Call Monitoring 101: How Businesses Can Improve Customer Conversations

No one likes being monitored — not agents, managers, or business owners. But monitoring happens for a good reason.

Call center agents are trained in customer communication, often following scripts to maintain consistency. Of course, customers don’t come to you with a script. Every call is different, and agents never know what challenges they’ll face, especially when dealing with frustrated customers.

That’s where call monitoring software can make a difference.

It’s not just about protecting agents from false claims — it’s also about empowering them. By providing recorded interactions, managers can offer targeted coaching, helping agents confidently navigate difficult conversations.

The result? Less stress, more support, and a stronger, more resilient team. Everyone wins when agents learn from real situations (and each other).

Why Should Businesses Monitor Calls?

Call monitoring serves two purposes. First, listening to calls allows customer support managers to help their team improve customer interactions. Second, it conveys a manager’s active presence in any interaction, preventing agents from slipping away from the recommended communication path.

Agents are always free to improvise based on the situation. But knowing that every word they exchange with a customer is being recorded prevents them from saying or doing anything that might be perceived as an unfair or malicious business practice. Monitoring capabilities allow support managers to analyze live or recorded calls, helping everyone keep customer satisfaction at the forefront.

Before we dive into specific software recommendations, let’s quickly assess the case for call monitoring software.

Improves customer experience and satisfaction

A call monitoring system allows contact center management to identify the common pain points that customers mention in conversations. It serves as input to optimize communication strategy.

This automatically improves the quality of service offered by customer support agents. With the communication strategy already optimized for these recurring problems, agents know what to say whenever these pain points make their way into conversations.

Call monitoring leads to fast resolutions, increasing resolution rates and first-contact resolutions. You can use these metrics to highlight your team’s strong performance in stakeholder meetings, and even if you don’t, the numbers will speak for themselves.

Beyond numbers, call monitoring influences customer satisfaction and retention.

Enhances agent performance and training

Contact center agents experience mental stress. Frustrated customers, targets, call volumes, and administrative workload are generally the most significant contributors.

Call monitoring tools save your agents from the added stress of not knowing what to do in a typical customer situation. It allows call center managers to offer real-time feedback, helping them handle the call effectively. The call recording becomes a gold mine of insights and learnings for coaching the whole team. It doesn’t just support one agent’s performance but helps elevate the entire call center’s performance.

Subsequently, a series of similar recordings and examples lets new agents ramp up and develop their skills in a comparatively shorter time.

Ensures compliance and quality management

When agents know their conversations are being monitored, it automatically encourages them to align with a company’s guidelines and regulation standards to avoid getting into trouble. It can also keep unrestrained attitudes in check, helping agents follow the expected communication standards.

The call logs, scripts, and escalations go for review, allowing managers to deliver constructive feedback. This encourages the agent to be more cautious and automatically improves the quality of conversations.

Optimizes call center operations and performance

Reviewing call recordings periodically and making them part of your process directly influences agents’ performance. The suggested alternatives, ideas, and modifications shared in reviews help call center agents gradually improve and reduce wait times, automatically enhancing your service level agreements.

Better- and well-trained agents directly deliver their impact on the contact center’s key performance indicators. They help optimize present workflows to improve the center’s operational efficiency.

What to Look for When Evaluating Calls

Below are certain points you should look for while reviewing agents’ calls.

Call handling efficiency and service quality

This involves assessing if agents are managing inbound and outbound calls professionally. Monitor the trends in resolution rates to see whether they are improving over time.

If not, investigate to understand why and make the required modifications to the communication strategy.

Adherence to scripts and compliance guidelines

It’s natural for agents to create their own path to communicating with customers, considering the uniqueness of their support issues.

However, it’s best to address the uniqueness with an innovative resolution rather than straying too far from the established communication path. This will help ensure that calls meet legal and compliance standards.

Customer satisfaction and feedback

Assess how customers rate their experience in post-call surveys. As customers often miss completing a survey unless prompted, you can add a prompt in call scripts that encourages customers to fill out the survey after the call.

Pay close attention to escalations. Review why the issue was escalated and what service the customer received afterward. If it’s not up to standard, advise your team with alternative countermeasures to deliver a satisfactory customer experience (CX).

Agent performance and engagement

Check if agents are efficiently resolving concerns. The time to resolution or handle time is crucial here. You don’t want to keep testing a customer’s patience. Listen to the customer’s side to see if they are providing useful feedback to the agent.

This is the most critical insight to understanding the customer expectations front.

Methods for Monitoring Phone Calls

Call monitoring software facilitates different methods for reviewing customer communications. These methods include:

Live call monitoring

With this approach, supervisors or contact center management listen to real-time customer calls to see if they can add value or help the agents improve their performance. It works best for immediate coaching and delivering feedback that requires prompt implementation.

This method is typically used to see how new agents handle customer conversations while managing inbound or outbound conversations.

Call recording and playback

Calls are recorded, and the supervisors review them later for quality assurance and quality control. This allows the managers to show that the call center is in compliance. It also helps management understand an agent’s performance so they can select examples for coaching sessions. This helps not only one agent but the whole team.

Call whispering and barging

With in-call whispering, call center supervisors can talk to agents in real time without the customer hearing. This helps an agent navigate complex support cases or close sophisticated upsells or cross-sells over calls.

Many call monitoring software tools also include call barging capabilities. This allows managers to intervene in calls whenever necessary.

AI-powered transcriptions and analytics

Managers can choose to monitor a call through a transcription. It makes the text searchable, which allows them to check whether specific information was conveyed on the call.

Call monitoring software with artificial intelligence (AI) also comes with real-time sentiment analysis. Managers can monitor calls and train their team to use insights from sentiment analysis to guide the conversation.

Top Call Monitoring Software Solutions

1. Nextiva

Nextiva offers cloud-based call monitoring with supportive features like live call whispering, call recording, and real-time analytics. It integrates seamlessly with popular CRM systems to improve the workflows of contact centers and sales teams, ensuring a smooth CX with high-quality calls.

Here’s an overview of Nextiva’s call monitoring solution:

• G2 rating: Nextiva scores a 4.5/5 based on 3,300 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Plans start at $30 per user per month. The Engage and Power suites offer robust capabilities for companies that need business voice and call center capabilities. Those start at $40 and $60 per user per month, respectively. Enterprises can start at $129 per agent per month.
• Top features in addition to call monitoring: Features include smart call routing, a unified inbox for website chat, text messaging, social media management, and email.
• Factors influencing pricing: Higher-tier plans offer advanced features like intelligent call routing, interactive voice response (IVR), and in-depth analytics.
• Unexpected costs: Nextiva offers straightforward pricing with no hidden fees.
• Benefits: Real-time monitoring provides immediate feedback and peer-to-peer learning by listening to and providing feedback on calls.

2. Gong.io

Gong uses AI-driven conversation analytics that help businesses improve sales call performance. It charges around $5,000 as a platform subscription fee and offers professional services and agent training for an additional $7,500.

Here’s an overview of Gong.io:

• G2 rating: Gong scores a 4.8/5 based on 6,074 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Plans include a $5,000 base fee per year and the following rates per user: $1,600 per user per year (up to 49 users), $1,520 per user per year (50–99 users), $1,440 per user per year (100–249 users), and $1,360 per user per year (250+ users).
• Top features: Automatic call recording, transcription and search, AI-powered insights, CRM integration, and performance analytics make up the popular features.
• Factors influencing pricing: Gong’s call software imports contacts from your CRM, so your CRM must be compatible.
• Unexpected costs: Gong usually charges $5,000 for a platform subscription (base price). Other costs include $7,500 for professional services (customer support and training costs). In addition, Gong.io charges for three years upfront for most companies.
• Benefits: Gong Connect allows your support team to record calls, capture key customer details, and track deals from the mobile app. It syncs with your CRM to keep calls linked to the correct accounts so that reps can work from anywhere.

3. Dialpad

Dialpad manages real-time transcription and call recording. It facilitates agent coaching and helps managers with real-time analytics.

Below is an overview of Dialpad:

• G2 rating: Dialpad scores a 4.5/5 based on 1,861 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Rates are $15–$25 per user per month on an annual payment basis. A free 14-day trial and custom plan are also available.
• Top features: Dialpad provides easy navigation, call history/progress, call recording, live metrics, and real-time assistance.
• Factors influencing pricing: Features like call queues and CRM Integration are locked to the pro plan.
• Unexpected costs: An additional porting fee, administrative cost recovery fees, and an E911 regulatory recovery fee might apply.
• Benefits: It streamlines your communication with a centralized AI-powered app, helps you stay focused on what matters with AI Recaps, and has real-time analytics for managers and admins.

4. NICE CXone

NICE CXone software uses call monitoring features focused on compliance tracking and quality management to ensure calls are aligned with quality standards. Here’s an overview of the software:

• G2 rating: NICE CXone scores a 4.3/5 based on 1,636 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Plans are priced at $71–$209 per month. Call monitoring features are spread into different plans. There is also a feature-heavy ultimate plan at $249 per month.
• Top features: Enlighten AI for CX, journey orchestration, and call routing functionality top the list.
• Factors influencing pricing: Add-ons such as knowledge management, proactive engagement, automated interaction summarization, and AI-powered self-service might cost extra.
• Benefits: NICE CXone provides access to unlimited innovation via open APIs and pre-integrated certified partner applications, seamless integration of various communication methods, rigorous quality control measures, and detailed analytics and reporting capabilities.

5. Five9

Five9 includes speech analytics, live call monitoring, and CRM integration. Here’s an overview of the software’s pricing and top call monitoring features:

• G2 rating: Five9 scores a 4.1/5 based on 511 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Plans cost $175–$325 per month.
• Top features: Features include Omnichannel contact center, automation and AI tools, interaction analytics, and workforce engagement management.
• Factors influencing pricing: Add-ons like Admin Assist, Agent and Supervisor Consoles, and CRM Connectors might cost extra.
• Benefits: Five9 delivers advanced voice quality, ready to scale with your enterprise and facilitate global reach.

6. Talkdesk

Talkdesk offers many features for managing your call center operations, including IVR, custom reporting, and advanced security tools. Here’s an overview of the software:

• G2 rating: Talkdesk scores a 4.4/5 based on 2,411 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Rates are $85–$145 per user per month.
• Top features: Call whisper, call barging, call takeover, and call recording are the leading features.
• Factors influencing pricing: Add-ons like Talkdesk Autopilot, Talkdesk Navigator, Customer Experience Analytics, and Workforce Management might come at an additional cost.
• Unexpected costs: No hidden costs are tied to Talkdesk’s pricing plans.
• Benefits: Talkdesk enables you to keep track of what happens during active calls and allows you to improve agent coaching and training.

7. RingCentral

RingCentral offers live call monitoring with features like detailed call logs. It allows managers to quickly hop onto the call and relieve the sales or support agent to ensure callers are satisfied with the customer service. Here’s an overview of RingCentral software:

• G2 rating: RingCentral scores a 4.0/5 based on 147 reviews.
• Pricing plan: Plans are priced at $30–$45 per user per month. These are starting prices, and the exact cost might vary depending on the number of users and the specific features you choose.
• Top features: RingCentral offers improved customer support, robust security policy controls, and affordable and transparent pricing.
• Factors influencing pricing: Some core features like call recording require extra fees on lower tiers.
• Benefits: You can train your sales and support staff during live calls.

How to Choose a Call Monitoring Software

When selecting call monitoring software for your business, consider these points:

• Define call monitoring goals. Document the goals you aspire to achieve with your call monitoring system. Do you want to train people, assure quality, or remain compliant? Whatever the goal, define and stick to it — it will gradually lead to customer satisfaction. Make sure you have clear KPIs to measure success.
• Select the right call monitoring software. Choose a tool that aligns with your business needs, phone system, and contact center operations. Check whether the tools integrate with the CRM, customer support platform, or call center solution.
• Train your team, and implement monitoring workflows. User adoption is crucial when you want the system to contribute to ROI. Encourage your supervisors to leverage the software’s benefits while following call monitoring best practices. Implement live call monitoring and whispering while introducing feedback sessions in your regular workflows.
• Optimize call quality, and ensure customer satisfaction. Improve scripts and service quality using real-time call data and customer feedback. Use AI-powered transcriptions and analytics to continuously optimize customer satisfaction.

Monitor Calls, and Improve CX With Nextiva

Call monitoring gives customer service managers factual data when suggesting ways to improve agent performance and ensure compliance. Nextiva’s cloud-based call monitoring solutions allow businesses to monitor live calls and offer real-time coaching with call whispering.

You can record calls to review later or use AI-powered transcription and analytics to improve service delivery.

Ready to optimize your call center operations? Learn more about Nextiva’s call monitoring solutions today. 👇

FAQs About Call Monitoring Software

Here are a few questions people frequently ask when shopping for call monitoring software: