Enterprises continue to rely on unified communication (UC) and contact center (CC) solutions to enhance workforce productivity, streamline communications, and improve customer experiences.
However, monitoring these platforms can be a daunting task, especially for large organizations with thousands of employees. To address these challenges, automating UC and CC with performance monitoring tools has become critical, rather than a nice-to-have solution for businesses.
In this blog, I’ll explore the top reasons why businesses should automate UC monitoring and best practices for effective voice quality monitoring in your contact center. I’ll also outline the negative impacts your business may face if automation is not a priority.
Here are the top 6 reasons to automate UC monitoring:
- Increase efficiency: Monitoring UC platforms and services can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Automating these tasks can significantly increase efficiency by reducing the time and effort required for manual tasks.
- Cost savings: Automating UC monitoring can help businesses save costs by reducing the need for additional IT employees and improving the utilization of existing resources.
- Minimize human errors and reduce risk: Manual or silo monitoring processes are susceptible to errors and can expose businesses to security risks. Automating these processes can help minimize human errors and reduce the risk of security breaches.
- Increased visibility for better reporting and insights: Automated UC monitoring provides greater visibility into the use and performance of UC platforms, enabling IT to identify and resolve issues quickly and make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.
- Enhanced employee experiences and compliance requirements: Automated UC monitoring can help ensure employees have access to the UC platforms they need to perform their roles effectively, leading to a better employee experience. Additionally, compliance requirements can be more easily met when using automated processes.
- Ensure compliance with industry and regulatory standards: Automating UC monitoring ensures compliance with industry and regulatory standards by eliminating human error, enabling real-time detection and response to issues, providing comprehensive monitoring across communication channels, and simplifying compliance reporting with detailed audit trails.
Negative impacts of improper UC monitoring
Not effectively monitoring your UC platforms can lead to several negative impacts for your enterprise.
One of the most significant is decreased productivity. IT employees may not be aware of issues that are affecting employee productivity, such as poor call quality or frequent downtime, resulting in lost time and decreased efficiency.
Additionally, UC platforms may contain sensitive business and customer data, and not properly monitoring them can leave them vulnerable to security breaches or data leaks, creating significant security risks.
Compliance issues are another potential impact of not properly monitoring UC platforms. Many industries have regulatory compliance requirements that must be met when handling sensitive data, and failure to monitor UC platforms to ensure compliance can lead to hefty fines and legal consequences.
Moreover, without automation and proper monitoring, IT staff may have to spend a significant amount of time on manual provisioning and maintenance tasks, leading to increased IT costs and reduced ROI on UC platforms.
Why is voice quality monitoring tool essential in a contact center?
Poor call quality can lead to frustration, misunderstandings, and loss of business for the company. With a voice quality monitoring tool, contact centers can ensure their agents are providing high-quality service to their customers, leading to better customer satisfaction and increased business success.
Key features a voice quality monitoring tool should have:
- Real-time monitoring: The tool should be able to monitor calls in real-time, alerting supervisors to any call quality issues as they occur.
- Automated testing: The tool should be able to perform automated tests on calls, checking for issues such as background noise, dropped packets, and latency.
- Historical reporting: The tool should provide historical reports on call quality, enabling supervisors to identify trends and make improvements.
- Dashboard and alerts: The tool should have a dashboard that provides a visual representation of call quality metrics, and alerts should be generated if certain thresholds are exceeded.
- Integration with other systems: The tool should be able to integrate with other contact center systems, such as the call recording system, to provide a more comprehensive view of call quality.
Risks for neglecting voice quality monitoring in contact centers
Neglecting voice quality monitoring in a contact center can have a significant impact on customer satisfaction, agent productivity, compliance, and brand reputation. It's important to implement voice quality monitoring tools and regularly review call quality metrics to ensure a high-quality customer experience.
Potential risks include:
- Poor customer experience: Poor voice quality can lead to a frustrating and unsatisfactory customer experience, which can result in customer complaints, negative reviews, and loss of business.
- Decreased productivity: If agents are struggling to hear customers or are constantly asking them to repeat themselves due to poor call quality, it can decrease productivity and increase call handling times.
- Compliance issues: Some industries, such as healthcare and finance, have strict compliance regulations that require calls to be of a certain quality. Neglecting voice quality monitoring can lead to compliance issues and potential legal consequences.
- Missed opportunities for improvement: Without voice quality monitoring, contact center managers may not be aware of issues that agents are facing, making it difficult to identify areas for improvement.
- Damage to brand reputation: Poor call quality can damage the brand reputation of a company, leading to negative word-of-mouth and decreased customer loyalty.
Wrap up
In conclusion, automating UC and CC monitoring has become vital (a must have!) for businesses. By automating these processes, businesses can improve efficiency, reduce costs, minimize errors, gain greater visibility into platforms usage, and enhance employee experiences.
With Compliance Recording monitoring, enterprises can effectively avoid regulatory fine and risking business licenses if violated. Additionally, effective call quality monitoring in the contact center can help improve the customer experience and satisfaction.
When choosing the right technology for a contact center, businesses should consider factors such as scalability, integration, customization, and security and supports multi-platforms agnostic.
How IR can help
Monitoring and reporting tools, like IR Collaborate, can help you manage your entire communications and collaboration ecosystem. If you’re interested to find out more, book a demo.