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Monitoring calls with the Live calls dashboard (Talk Professional and Enterprise)

Nora Mullen
  • Edited

advanced

Using the Live calls dashboard, team managers can see at-a-glance all ongoing calls, listen in on agent conversations and barge in on calls when agents need support or escalation.

Note: If you and your team are using the call monitoring feature of Talk, ensure that your custom greetings provide adequate notice in accordance with your state or country's telephone recording laws. Default greetings created before call monitoring was launched on March 14th, 2017, do not alert callers that their call might be recorded and monitored.
To use the Live calls dashboard, you'll need the following permissions:
  • Your account must be a member of the Admin or Team lead Talk role in the Zendesk Admin Center. To learn how to configure roles for your users, see Giving agents access to Talk.
  • Users with only the Analytics > View Zendesk Talk dashboard permission cannot monitor calls.
  • Users with the correct permission who don't have a Talk Agent seat can view the dashboard but not interact with calls.

This article contains the following topics:

Viewing the Live calls dashboard and monitoring calls

The Live calls dashboard contains the following information for each live call:
  • The agent on the call
  • The group the agent belongs to
  • The call type (inbound or outbound)
  • The caller number
  • The ticket related to the call
  • The call duration

Use the procedure below to learn how to open the Live calls dashboard and monitor calls.

To view the Live calls dashboard and monitor calls

  1. From the product tray, select Talk.

  2. In the new tab that opens, click the Live calls icon in the sidebar.

    The dashboard opens. You can filter the dashboard by agent or group name using the search field in the upper right.

  3. In addition to viewing live call information, the dashboard enables you to take the following actions:
    • Listen into a call: To monitor a call without notifying the agent or caller, click Listen.

      Note: If a call shows a status of IN MONITORING, it means that another administrator is already listening to the call. Only one user can listen to a call at a time.
    • Join an existing call (barge): Click Barge to join the call. The agent and caller will both hear a beep notifying them a third party has joined.

      Click End barge to leave and return to listening in to the call.

      Note: Only one agent can barge into a call at a time. The original agent must remain on the call; if they disconnect, the call will end.
    • Stop listening in: Click Leave call to stop listening to the call.

Auditing call monitoring activity

You can export a comma-separated values (CSV) file containing an audit report of call monitoring activity.

To the call monitoring activity report

  1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then click Channels > Talk.
  2. Click the History tab.
  3. Click the Export Monitoring CSV button.

The report will be emailed to the address associated with your user account.

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26 Comments

  • Jonny

    This is great =) 

    1
  • Tikisha Dowden

    Does this feature work with agent forwarding?

    0
  • Jenny Gillett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Tikisha, 

    If I understand your question correctly then yes it works. 

    If you are monitoring a call and that call is transferred to another agent or forwarded to an external number, you can continue to monitor the call until it has ended. 

    Does this answer your question? 

     

    Jenny

     

     

    0
  • Josh

    Jenny,

     

    I want to allow agents to have this feature, but don't want to give them the ability to manage all of the channels. Currently custom roles forces this. Can this be broken off in custom roles better?

    7
  • Tikisha Dowden

    Thanks Jenny! You've answered my question.

    0
  • Jenny Gillett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Josh, 

     

    This is a request we are hearing more and more, currently there is only 2 role you can give your agents and that is manage channels or admin. We are looking into how we assign our roles at a more granular level but this will be a bigger project in the future and not just tied to Call Monitoring. 

    Regards

    Jenny

     

    0
  • Brad Harris
    • Edited

    I have a similar question as Josh -

    One of the primary reasons why we were excited about this feature is to help our Tier 1 agents learn from our Tier 2 agents by listening in on the call after it has been transferred through call monitoring.

    I really need to be able to assign more granular permissions beyond "Agent" and "Admin".

    Is this something that can be implemented? It could be as simple as the dropdowns in the user profile:

    6
  • Alexander Holder

    Very keen for triggers here for some advanced reporting. Current workaround isn't overly fun but this is a game changer

    0
  • Mie Dohn

    Hi,

    I would like to use this feature for internal training, but I do not want to give all "staff" access to manage the channels. Is it somehow possible to allow the staff agents to listen to live conversations with out being af team leader or admin?  

    3
  • Jenny Gillett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Mie, 

    Thanks for getting in touch, this is consistent with other feedback we have heard.  We understand the need to have more granular permissions by feature and/or by role. It is something we are actively looking at introducing into the product. I don't have any dates to share with you at this point so please bear with us. As soon as I have an update I will post it here. 

    Thanks

    Jenny

     

    0
  • Noc

    Hi Nora,

    There is also functionality to put the caller on hold, but we haven't figured out how to return back to the call from the dashboard?

     

    0
  • Maria

    Jenny, any updates on changes to the access levels for live listening?

    We are looking for a solution for buddying/ side by side call listening, and it has been suggested to us to have agents do live listening. This is impractical if we are giving such high access to brand new agents or having to create zendesk users just to listen to calls. 

     

    1
  • Jenny Gillett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Maria, 

    This work is still on our backlog and I do understand the need but unfortunately the work has not been prioritised as of yet. The only work around we have to offer you at this point is to give your agent manage channel permission but I realise the concerns you might have around that. Alternatively the other option for now is to use a splitter on your head sets. 

    I'm sorry I don't have a better update for you. 

    Thanks 

    Jenny 

     

     

    0
  • Oliver Tietze

    This article describes a feature which is NOT available in 'Professional' (as far as I can see).

    The Can view Zendesk Talk dashboard permission seems to be an 'Enterprise' only feature. But: it should be in Professional, as in a large enterprise it usually is not common to allow every agent to see the full list of agents, statistics and Benchmarks. It could (like in Germany) even be legally difficult to allow this.

    I assume this restriction was indeed meant to be available in 'Professional'.

    Could someone please show me how to do it ;)

    Regards

    Oliver

    0
  • Dane K

    I'll just add my voice to the chorus of others asking for the granular permission.

    As we have external vendors who manage our call centers, we don't want those same TL's and Supervisors agents to have Admin level permissions in our system to manage all Channels. 

     

     

    1
  • Devan - Community Manager
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hello Dane,

    We currently don't have a timeline on this feature request at this time, but I would recommend reaching out to our Product Feedback channel and posting your requests so our devs can consider it for a future update.

    Talk Product Feedback

    Best regards,

    Devan

    0
  • Howard

    We have a new Agent undergoing induction here at Raleigh UK . How may this agent listen in to the calls of the agent he is shadowing?

    Thank you

    0
  • Howard

    PS we are using Jabra Pro wireless headsets

    0
  • Thomas de Silva

    Hi Howard.

     

    You can do this using the monitoring function if.

    It requires that you are on Professional or Enterprise. You should also be able to pair two or more Jabra headsets. Please read here

    #helpsome regards,
    Thomas de Silva
    Zendesk Consultant @ helphouse.io

    1
  • Howard

    Thank you. I now have the instructions of pairing a 2nd headset.  

    0
  • Deniz

    Hi,

    Do we have to give 'Can manage channels and extensions' permissions to supervisors to be able to do live call monitoring?

    'Can manage channels and extensions' should be a admin level permisson, as channel configurations are sensitive and extensions usually contain very confidential information about your api endpoints and structures. Giving team leaders access to this sections doesnt make any sense.

    2
  • Devan - Community Manager
    Zendesk Community Team

    Hello Deniz,

    I understand your concerns, but this is something that can not be avoided if you are giving supervisors the ability to perform live call monitoring. I've gone ahead, though, and linked to our product feedback forum so you can share your concerns with our development team so that we can consider this for future updates.

    Talk Product Feedback

    Best regards.

    -1
  • Michael Esposito

    Devan - Community Manager 

     

    Is it possible to monitor an agent (agent/call monitoring) prior to them receiving a call?  For example, we want to monitor an agent for the day and listen in on ALL calls they receive.  We had this feature at Jive (https://jive.com/features/call-monitor/) - wondering if this feature is available.  We appear to only be able to monitor a call once it's started.

     

    Thank you

    0
  • Nicole S.
    Zendesk Community Team

    HI Michael - 

    Do you necessarily need to listen live? We do not offer the ability to listen prior to receiving, but you can make a report on that agent's Talk tickets and listen to the recording of all the customers they talked with. 

    0
  • Jeremy McWilliams
    • Edited

    Hello,

     

    Is there a way to have trainee agents listen in on calls without giving them admin access? 

     

     There has to be a way to train remote agents with live calls in tandem with veteran agents or trainers. I really want my agents to have that experience and extra confidence.

      When we were going into the office before pandemic hit we used training cording that connected to our computers that allowed a trainee agent to sit with a veteran agent. In this way we could either have a the trainee or veteran talk with the customer and teh other listen depending on where we were in the training process and this as very helpful. I just need to figure out the same in the remote working realm. Please help! 

    In this article link below there is mention, but i have yet to find a way to do this in the way i am asking about.

    https://www.zendesk.com/blog/phone-support-training-tips/

    Listen in. Next, have new agents listen in on calls and shadow other phone agents to learn how they speak and respond to customers. 

     

    Thanks and Best Regards

     

    3
  • Josh

    +1 to jeremy

    0

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