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5 Reasons Customer Service Reps Should Be Recorded

By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

“Your call may be recorded for quality purposes,” the electronic voice announces to the caller.

We’re so used to hearing this notification that companies don’t even teach reps how to respond properly when customers try to opt out of being recorded. Not being able to stop a recording immediately, facilitating a customer's withholding of consent, is unlawful in many states where all-party consent to monitoring and recording is required.

Major call centers use centralized equipment that records ALL calls, and generally this is thought to make the rep evaluation and coaching process easier and more efficient.

On one level, it does. Calls can be “drawn” by evaluators on a random basis with no obvious intrusion into conversations. Reps are believed to be behaving as they normally would, not trying to spiff up their chats simply because they know they’re being monitored or judged.

However, I believe what appears to be a primitive means of recording calls is preferable. Reps should record their own conversations using portable, “hand held” equipment while at their individual workstations.

There are 5 reasons this improves achievement and efficiency:

(1) I oppose the “Let’s catch them doing something wrong” attitude that informs secret monitoring. Typically the mystery surrounding when reps will be recorded and which calls will be drawn leads to a defensive rather than supportive environment.

(2) Reps need to take a more active role in their development, and take responsibility for their performances. If they’re BEING recorded, this makes them passive, and it’s all too easy for them to feel alienated from the process instead of the essential ingredient in it.

(3) When reps start and stop the tape with each call, which I encourage, they remind themselves that each call is a performance, and they need to give it their best. The extra adrenalin that accompanies a “live” performance gives them extra vitality and sharpens their senses.

(4) I require reps to score their own calls, and they can select the best ones, in their estimation. Why? Because the purpose is to MOTIVATE them as well as to improve them. Self-scoring promotes ownership of call handling and customer outcomes.

(5) Reps’ managers then score the calls. After they do, reps and managers sit down together and review the calls and compare notes with the idea of achieving consensus with regard to strengths, weaknesses, and specific strategies that will make conversations better.

In the programs that I develop for my clients reps and managers and trainers learn TEAMEASURES™, which are Telephone Effectiveness Assessment Measures™. These are some 25 elements of effective conversations culminating in an overall potential value of 100 points.

They’re operationally defined, and now validated in millions of conversations. They work across industries and languages.

By using TEAMEASURES™ clients of mine are able to speak the exact same language about telephone events and understand the precise values associated with producing various results and levels of customer satisfaction, from call to call.

Because reps and managers receive the same training in how to apply TEAMEASURES™ they are equally capable of scoring calls accurately. On a 100 point scale, most scorers will evaluate calls within a two percent deviation from each other, which is extraordinary inter-judge reliability.

Mere “checklists” which are most prevalent in modern call centers, don’t come close to capturing the breadth and depth of calls the way TEAMEASURES™do.

There is a lot of interest in teambuilding and in empowering people at all levels of organizations. Encouraging reps to score own their calls and to take full credit for the results they generate makes them “owners” and not the spectators they feel they are under most call evaluation procedures in use today.

Moreover, by using precise measures that are connected to customer values, we can evaluate the best contributors with precision and reward them in the magnitude they deserve.

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,000 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard" in negotiation, sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com. 

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