Team
The ten-minute morning check every supervisor should do
19 Oct 2026 · 8 min read
The short answer
Call monitoring in ten minutes: check who is signed in, clear yesterday’s missed calls, compare service level with target, scan late tickets, review one recorded call, and write one coaching note. On SautiDesk the live floor view and reports need Pro. Basic covers tickets, recordings and the queue.
A supervisor’s first ten minutes decide the day. In that time you confirm the right people are on the phones, make sure nobody was left waiting for a callback, check yesterday against your targets, and pick one call to learn from. This checklist is the routine, with a clock. It builds on the call centre plan and works on any team that has calls, tickets and a supervisor.
What is call monitoring, and what does a supervisor actually watch?
Call monitoring is the practice of listening to, reviewing or watching live calls to check quality and help agents. It has three forms. Live monitoring means listening to a call in progress. Recorded review means playing back a finished call. Floor monitoring means watching status and waiting times without listening to anything. Some systems also let a supervisor whisper to an agent or join a call. Start with floor monitoring and recorded review. They cost less effort and cause less discomfort for agents.
The ten-minute check, minute by minute
Do the check in this order, because each step uses what the one before found. Set a timer for the first week. Stopping at ten minutes keeps the habit small enough to survive a bad day.
| Minutes | What to do | Where to look in SautiDesk | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00 to 1:00 | Who is signed in, who is late, who is on a break that is too long | Floor view: agents with status and time in status, longest first | Pro |
| 1:00 to 3:00 | Yesterday’s missed and abandoned calls. Give each an owner and a callback time | Missed and abandoned calls report, and the Owed a call report. On Basic: missed-call tickets in the ticket list | Pro for the reports, Basic for tickets |
| 3:00 to 5:00 | Service level: share answered within the target, abandon rate, longest wait | Service level report and Queue by hour | Pro |
| 5:00 to 7:00 | Late and unanswered tickets across calls and WhatsApp. Oldest first | Ticket list, sorted by oldest | Basic and Pro |
| 7:00 to 9:00 | Listen to one recorded call from yesterday, start to finish | Recording on the customer’s ticket | Basic and Pro |
| 9:00 to 10:00 | Write one coaching note and send the plan for the day | A direct message to the agent | Basic and Pro |
On Basic, nothing in the table is blocked, but minutes 0 to 5 become manual. Ask agents to sign in and set their status, then read the ticket list for missed calls yourself. The floor view and reports are what Pro adds, and they save most of those five minutes.
Minute 0 to 1: read the floor
The floor view shows calls waiting now, calls answered today and how many agents are signed in. Agents who have been in one status too long sort to the top: a call that has run long, or a break that has not ended. Compare the signed-in count with your rota. A gap now is easier to fix than a gap at 10 am, when calls are already queuing. Floor view and listening in on live calls are Pro features.
Minute 1 to 3: clear yesterday’s misses
Every missed call becomes a ticket with an owner, so the question is whether the owner called back. Open the missed and abandoned calls, assign anyone left without one and write the callback time on the ticket. A customer who rang and was never called back is the most expensive item on your list. The missed calls guide puts a number on it.
Minute 3 to 5: compare service level with target
SautiDesk’s default service level is 80 percent of calls answered within 20 seconds, with at most 5 percent abandoned and no caller waiting longer than 120 seconds. Look at yesterday’s figure and at which hour broke it. If one hour fails most days, move a break or a shift, not the target. SLA templates and the queue guide help you set targets you can hold.
Minute 5 to 7: scan late tickets
Calls are one channel. A WhatsApp message left on read overnight is the same failure. Sort tickets oldest first and look for any with no reply from the team. This takes a minute once the list is sorted. Hand each one to a named person before the first call arrives.
How do you run call quality assurance in two minutes a day?
Call quality assurance (QA) means scoring a sample of calls against a short list of standards, then coaching from the gaps. Keep the list to five yes-or-no items so you can score a call in the time it takes to play it. One recorded call a day is enough to start. Over a week that gives you five calls, which is enough to spot a pattern in one agent or in the team.
| Check | Yes means |
|---|---|
| Greeting | Business name and agent name said within the first 10 seconds |
| Understood the problem | Agent repeated the issue back before acting |
| Correct answer | What the agent said was right and complete |
| Next step | Agent stated what happens next and when |
| Ticket | An outcome was chosen and the note says what was promised |
Score the same way every time and score calls you did not pick because they were bad. Choosing only bad calls teaches agents that review means punishment. If you record calls, tell callers first. The call centre plan covers the Kenyan data protection points.
Which customer service skills should a supervisor coach?
Coach the skills you can hear on a recording: listening, clear explanation, ownership, tone and written follow-up. Each can be changed with one specific habit, which makes it coachable in a single conversation.
- Active listening: the agent lets the customer finish and repeats the problem back. Habit: say “So the issue is…” before answering.
- Clear explanation: short sentences, no jargon, one instruction at a time. Habit: end each step with “Does that make sense?”.
- Ownership: the agent says what they will do, not what “the system” does. Habit: “I will check this and call you back by 3 pm.”
- Calm under pressure: the agent lowers pace and volume when the customer raises theirs. Habit: acknowledge the feeling first, then solve.
- Written follow-up: WhatsApp or SMS after the call matches what was said. Habit: send it within five minutes while the details are fresh.
Pick one skill per agent per week. A list of five things to improve gets none of them improved. The CSAT guide shows how to check whether coaching moved the customer’s score.
A coaching note template you can copy
A good coaching note is short, specific and about a call, not a person. It names one thing done well, one thing to change, and one thing to try. Send it the same morning while the call is still fresh.
Keep the notes in one place for each agent. After a month you have a record of what you coached and whether it stuck, which is also what you need for a fair review.
What do you do when the check finds a problem?
Act on the first problem inside the ten minutes, and write the rest down. A check that turns into a long investigation will not happen tomorrow. Use a fixed response for each common finding so the decision takes seconds.
| You find | Do this now |
|---|---|
| An agent has not signed in at start time | Message them. If no answer in 10 minutes, move someone from another task onto the phones |
| Missed calls with no owner | Assign each one, add a callback time to the ticket, tell the owner by message |
| Service level broke in the same hour three days running | Move a break or a shift out of that hour this week |
| A ticket with no reply since yesterday | Reply yourself or hand it to a named agent before the first call |
| A recorded call with no next step stated | Put it in tomorrow’s coaching note, not today’s huddle |
Tell agents what you monitor
Agents should know that calls are recorded, who reviews them and what the scorecard contains. Share the five-line scorecard on day one, and review a call with the agent in the room as often as you review it alone. Monitoring that agents understand reads as support. Monitoring done in secret reads as surveillance, and people stop taking calls the way they would normally take them.
What changes if you are on SautiDesk Basic?
On Basic you still have tickets, one queue, recordings on the customer’s ticket and every channel in one list. You lose the live floor view, listening in on live calls and the reports. You can still run the whole routine by hand: agents set their status, you read the ticket list for missed calls and you review one recording. Move to Pro when the manual count takes longer than the call review.