1 in 4 companies: monitoring somewhat effective or not effective in improving service

Despite the ubiquitous message "Your call may be monitored to ensure quality service," companies generally don't devote sufficient resources to monitor customer calls or to work with call center employees to improve performance, according to a survey of more than 400 companies conducted by Aon Consulting and Verint Systems. While billions of dollars are spent on call recording technology, most recordings sit idle, the survey found.

More than 25 percent of organizations surveyed said their call monitoring efforts did not effectively lead to improved customer satisfaction or better business processes.

Inadequate resourcing -- finding time and staffing required to perform robust monitoring -- is the single greatest challenge to monitoring programs, with 75 percent of companies reporting being under-resourced. More than 40 percent of respondents also questioned the adequacy of their call sampling, the consistency of their ratings and the usefulness of their findings. Coaching was cited as a challenge by 58 percent of respondents.

"Even though call monitoring systems are in place at most call centers, companies do not adequately turn those recorded conversations into lessons that make customers happier or make representatives more effective," said Dr. Miriam Nelson, senior vice president of talent solutions at Aon Consulting. "Fortunately, fairly simple process changes are generally enough to give companies a better return on their investment of time and resources."

"Organizations have access to a goldmine of data hidden in their customer interactions," said Mariann McDonagh, vice president of corporate marketing at Verint Systems. "By listening to the voice of the customer and utilizing powerful solutions such as quality monitoring and speech analytics to unlock this actionable intelligence, organizations can significantly enhance performance in the contact center and across the enterprise."

Despite the gap between the perceived value of monitoring and the results, 11 percent of respondents led the group in terms of the benefits they derive from monitoring. These companies generally employed the following "best practices":

- Using an external quality-monitoring partner to listen to calls;

- Using speech analytics technology to identify key opportunities for improvement;

- Effectively using employee rewards;

- Improving first-call resolution;

- Engaging business units with customer-call feedback. 

More than 1 in 4 survey respondents represented Fortune 500 organizations, with 26 percent representing financial services firms, 14 percent representing telecommunications and communications firms, and 11 percent representing service companies.

About Verint Systems Inc.

Verint Systems Inc., headquartered in Melville, New York, is a leading provider of analytic software-based solutions for security and business intelligence. Verint software, which is used by over 1,000 organizations in over 50 countries worldwide, generates actionable intelligence through the collection, retention and analysis of voice, fax, video, email, Internet and data transmissions from multiple communications networks. Visit us at our website http://www.verint.com/.

About Aon Consulting

Aon Consulting Worldwide (http://www.aon.com/hcc) is among the top global human capital consulting firms, with 2006 revenues of $1.282 billion and 6,500 professionals in 117 offices worldwide. Aon Consulting is reshaping the workplace of the future through benefits, talent management and rewards strategies and solutions. In August 2006, Aon Consulting was named the best employee benefit consulting firm by the readers of Business Insurance magazine.