Discover how call whispering can help your business

Did you were one of those students in elementary school who, when the teacher asked you in
front of everyone something about the class, your classmates next to you whispered the answer
you didn’t know? In that case, you know the importance of having the right information at the
right time, especially in the contact center environment.
Today, there are tools that help contact center managers provide help and advice to their team
members while they are answering calls. One of them is the so-called call whispering, which
consists of using special software to create a dialogue between the supervisor and the agent
during a call with the customer, who does not hear that conversation. It can also be additional
information that appears on the consultant’s PC screen to help him in his task.
This form of coaching has many advantages, since it allows correcting errors in real time, providing
support and resolving doubts without affecting the quality of the service or disturbing the
customer. In addition, it is an agile and non-intrusive method for both the agent receiving the
guidance and the person making the call.

Call monitoring: the origin

It has been discovered that an advisor can work hard and take many training courses to learn how
to master the job, but what helps the most is coaching by someone more experienced.
That is why the training process for new call center staff involves a coaching process where the
manager or the people in charge of training monitor the calls that newcomers make to customers
in order to measure their performance, give them feedback and decide when they are ready to
perform their tasks on their own.
This practice went a long way toward speeding up the training process for consultants and helped
managers and trainers spot red flags and newcomers’ successes in a timelier manner.
However, it had a downside: Since there was a time lag between a call and feedback, clients were
often confronted with advisors who were not yet fully prepared, so it was common for them to
make mistakes that hurt the company.

How does call whispering work in a contact center?

Currently, many call center software used to listen to calls and record them, also allow adding the
function so that, on the one hand, managers are listening to the call between the consultant and

the client, and on the other hand, the manager can speak into the consultant’s earpiece without
the client hearing him/her.

Other software also allows the manager to send additional information to the advisor’s computer
during the call with the client. A further function allows the manager to enter directly into the call
if necessary to support the advisor in customer service.

Benefits of call whispering

 Call whispering gives trainers a much truer picture of advisor performance.
 Advisors’ learning is more effective as they can improve in real time on the job thanks to
the advice of their trainers.
 Customer service does not drop in quality, since, although the advisor is in the process of
improvement, the call with the client does not drop in quality as it is coached by the
expert.
 Two heads are better than one, so the customer experience is strengthened by having
more solutions and points of view.
 It allows the expert to take the call in the event of a difficult situation with the customer,
resolving the situation more effectively.
 Contact centers whose employees work remotely deserve a special mention: with this
technology, the trainer will be virtually next to the consultant to assist him or her
regardless of the fact that they are physically located in two different places.
 While it can be intimidating for consultants in training to receive their first calls from
customers and at the same time feel listened to by their manager, this practice is a good
way to reinforce learning. Unlike the example we mentioned of the teacher asking
questions at school, call whispering is like the teacher giving you confidence by giving you
the answer.