Call Monitoring is an essential tool for any business who has multiple agents making calls, or has a geographically dispersed team. From a strategic perspective, this feature can be invaluable for not only training new employees but also performing quality assurance on all employees, no matter how long they’ve been working. 

Phone calls aren’t simply a way to make a sale, they also provide opportunity for learning and strategizing your business and teams. smrtPhone clients rave about the seamlessness of training using call monitoring, and the ability to do real-time quality assurance, even ‘rescuing’ a call while it’s happening which can save clients and revenue. 

smrtPhone didn’t just develop a standard call monitoring feature, we also added “Whispering” and “Barging” which really sets it apart from other phone systems: it’s not enough to listen in on phone calls, we want you to have the agency to tactfully interject and enter the call, if needed. 

The Strategic Benefit of Call Monitoring

The two use cases that most benefit from call monitoring: training and quality assurance. 

Training

When you first start a relationship with any new employee, no matter how qualified they are, you’ll want to ramp them up on your company’s ways of doing things. Call monitoring can be integral to training. Here’s a quick and easy way to think about how to use it, in three steps: 

I speak, You listen: As an employer, you’ll first want your employees listening in on your calls. This call monitoring can be done via the Listen feature. 

You speak, I coach: The next step is them making calls, and you using Whisper to coach them through it with any necessary information, tips or guidance. 

You speak, I listen: The last step in training is your trainee making calls and you stepping back to listen, providing quality assurance if necessary, in real time. If it’s necessary to step in, the Barge option can seamlessly be utilized to rescue or pivot a call in the right direction. 

We’ll go into more details about how Listening, Whispering, and Barging work with smrtPhone Pro, but keep in mind how much easier training can be if you’re able to drop in from anywhere, at any time, on a trainee’s calls.

Quality Assurance

Every business that makes phone calls should engage in quality assurance. It’s the simple practice of ensuring that all calls are aligned with the business standards and goals, and even the most seasoned employees may need refreshers or feedback. You want to be proud of how your business is being conveyed, and when you have multiple employees, it’s up to you to check that their work reflects your brand and strategy. 

With Call Monitoring, any phone call being made from one of your business’ phone numbers is available as an admin to drop in on. A common and slightly archaic way that businesses do quality assurance is to listen to call recordings after the fact, and dissect what went wrong or right. But how impractical is it to listen to a phone call hours or days after it happened to find out how it could have gone differently? With call monitoring, you can whisper advice or feedback to an employee, or even barge in to ‘rescue’ or change the trajectory of a call. Quality Assurance can be immediate, as opposed to reflective, and when revenue is on the line, going Pro can pay for itself with even just one rescued client.

Organizations that make a strategic investment in employee development report 11% greater profitability and are 2x as likely to retain their employees. - Gallup, Inc.

How Does Call Monitoring Work?

Call Monitoring and its associated call center features is available to smrtPhone Pro subscribers. Once Pro Dialing is toggled on, Admins can navigate to the Admin section of the smrtPhone Web App and see a list of all calls currently live and in session, including smrtPhone and smrtDialer calls. There are three options for any call: Listen, Whisper and Barge. 

Listen In 

This is a fairly straightforward feature that any manager or employer should see the benefit of: listening in on phone calls as they happen, to ensure your employees are representing your business as expected. When you’re training a new employee, whether it be a Virtual Assistant, a salesman, or any admin at your business, it will help them to hear your calls in real time. 

When an employee first starts, it will be useful for them to hear a seasoned employee conduct a call without having to put it on speaker or even alerting the person on the other end. And as always with training, it will come time for that new employee to make their first calls, that you’ll want to listen in on. 

Whisper

Imagine you’re listening in on a call and you really want to interject without the client or lead hearing? smrtPhone developed a “Whisper” feature for when you want to do exactly that: whisper something in your employee’s ear. Maybe a tip about the client they don’t know, a question the agent should ask, or a rate you’re willing to lock in to close the deal. It’s an easy way to help out without intruding on the call or interrupting the flow of your employee. 

Whispering is especially crucial in businesses that are increasingly remote and on-the-go: you can be whispering on a call taking place between two people in Connecticut while on a business trip in California. Long gone are the days that a manager has to be physically present to provide advice or approvals on an employee’s calls. 

Barge   

Barge is the third option, in which an admin can actually enter a call that has already started. Think of this as an opportunity to ‘rescue’ a sale that isn’t going as planned, or simply create a conference call mid-way, from the position of listening in.

Barge can be useful during training, where you’ve trusted an employee to make their own call, but need to swoop in at any point. Beyond just training, Barge allows for real-time quality assurance, where you can rescue a sale or pitch as it happens, instead of reviewing a recording later to find out what went wrong. 

Consider that ‘barge’ doesn’t have to be an individual stepping into a call abruptly, it’s a team effort. If someone engaging in call monitoring wants to enter a call, they can send a chat asking to be intro-ed, and the employee can say “let me bring in our manager to discuss this further.” A group call can begin without having to dial or connect, creating further interruption. ‘Barging’ doesn’t have to be disruptive, it can and should be a seamless introduction. 

 

If these features interest you, smrtPhone Pro might be the best decision you make for your business. Check out this article on smrtPhone Pro pricing and don’t just take our word for it that this feature can save a sale: 

Drew Farnese used smrtPhone Pro's Whisper to lock up a deal.

Learn more here about how to use call monitoring with smrtDialer and consider going Pro!