Monitoring and Coaching Live Calls

When choosing to monitor a live call as explained in Monitoring an Agent Live, you can choose to enable a feature to coach the agent. This action is called whispering, and it means that you can speak to your agent without the caller knowing.

Alternatively, you can choose to assist the agent by speaking directly to the caller while the agent is still on the line. This action is called barging in, and it means that the caller will hear you speak.

Roles

There are four roles to consider in the context of monitoring and coaching:

User: This is the caller. Users can speak and all the parties in the call can hear them.
Pupil: This is the agent. Pupils can speak and all the parties in the call can hear them.
Monitor: This is the person supervising the live call. Monitors cannot speak, but they can hear all the parties in the call.
Coach: This is the person supervising the live call that has enabled the Coaching feature. Coaches can speak to Pupils and Monitors, but Users cannot hear Coaches.

Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) from Users can be heard by all the parties in the call, but DTMF from other types of users cannot.

Call Actions

Press 4# if you are a live-monitoring a call as a Monitor and want to become a Coach. This will allow you to whisper messages to the Pupil.
Press 6# if you are a live-monitoring a call as a Coach and want to become an active user. This will allow you to barge in and everyone in the call will hear you.
Press 0# if you are a live-monitoring a call as either a Monitor or Coach and want to become an active user. This will allow you to barge in and everyone in the call will hear you.
Press 1# if you are a live-monitoring a call as a Coach-turned-active user (after pressing 6# or 0#) and want to remove the Pupil from the call.

Changing Roles

You CANNOT change roles if you enter as a User or a Pupil. DTMF commands will propagate to the call if you are a User, and will be ignored if you are a Pupil.
If you join as a Monitor or as a Coach, and then change roles to a User, your DTMF commands will propagate to the call, but won’t be heard.
If you join as a Monitor, you can become a User by pressing 0# or a Coach by pressing 4#. You CANNOT return to the role of Monitor after making a change.
If you join as a Coach, you can become a User by pressing 0# or 6#. This role is referred to as Coach-turned-active-user.

Sample Workflow

A Supervisor monitors a live call between an Agent and a Customer. The Supervisor joins the call as a Monitor, so no one can hear them.
The Agent seems to need assistance. The Supervisor then presses 4# to become a Coach and can now whisper feedback and ideas to the Agent (Pupil). The Customer can only hear the Agent.
The Customer requires more assistance than the Agent can provide, and the Supervisor needs to step in. The Supervisor then presses 6# to barge in and everyone in the call can hear them.
Note: The Supervisor could also press 0# to the same outcome.
In rare cases, the Supervisor might choose to disconnect the Agent and complete the call without the Agent. In this case, the Supervisor would press 1# to remove the Agent from the call.