Call Whispering : How and Why Use it in a Contact Center?

Regardless of the nature of contact center campaigns, all agents must go through a training and adaptation phase in order to become acquainted with the company’s norms. As a decision-maker and owner, you must review the success of new employees under your supervision on a regular basis and offer them the necessary assistance, resources, tools, and training.

As a general rule, learning on the job in real-world situations is always far more successful. However, when it comes to customer service or sales departments that are using advanced contact center software to receive or make calls all day, you can’t afford to make mistakes or you’ll lose a prospect or a client. So, for people who are new to one of these sectors, there is a feature called whispering, a tool that can be described as discreet listening that might modify the way they are trained.

In this article, we will explain what call whispering is and how its advantages may affect your contact center’s productivity and efficiency.

What is Call Whispering for Contact Centers?

 

Call Whispering is a tool that can be incorporated in virtual switchboards or contact center software that allows managers and supervisors to be just partially present during a live call with a client. Call Whispering is also referred to as discreet listening in some circles.

Its functioning is incredibly straightforward and easy to comprehend. Consider the scenario in which a new agent receives a phone call. Call whispering allows your supervisor to take on the mantle of a “trainer”, in order to participate in a call without the client being aware of their presence. In that aspect, the supervisor will be able to more readily assist the new agent in the event of an overlook or a challenging phone conversation.

Call whispering has the following business applications:

  • Sales teams: The automated call whisper feature can prompt salespeople to upsell a product, propose a service, or ask inquiries tailored to the caller’s locale or reason for calling.
  • Help desk and customer service agents: Call whisper reminds agents to collect important information from callers through on-screen prompts and gives extra aid to agents coping with problematic callers.
  • Staff training and onboarding: Call whisper may be used by any organization to teach or advise personnel on how to effectively answer and respond to diverse calls.

What are the features and options of Call Whispering?

Contact Center supervisorsWith Call Whispering supervisors will be able to oversee the calls that may be defined in conjunction with your telephony solution provider when setting your contact center software solution. This will allow you and your supervisors to have a global perspective of what is occurring at the level of call transmission and receipt.

Also, there is nothing more effective than call whispering when it comes to improving your call handling abilities. Agents in training can be corrected on how to convey the message in a manner that is consistent with your company’s brand image through this “live” coaching method.

Because the information received and the manner in which it is provided is the same for each contact, you can be confident that supervisors will avoid misunderstandings and will be able to deal with problems in the proper manner. Remember that consistency in communication is extremely important for maintaining a good relationship with your customers.

In addition to the ability to see the progress of the calls, call whispering provides the option of being disabled in the middle of a call if necessary. The objective is to be able to intervene in sensitive or stressful circumstances when the need arises.

Why should your supervisors and managers whisper?

The call whispering function might be advantageous to your contact center especially if you are either focused on the customer service department, your sales department, or both. Many advantages may be gained by including this functionality into your agent teams, including the following:

Effective Call Center Training

The most noteworthy advantage of call whispering is that it allows to practice in a live setting and be presented with actual difficulties without having to be entirely independent. In the event of a problem, knowing that a supervisor is available, can help the agents in training feel more at ease and react more rapidly than usual.

Improving your Contact Center brand image

being able to pick up on small mistakes like grammatical, lexical, or even expression faults might be quite beneficial. As a result, your consumers not only pick a product or a service, but they also choose the values that your firm represents. This is why you must maintain a certain level of consistency in the attitude you convey to your clients. With call whispering, agents can ensure that your organization is presented in the best possible light to consumers and prospects.

More features for customer service

If you operate in the customer service department and receive a call to report an issue, it is possible that you will not have a solution right away. Two persons working on the problem will allow you to solve it more quickly. To be able to “whisper” during a phone conversation is also very advantageous in sales since it allows your agents to introduce an extra point of view or argument that will help you convince a prospect.

In the case of customer service, it is possible to encounter irritated consumers, which can be a stressful circumstance for an agent who is still learning their duties. By using call whispering, a supervisor may assist an agent who is experiencing difficulties by providing advice or even intervening directly in the conversation to find a solution to the problem.

Measuring the efficiency of your call center agents

through the supervisor dashboard, you have access to all of the data pertaining to your contact center performance, allowing you to remedy any disparities and adjust your sales or communication methods in response to the findings. This is an excellent method to achieve call center efficiency.

Discover a wealth of invaluable insights into the world of customer experience. Learn how to make your agents specialists, care about your clients, promote more durable connections, and make providing support enjoyable. Find out about the future customer experience center!

The methods of listening and whispering

The call whispering functionality is made up of three modes that allow you to regulate the conversations and messages that are conveyed. These functions employ eavesdropping for a variety of objectives, including information collection and training.

Call Recording

With call whispering access, you may listen to recordings of all your call center’s calls. The goal of this function is training; in reality, it provides the opportunity to analyze with hindsight the weak areas and improvements that may have been identified throughout the talk. Whether the audio is listened to alone or with the trainer, it is an excellent approach to identify potential gaps.

Supervision

This is the mode in which you can see everything that happens in your contact center. This mode allows you to track information such as the number of calls received, client wait time, and time spent on the phone. As a consequence, the supervisor has an overall picture of the call center’s appropriate operation and may issue directions to follow as well as adjust the objectives based on the outcomes.

Participating in the live calls

This option allows you to interfere in a call, whether or not the presence of the supervisor is communicated to the person on the other end of the line (everything depends on the type of intervention). The supervisor can use this mode to assist the agent in making decisions, completing information, and so on.

What are the alternatives to call whispering?

Many VoIP systems feature basic call screening and management options. However, to use the call whisper, monitoring, and barge capabilities, you may need to upgrade to a higher-tier plan.

If your contact center does not require extensive capabilities, try one of the options for coaching your employees, collecting consumer information, and improving call experiences. Options like an automated receptionist. Although simple systems lack call whisper, they do feature call filtering and routing options. Call routing rules can be configured by small business owners and sales or customer service managers to guide consumers to the most appropriate agents.

On the other hand, even if your call center CRM does not link with your phone system, you may gain insights from client calls. Employees at contact centers that use a cloud-based CRM may pull up customer data on the screen and check caller information. Additionally, your team members may be reminded to ask certain questions during the next call by leaving notes in the system. A CRM, while not as efficient as an integrated system with call whispering, centralizes customer data for better customer experiences.

Don’t forget to collect more client information by emailing or messaging them following a phone call, and include an embedded link to a survey or online rating tool. Your survey can offer a variety of questions, such as where the caller heard about your product and service or enquiring about their preferences and general customer happiness. It’s less effective than monitoring and recording calls since it’s more difficult to pinpoint the precise time a call went bad.

What will the future of Whispering look like?

There is one flaw in call whispering coaching. It can only be used if someone else is doing the whispering. In other words, supervisors can only listen in on so many calls at a contact center with many teams or agents. Indeed, supervisors are human and their knowledge or experience may be wasted on the wrong calls because they can be listening to the wrong one at the wrong moment. This means that both the caller and the agent miss out on an opportunity or can create bigger problems for your customer experience.

As a supervisor who whispers, you’re using your experiences to mentally match events that may emerge during the conversation with the appropriate reactions and approaches. Because of the numerous mistakes they’ve made throughout the course of their careers, they’re able to spot these situations and promptly provide solutions.

That’s where, Artificial intelligence (AI) comes in, by giving the possibility to augment rather than replace human skills. Call Whispering in the near future will use AI to spot patterns and offer answers to those patterns. However, there is a distinction: During a conversation, every agent can have an AI coach whispering in their ears or displaying important facts on their screens.

Another advantage of employing AI for whispering is that it can collect data much faster than a manager by being there on every call. In contrast to a manager, AI can learn from all of the calls at once, allowing it to draw conclusions and give suggestions faster than a human can. To put it another way, AI-enhanced whisper coaching can help supervisors pick up new skills more quickly.

Conclusion

Call Center SupervisorsYour contact center will be able to boost customer satisfaction with call whispering since if there are two persons (agent and supervisor) thinking about a customer’s request, the solution will be provided much more swiftly. In the contact center world, this is what every client is seeking.

Calls can be stressful, and each call is unique. Customer happiness is determined by your agent’s words, tone, and actions. Whispering is a function that benefits both businesses and agents, as well as your customers. Call whispering can help firms shorten sales cycles, raise sign-up rates, and improve their reputation.

Your objective is also to make your agents as pleased and confident as possible. Furthermore, it will assist you in retaining your personnel while enhancing their performance. In the end, it is your consumers who will benefit from a high-end customer experience on every call.

As a leader in telecommunications and CCaaS, NobelBiz offers a complete set of contact center solutions all over the world. Our long experience allows us to understand what is at stake for decision-makers and call center owners when it comes to keeping performances and ensuring business success.

When it comes to performance NobelBiz Omni + is a Cloud Contact Center Solution that enhances agents by giving them the ability to seamlessly and easily use all communication channels. And also empowering your manager with our supervisor dashboard that allows for accurate Call Whispering and perfect monitoring of your performances.

Our telecommunication solution NobelBiz Voice Carrier is purposefully built for contact centers and has tools to increase performances by offering a high level of adapatability and scalibility.

Abdelmounim Benharouga has always had a strong passion for writing and digital marketing.  He started as a Digital Content Writer part of marketing department then moved to being Customer Success Manager for the African Region within the Nobelbiz team.

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