Donna Fluss, a consultant and author who writes for Call Center, has just issued an intriguing new white paper on a technique for automated "real-time coaching":

What it is:

"Real-time coaching is an emerging application that literally listens to agents as they handle customer calls and notifies them via screen pop-ups when they make a mistake or miss a step. These applications use speech recognition technology to monitor how agents handle their calls. Real-time coaching is very effective because it enables agents to take corrective action while the customer is still on the line and generally before the customer knows there is a problem."

I think she does a good job in the white paper explaining what the hard and soft ROI factors are, and she includes some pretty useful best practices.

You can read the white paper on her site.