If you manage a call center, you don’t want to have these things happen on your watch:
- A customer who hangs up after enduring an excessive hold time.
- A customer who complains about not having their issue resolved after being bounced from agent to agent.
- A call from the compliance department warning of regulatory trouble.
Call center monitoring and reporting can help prevent these issues and others from occurring. You can use the process to keep your call center running smoothly, efficiently, and in full alignment with privacy laws, industry standards, and customer expectations. (It becomes even more important when your team is hybrid or fully remote.)
Done right, call center monitoring protects your business and helps ensure every caller to your contact center receives a superior customer experience. To help you get started, this guide offers a practical call center monitoring checklist that you can adapt to your own operation.
Main Takeaways
- Call center monitoring can help managers enhance agent performance, improve operational efficiency, increase first-call resolution rates, boost customer satisfaction, and mitigate the risk of compliance violations.
- Building a robust call center monitoring system comes with challenges. Chief among them is limited visibility into calls. Plus, managers and supervisors have responsibilities that give them little time to listen in on calls and review interactions.
- Best practices dictate that managers seek out the most effective call center monitoring software to help ensure thorough and efficient tracking of performance and compliance.
- The best tools for efficient call center tracking and monitoring are AI-driven, such as cloud-based conversation intelligence software. AI tools can analyze online and offline data at scale to provide a comprehensive evaluation of call center performance.
What Is Call Center Monitoring?
Call center monitoring is the process of tracking and analyzing calls to evaluate agent performance, service quality, and compliance. It requires call center managers to actively listen to or review calls and use call center monitoring systems and software.
Types of Call Center Monitoring
Call center managers have several options when it comes to monitoring operations. Each method offers unique benefits — and limitations.
Live Call Monitoring
Supervisors can listen in on calls as they happen to gain real-time insight into agent performance and customer interactions. While this method can be valuable for immediate coaching opportunities, it’s time-consuming and difficult to scale. Because of call volume and duration, only a small percentage of calls can realistically be monitored live.
Call Recording and Review
An alternative to live call monitoring is to record calls for review at a later time. Call center managers can record and transcribe calls and then use AI to review them at scale.
Automated Quality Management
Analyzing digitized call data also uncovers customer trends and behaviors at scale — and paves the way for automating QA scoring. Automated quality management reduces the manual workload on supervisors by evaluating 100% of calls, rather than relying on a limited sample. Because it removes the subjectivity of human scoring, automated quality management also delivers more consistent, unbiased results.
Speech and Sentiment Analysis
AI-powered monitoring tools can detect subtle changes in tone and sentiment in calls and help supervisors identify the precise point at which an agent-customer interaction goes off track. This level of insight helps call center managers identify issues faster, and plays a key role in training agents to handle difficult conversations with greater empathy and effectiveness.
Key Benefits of Call Center Monitoring
Understanding what’s happening in your call center is essential — but effective call center monitoring offers far more than just oversight. Here are five key benefits to keep in mind.
Benefit 1: Improves Agent Performance
Monitoring customer interactions gives supervisors the ability to provide precise, actionable feedback. By highlighting actual examples of strong and weak performance, managers can deliver targeted coaching that sharpens scripts and elevates the quality of customer conversations.
Call center monitoring also helps identify top performers and agents who may need additional support. This visibility enables better coaching programs, mentoring opportunities, and smarter staffing decisions to strengthen team performance across the board.
Benefit 2: Enhances Customer Satisfaction
When you use call monitoring to fine-tune coaching and raise performance standards, the customer experience naturally improves. Tools like automated quality management — which evaluates every call, not just a sample — can provide a clear picture of how your agents are handling interactions.
If an agent veers off their talk track, call center monitoring reveals it. From there, you can deliver targeted training to address issues quickly. The result? Fewer escalations, less customer frustration, and more time for you to focus on broader team priorities.
Benefit 3: Supports First Call Resolution (FCR)
Monitoring and reviewing calls also gives call center managers insight into recurring customer issues. In addition, it helps agents prepare to resolve them on the very first interaction. By identifying common pain points, you can equip your teams with the knowledge and tools they need to deliver faster, more effective support.
A strong first call resolution (FCR) rate reduces the need for follow-up calls, improves customer satisfaction, and lowers operating costs. It’s no wonder, then, that 80% of service firms track FCR today, compared with just 50% in 2018.
Benefit 4: Ensures Compliance and Reduces Risk
Effective call monitoring can also help your call center operation mitigate regulatory and legal risk. You can confirm that your agents are following approved scripts, disclosing required information, and adhering to data security protocols. These records not only support internal compliance programs but also provide documentation in the event of an audit or dispute.
Benefit 5: Increases Call Center Efficiency
All the benefits outlined above point to another: operational efficiency. Better-performing agents and higher FCR rates translate to more calls handled and improved service quality. And when you can spend less time chasing down problems or manually reviewing calls, you can devote more time to higher-value tasks like developing talent, refining processes, and optimizing staffing strategies.
Common Challenges in Call Center Monitoring
While the benefits of call center monitoring are many, building a truly effective call monitoring system requires overcoming a few common challenges. Knowing what to watch out for can help you design a monitoring program that’s both comprehensive and sustainable.
Challenge 1: Inconsistent Call Evaluations
Unless you evaluate every call, you don’t have an accurate picture of agent performance, customer satisfaction, or call center efficiency. Traditional call monitoring processes rely on manual scoring, with managers evaluating a small sampling of calls. This process is prone to:
- Bias (e.g., managers cherry-picking calls from their best agents to boost scores)
- Inconsistency (e.g., a random sampling might not capture problem calls)
The solution to achieving consistency in call center monitoring is to use AI-powered technology and automation. AI quickly scores every call, selecting key positive and negative insights for follow-up. For example, AI’s ability to detect sentiment and tone might point to a section of the call script where an agent begins to lose callers. The call center manager can then flag this to the team and adjust the script.
Challenge 2: Limited Visibility Into Customer Experience
Due to time and resources, manual monitoring only covers a small fraction of calls. This means limited visibility into the true customer experience. That’s not going to help improve call center evaluation or raise your agents’ performance.
Again, AI tools shine a light on the real customer experience by analyzing 100% of interactions quickly and accurately, highlighting customer behaviors, patterns, and trends.
Challenge 3: Compliance Risks and Data Security Concerns
Even with ongoing training and a script to hand, it’s easy for call center agents to fail to follow necessary compliance and security protocols. Detecting missteps is practically impossible through manual call monitoring. However, AI-driven compliance monitoring automates the process for managers by reviewing digital transcripts and flagging violations instantly. This gives them an opportunity to correct mistakes so they only happen once.
Challenge 4: Agent Resistance to Monitoring
Let’s face it — no one likes feeling watched. For many agents, the idea of someone listening to their calls can trigger insecurity and concerns about micromanagement. It’s human nature. At the same time, agents want to be treated fairly and judged objectively, not based on a single off moment. That’s where AI-powered monitoring tools can make a real difference.
Automated quality management scores every interaction consistently and without bias. This helps create a more transparent and equitable performance review process. It also allows call center managers to highlight positive examples and deliver coaching in a way that builds confidence, rather than fear.
Best Practices for Effective Call Center Monitoring
Call center monitoring best practices can help you overcome the challenges described above. Here are some to consider.
1. Define Clear Monitoring Goals
Start with a clear idea of what you want your monitoring program to achieve and stick to those goals. We’ll address these in more detail later, but here are some metrics to consider using:
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
- First call resolution (FCR)
- Agent adherence to scripts and compliance
- Average handle time (AHT)
2. Employ a Combination of Manual and Automated Monitoring
Don’t throw out manual monitoring altogether; there’s still a place for it as part of a comprehensive call monitoring program. If you use AI and automated monitoring, you’ll capture every call, which will give you more time to check into one or two calls with each agent.
3. Implement AI-Powered Call Scoring
Manual call scoring is time-consuming and limited, typically covering just 2% to 5% of total calls. But with an AI solution like Invoca, you can automate the process and evaluate 100% of customer interactions.
Invoca’s quality management solution scores calls consistently, without bias, and at scale. It also detects tone and sentiment, offering deeper insight into agent performance. When an agent deviates from the script, the AI flags it, providing a clear view of where support or retraining is needed.
4. Collect and Act on Customer Feedback
Feedback from actual customers is extremely valuable. Use it to build and maintain an effective call center operation. If you are not surveying callers after calls to gauge customer satisfaction, start a program right away! Post-call surveys inform metrics like customer effort score (CES), so you know how friction-free (or not) the customer journey is.
You can also gather feedback without a customer survey. Call transcripts contain all kinds of feedback, from comments on how long a customer has been on hold to thanks for agents who go the extra mile to solve a customer’s issue.
5. Optimize First Call Resolution (FCR)
A best practice in call center monitoring is focusing on FCR. Tracking FCR helps uncover why customers call back, enabling targeted coaching to improve outcomes. Tools like Invoca PreSense enhance FCR by giving agents visibility into the caller’s pre-call digital journey — including ads viewed, webpages visited, and products browsed — so calls are routed to the right agent with the context needed for a faster, more personalized resolution.
See how PreSense works in this short video:
6. Train and Empower Call Center Agents
At the heart of every successful call center is a well-trained, confident team. Agents require more than scripts, though. AI-powered monitoring provides real-world insights for personalized coaching, while ongoing training in both soft skills and compliance keeps agents sharp, adaptable, and ready to deliver exceptional service on every call.
Critical Call Center Metrics and KPIs for Quality Assurance
Tracking performance metrics is crucial for enhancing agent effectiveness and productivity, as well as delivering a high-quality customer experience. These seven key performance indicators (KPIs) offer valuable insight into what’s working, and where improvements are needed.
1. First Call Resolution (FCR)
We already touched on this metric, but solving customer issues on the first call means more satisfied customers and fewer calls. That’s why you want to aim for a first call resolution rate of at least 70%, meaning seven out of every 10 calls are resolved when they come in. A high FCR has the added benefit of lowering operational costs, especially when calls don’t need to be escalated to supervisors.
2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
Customer satisfaction scores capture customer feedback on experiences with call center services and agents. CSAT scores are derived through quick, automated after-call surveys that rank a caller’s experience from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (highly satisfied). Since they represent a snapshot of a customer’s experience, CSAT scores can be combined with other CX metrics or AI-driven tools, like sentiment analysis, to create a complete picture of customer satisfaction.
3. Average Handle Time (AHT)
AHT is the total time an agent spends on a call, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work. This metric shows how efficiently agents handle customer inquiries and solve problems. It’s a metric that requires some nuanced perspective, though. A low AHT doesn’t necessarily mean that customer problems are solved quickly; it could indicate that customers are hanging up or agents are escalating calls to supervisors.
4. Call Abandonment Rate
Call abandonment rate measures the percentage of customers who hang up before reaching an agent, mostly due to long hold times. Call centers expect to have some abandoned calls, but a call abandonment rate over 10% indicates looming problems with call handling.
5. Call Quality Score (CQS)
Call quality score is a quantitative assessment of agent performance and focuses on whether the agent’s conversation is compliant and how closely they stick to the script, as well as the overall quality of the interaction and overall customer satisfaction. A high CQS indicates a positive customer experience and superior customer performance.
6. Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer effort score measures how easy it is for a customer to resolve an issue. CES was prompted by a 2010 study by the Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), which found that 96% of callers reported trouble interacting with brands due to friction points such as calls being dropped, long hold times, or too many transfers. CES helps identify friction points when used in conjunction with online and offline data.
7. Compliance and Script Adherence Rate
Call center scripts help ensure consistency and regulatory compliance. While natural conversation is important, agents must include key phrases, like reading a HIPAA notice or requesting account access permission. If an agent uses seven out of 10 required statements, their adherence rate is 70%. Monitoring this metric helps managers identify training needs and reduce compliance risk.
Types of Tools Used for Call Center Monitoring
We’ve referenced call center monitoring software and other tools that can help supervisors and managers create an efficient monitoring program. Here’s a quick rundown of some others:
Call Recording Software
Recording and transcribing 100% of calls is a must. Call recording software can automate call capture for QA, training, and compliance. Paired with AI, these solutions can offer insights into agent performance, customer satisfaction, script adherence, and first call resolution.
Screen Monitoring Tools
Solutions like Teramind, Level AI, and Computer Talk are commonly used in contact center environments to record on-screen activity. They help supervisors identify workflow inefficiencies, training needs, and potential security risks, such as unauthorized system access.
Speech and Sentiment Analysis
AI-powered speech and sentiment analysis software analyzes tone and emotion to flag frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction in agent-customer interactions. This allows supervisors to address service breakdowns and coach agents more effectively.
Quality Management and Automated Scoring
Quality Management tools like Invoca’s can evaluate 100% of calls objectively and consistently. They help reduce manual review workloads and highlight performance gaps for targeted coaching.
Call Routing and IVR Optimization
Smart IVR systems allow callers to self-route to their desired destination, while intelligent call routing automatically directs callers to the most suitable agent based on their pre-call website activity. Both tools help reduce friction in and expedite a caller’s journey. They also generate valuable interaction data that can be used to improve first-call resolution rates and the overall customer experience.
Customer Feedback Tools
Platforms like SurveyMonkey, Hubspot, and Hotjar gather direct insights into customer experiences. Combined with AI-detected feedback from call data, they help uncover pain points and improve service quality.
Optimize Your Call Center Quality Monitoring with Invoca
Call center monitoring is a critical process for gauging customer satisfaction, elevating agent performance, and maintaining compliance. The most effective approach blends intelligent, timesaving technologies like AI with targeted manual review, such as listening to a representative sample of calls.
With Invoca, managers can automate time-consuming tasks like quality assurance and call scoring, while gaining analytics from 100% of calls — not just a small sample. These insights enable more efficient operations, sharper coaching, and consistently high-quality and compliant service.
Additional Reading
To learn more about how Invoca’s AI-driven conversation intelligence tools can help your call center monitoring and reporting, check out these resources:
- How to Improve the Call Center Quality Management Process
- Up-Level Your Agent Performance With Automated Contact Center QA
- How to Harness the Power of AI Tools for Business Success
Why not book a free demo with our team to find out how Invoca can help you develop actionable call center metrics and monitor QA? Reach out today to schedule some time with us.
FAQs
How Challenging Is the Call Center Quality Monitoring Process?
Monitoring call quality at scale is no small task, especially when your team handles hundreds or thousands of calls daily. Manual evaluation is time-consuming and limits visibility. That’s why adopting AI-powered monitoring tools is critical to running a successful call center. The right software can automate call tracking, recording, scoring, and compliance reviews, giving managers the insights they need without the operational burden.
What Percentage of Calls Should Be Monitored in Contact Centers?
Ideally, 100%. Manual monitoring captures less than 5% of calls — a fraction too small to reflect overall performance. AI-driven solutions can record and transcribe every call, analyze trends, objectively score agent performance, and flag compliance risks. This improves quality assurance (QA)and supports more informed coaching and operational decisions.
How Does Quality Assurance (QA) Impact Call Center Performance?
QA sets clear expectations for agents through scorecards and evaluations, supports targeted coaching, and helps improve call center team performance. QA also drives better customer service by boosting first call resolution and enhancing the overall customer experience.
