trying to meet Visa's Payment Card Industry standard compliance.

1 - E-Learning: This functionality typically blows people away when they see it for the first time. It provides a user-friendly method of automatically delivering targeted training materials to agents after an evaluation is complete. Supervisors can also easily create cds or webpages with a "Best Of" call list for training purposes.