The call listening feature authorizes users to silently listen to phone calls that are currently in progress. With this feature, supervisors or team leaders can coach new support agents, supervise escalations, or monitor the quality of calls. The user who is listening to a call can hear both the customer and the agent on the call in real time, while neither of them can hear the listening user.
Listening to a call is available to users with the default admin or owner role, or to users with a custom role with the "Listen calls" permission attributed.
How it works
When you start listening to a call, the system opens a one-way connection that carries the audio of the ongoing call. The call itself is not interrupted in any way, and you do not become a participant in it. You hear the conversation, but your microphone is never connected to the call, so neither the customer nor the agent can hear you. There is no indication to the customer that a third person is on the line, while on the other hand, the support agent is fully aware that you are listening.
While listening to a call, you may still be available for calls. If a new incoming call starts ringing to you, or you initiate a new call, the listening automatically stops.
Granting the "Listen calls" permission
Being able to listen to calls is controlled by the "Listen calls" permission, which is not granted to default agents. Only users with admin, owner, and custom role with the given permission are allowed to listen to calls. To grant the permission to a custom agent role, edit the desired role and enable "Listen calls" in the Calls group of permissions.
Note: An agent can only listen to calls in tickets belonging to departments they are a member of, so granting the permission does not expose all calls to agents with the given custom role.
Tip: Because the customer is not notified about any other user listening to the call, it is recommended to grant this permission deliberately, and to make sure your call recording and monitoring practices comply with the laws applicable in your country and in your customers' countries.
Listening to a live call
To listen to a call that is currently in progress, either navigate to Calls > Active calls, or have a ticket filter to see the currently running calls, or have the agent you're supervising send you via internal chat the ticket ID of each call the agent handles. Open the ticket with the call you want to listen to, and click the "Listen" button.
You can listen to one call at a time. If you start listening to another call, the previous listening session automatically stops.
Note: You can add messages & notes to the ticket while listening to its call to help the calling agent resolve the customer's query.
Stopping the listening session
To stop listening to a call, use the "Stop listening" button in the top right corner of the call widget. Your connection closes, while the call continues undisturbed.
The system also ends listening automatically when the call you are listening to ends, when you start an outgoing call or answer an incoming one, or when you log out of your agent panel or your session disconnects.
What call listening does not do
While listening to a call, you cannot speak to the agent. There is no whispering mode, so you cannot privately advise the agent while the call is running. You are although able to help the agent either via internal chat, text messages or notes in the ticket, or after the call. You also cannot join the conversation. To speak with the customer, the call has to be transferred to you by the agent handling it.
Please note as well that listening is not recording. The call that you are listening to is not recorded for later review, unless you have call recording enabled in the configuration of your call widget/phone number.
Tip: Recorded calls can also be transcribed to text via our AI call transcription feature.