Why Call Center Managers Love Call Whisper

Call center managers love call whispers because they allow them to listen discreetly to calls, coach agents, and defuse difficult situations when they arise.

New to whisper systems? You’ve come to the right place.

This quick guide will tell you everything you need to know about call whisper and how and why call center managers love this small yet powerful call management feature.

What Is Call Whisper?

Call whisper is a phone system feature that allows managers and supervisors to coach agents in real time during live calls.

It’s designed to improve agent performance without interrupting call flow. As the name suggests, customers cannot hear instructions, so the agent can receive instructions, reminders, or encouragement discreetly.

How Does Call Whisper Work?

You can use the whisper feature on both incoming and outgoing calls. Whenever an agent needs help, you can guide them to the best possible call resolution.

Here are three common scenarios where a manager may initiate the call whisper feature.

Monitoring calls

Call center monitoring is the process of listening to calls in real time or after completion for the purposes of agent training and improving customer service.

Depending on your scenario or business objective, your monitoring can be selective or random. For example, you can select specific calls by agent, team, or type to measure performance and create a benchmark.

You can also randomize the calls you monitor to eliminate the possibility of bias. When a computer or algorithm chooses which calls to monitor, no history or personal feelings are involved.

Responding to call events

In an office environment, it may be obvious that a call center agent needs help from a supervisor. For example, if there are raised voices, obvious signs of struggle, or changes in an agent’s mood, it’s likely caused by what’s happening in their headset.

Here, supervisors can start monitoring the live call and decide whether to initiate whisper mode and help with any customer objections, technical troubleshooting, or clarifying product details.

Likewise, the agent may flag that they need help. If a call is getting heated, a simple wave to an in-person colleague (or an instant message to a remote supervisor) isn’t uncommon. Again, the supervisor can start listening in and choose whether to initiate call whisper.

Integrating with call center software

Call whisper integrates seamlessly with Nextiva’s call center platform, allowing managers to switch between monitor, whisper, and barge-in modes during calls.

When used with sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) can detect negativity, frustration, or anger during a call — and automatically flag that live call to a supervisor by email, audible alert, or in-app notification.

Once aware, the supervisor can decide whether to start monitoring the call and initiate whisper.

Benefits of Call Whispering

Here are some key benefits cal whispering offers:

1. Enables real-time agent coaching

Supervisors can guide struggling or new call center agents through difficult conversations, improving first-call resolution (FCR).

This is particularly important if you’re short on experienced agents and need your new team members to hit the ground running. You have the security of knowing supervisors can intervene at any point and get a call back on track, rather than letting poor staffing levels impact your customer satisfaction levels.

2. Improves training and onboarding

New agents can receive immediate support during live calls, reducing training time and building confidence faster.

Even with all the roleplay and training outside of live calls, there’s no better way than learning on the spot. However daunting it may be to let new staff loose with your customers, it’s a whole lot easier when you can provide on-the-job coaching in real time.

3. Enhances call quality and customer satisfaction

When a customer has been in a call queue for some time, the last thing they want is incorrect answers and poor responses to urgency. It’s their right to feel they’ve queued for a quality response.

Call whisper helps agents deliver better customer experiences with supervisors providing corrective guidance during high-stakes interactions. In periods of high incoming call volume, it’s easy for even the most experienced agents to take their eye off the ball. The use of whisper ensures your processes remain streamlined.

Pro Tip: Use an IVR system to streamline call routing to get customers to the right agents faster and reduce wait time.

4. Boosts agent confidence and reduces stress

Knowing that supervisors are available to provide support reduces the stress agents feel when handling difficult calls.

Without this on-the-spot coaching and advice, agents may feel like they’re constantly on the back foot, battling against customers who think they know best. As morale drops, both productivity and helpfulness will decrease too. The awareness that a supervisor is on hand might be all an agent needs to remain focused and stress-free.

5. Increases sales and upselling success

Sales teams benefit from coaching in real time, especially when agents need help with call handling or upselling. The ability for supervisors to join a sales call and coach agents could be the difference between retention and churn.

An alternative here is AI Agent Assist. Using AI, agents receive on-screen prompts based on keywords and phrases happening mid-conversation. If there is an obvious product to push or a key stage where closing the deal is optimal, agents will be encouraged down the right path.

6. Maintains call flow without interrupting the customer

Unlike barging into a call, whisper mode ensures smooth, uninterrupted conversations with customers. It’s less intrusive and more conducive to agent development and situation management.

When calls flow better, you reach a remedy faster, improving metrics like average handle time (AHT) and first-call resolution (FCR).

Call Whisper vs. Barge-In vs. Monitoring — the Differences

At this point, it may seem like call whisper is a similar feature to call barging. You wouldn’t be wrong — there are definite similarities.

The table below lays out the major differences between call whisper, barge-in, and standard call monitoring.

	Call Monitoring	Call Whisper	Call Barge-In
Overview	Supervisors listen silently to the call without interacting with the agent or customer.	Supervisors coach the agent and relay relevant information privately, with only the agent hearing the feedback.	The supervisor joins the call and speaks to both the agent and the customer.
Suitable For	Quality assurance or performance reviews.	On-the-fly coaching without disrupting the conversation.	Critical situations when the supervisor needs to take over immediately.

Improve Your Contact Center Performance With Nextiva

When choosing a call center provider, it’s important to check off all the features you need (call whisper being just one of them). But there’s also a plethora of other factors to consider.

Coaching and development

Nextiva offers whisper, monitoring, and barge-in modes on its hosted contact center platform, giving managers flexible coaching tools.

These manual features are complemented by a host of AI-powered features to take away the burden on both agents and supervisors.

From AI Agent Assist to data-driven insights on how and when agents are most productive, there’s a wealth of reports for quality assurance, customer experience, and agent performance.

Personalized coaching experience

Within the call whisper function, you can customize settings to fit the workflow of your contact center.

Choose from:

• Live call tracking in a listen-only mode.
• An announced call whisper message only the agent can hear.
• A click to notify the agent (no announcement).
• A barge-in option where the supervisor can take over the call.

After the event, you can review phone calls for quality assurance purposes by accessing the call recordings stored within the cloud contact center platform.

You can even automatically analyze and score your customer interactions, including incoming call transcriptions, chats, emails, SMS — you name it.

This intelligent software uses speech analytics, natural language processing, and machine learning algorithms to evaluate agent tone and adherence to scripts, and even to detect potentially dissatisfied customers based on linguistic cues.

24/7 customer support

When you need support to help managers set up and use call whisper effectively, Nextiva is on hand. Whether it’s a customized coaching plan or technical setup, we pride ourselves on our Amazing Service® — so much so that we trademarked it!

94% of our customers say they are very happy with our service and support.

Nextiva offers 24/7 support with quick response times and accessible resources for troubleshooting and training.

Advanced analytics and monitoring

When you use Nextiva’s call center monitoring, you can access real-time and after-the-fact monitoring. This includes features like call recording, enabling you to listen to all recorded calls online.

With this capability, you can grade and analyze how your agents are performing, either by selecting calls or choosing to randomize the process.

In-call supervisor features like whisper allow you to coach agents on the fly. For example, if there’s a difficult call in progress, you can join and advise the agent on what to say without the caller hearing you.

If the call escalates and you feel you need to take over, the barge-in feature allows you to announce yourself and join or take over.

Scalability for remote teams

Whisper coaching works for distributed teams, ensuring consistent agent performance no matter where they are.

While it’s easy to detect when an agent is struggling next to you in an office, the popularity of remote work has created a new challenge for call center supervisors.

Using Nextiva’s cloud contact center means you maintain agent-to-supervisor relationships via internal calls, instant messages, and collaboration areas. During live calls, there’s a constant two-way exchange flagging when help is needed or suggested.

Unlike disparate platforms, you can use Nextiva for both your telephony and unified communication needs as well as your contact center platform.

The seamless integration of the two makes it possible for frontline agents to contact back-office support teams when needed, reducing the wait time customers experience.

For further integration, Nextiva’s open APIs allow you to seamlessly connect your other line-of-business apps too.

FAQs About Call Whisper