Silent monitoring

Silent monitoring allows supervisors to listen to ongoing calls and view active chat or email conversations without the agent's knowledge. There is no chat between the supervisor and agent, and the agent doesn't see any monitoring actions in their Communication Panel. The supervisor has all of the agent guidance actions available so the silent monitoring is true up to the point the supervisor wishes to interact with the agent on a call with the coach or join options.

The following table compares silent monitoring and agent guidance.

Function Available in agent guidance Available in silent monitoring

Internal chat between the agent and the supervisor

Yes

No

Listening a call or viewing a conversation without the agent knowing it

No

Yes

Listening

Yes

Yes

Coaching

Yes

Yes

Barging in

Yes

Yes
Tip:

You can tell silent monitoring and agent guidance apart based on their icons:

  • silent monitoring

  • agent guidance

A supervisor can only have one session of either agent guidance or silent monitoring at a time. If a supervisor, for example, has an ongoing silent monitoring session while an agent asks for agent guidance and the supervisor accepts the agent guidance request, the silent monitoring session then ends.

If the supervisor is listening to an agent's call, listening continues from one call to the next. If the supervisor moves from silent monitoring to agent guidance, the Listen button also remains active.

Prerequisites

  • Agent guidance is in use. See prerequisites in Agent guidance.

  • Silent monitoring is enabled in System Configurator.

Start silent monitoring

  1. Start silent monitoring either in Communication Panel or Dashboard.

    In Communication Panel:

    • the search field at the bottom of the view
    • Directory list and detailed view
    • History list and detailed view

    In Dashboard:

    • Agent list and the agent details view
    • Conversations list

  2. Choose the agent and click Silent monitoring.

    If the conversation is a phone call, open the Silent monitoring extension to see options:

    • Listen: When you open the extension, listening begins automatically. To stop listening, click the Stop button.

    • Coach: Speak with the agent during the customer call. Only the agent hears your coaching.

    • Join call: Participate in the call. When you join the call, everyone in the call can hear and speak to each other. (Includes conference calls)

    • Intercept: Intercept the call from the agent. The agent is disconnected and you continue with the caller.

    • Hang up: Hang up the call. All participants are disconnected and the call ends.