Taking Interaction Recording to the Next Level

Interaction recording has become a key contact centre technology, vital for compliance, training, and quality assurance.

It has evolved from its roots in call recording to provide multichannel capabilities, enabling companies to take a more holistic approach to evaluation.

This includes the ability to record and compare the activity on the agent’s screen during and after a call, as well as covering email, chat and other channels.

96% of respondents to the ContactBabel UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide 2023 use interaction recording. However, contact centre needs are changing as companies look to get more value from their solutions.

That means many are unhappy with the systems they have in place. 61% say that the fact their technology doesn’t support quality and performance management is a problem. 1 in 5 (20%) are looking to replace or upgrade their current system.

The ContactBabel report, sponsored by Enghouse Interactive, identifies four key challenges that interaction recording strategies need to overcome to deliver next level business value:

1. The Ability to Analyse Growing Interaction Volumes

Traditionally, contact centre supervisors analysed call recordings manually to ensure quality and identify areas for agent training and improvement.

However, the problem is that with growing volumes it is impossible to analyse every interaction, on every channel, from every agent.

85% of those surveyed by ContactBabel said a lack of time to analyse and use interaction data was an issue in some form, with over a third (35%) considering it a major problem.

2. Being Able to Effectively Analyse Interactions Across the Customer Journey

Given that interaction recording began on the telephone, unsurprisingly contact centres are happiest with performance on this channel.

81% said call recording delivered effective quality assurance. However, just 17% said quality evaluation on emails was very effective – and 14% classed it as ineffective.

The picture worsened on other channels. Only 14% of companies said evaluation of web chats was very effective, dropping to 13% for social media.

A further issue is that interactions are analysed individually, rather than as part of the entire customer journey. This may span multiple interactions, across different channels.

Organisations need to be able to bring these together to gain a holistic picture of end-to-end customer conversations.

3. Having the Capability to Measure the Right Metrics, Consistently

In most contact centres more than one person listens to and scores interaction recordings. To try to ensure consistency all interactions are therefore scored against set criteria.

However, often ideal performance is measured against efficiency metrics, such as call duration or the number of calls handled per shift.

Given the greater focus on customer experience, these metrics need to change, shifting to cover satisfaction and quality.

This can be difficult with many existing systems lacking detailed analytics capabilities. There’s also the issue of potential bias, with different supervisors judging interactions differently, skewing results.

4. The Option to Go Beyond Compliance and Agent Performance

The ContactBabel research found that most contact centres are happy with the effectiveness of their quality assurance processes at a basic level:

• 45% said their systems were very effective at enabling regulatory compliance.
• Half classed evaluating agent performance and training requirements as very effective.

Analysing interactions provides real strategic insight to businesses. For example, information can feed into Voice of the Customer programmes, or used to improve processes and drive greater customer-centricity.

HR can use this to track the performance of new recruits to identify the ideal skills they should be recruiting for.

However, the majority of contact centre leaders are not confident in using interaction recording data at this more strategic level.

Just 28% said it was very effective at improving overall customer experience, with only 10% saying it was used very effectively across the rest of the organisation.

What Contact Centre Leaders Want From Next-Level Interaction Recording Systems

To overcome these challenges, contact centre leaders identified three key areas for interaction recording improvements:

• Better data management information and reporting
• Adding multichannel capabilities
• Improving ease of use

A new generation of interaction recording systems aims to meet these needs. These solutions harness advanced AI capabilities to automate evaluation.

This means you can monitor 100% of interactions, across every channel, even including for details such as stress and tone of voice.

The solution can then flag interactions for further evaluations by supervisors, meaning they can focus their time, rather than manually listening to hours of recordings.

Analysis is more consistent, against predefined scorecards, while the resulting insight is available to share across the business to drive meaningful improvements.

All of this ensures that interaction recording adds greater value to the business, creating more customer-centric organisations that can deliver an effective, compliant and high-quality customer experience across every channel.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Enghouse Interactive – View the Original Article

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Enghouse Interactive