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Whisper is a call-monitoring feature that allows you to listen to a call between a customer and an agent. It also enables a manager to speak to the agent without the customer being able to hear you. This feature is used to help train new agents and is one of three call-monitoring modes available in a contact center service (see Barge and Spy for the other two). This type of management tool is very beneficial for aiding your team with hard clients. Or to simply direct them to hang-up the call if they are on the receiving end of abuse.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
whisper (verb)
intransitive verb
1.
to speak softly with little or no vibration of the vocal cords especially to avoid being overheard
2.
transitive verb
to make a sibilant sound that resembles - whispering
1.
to address in a whisper
2.
to utter or communicate in or as if in a whisper
whisper (noun)
1.
something communicated by or as if by - whispering , especially - rumor whispers of scandal
2.
a) an act or instance of whispering , especially speech without vibration of the vocal cords
b) a sibilant sound that resembles speech - whispered
3.
- hint trace
Whisper (Wikipedia)
Whispery
◌̣
Encoding
Entity (decimal)̣
Unicode (hex)U+0323

Whispering is an unvoiced mode of phonation in which the vocal folds (vocal cords) are abducted so that they do not vibrate; air passes between the arytenoid cartilages to create audible turbulence during speech. Supralaryngeal articulation remains the same as in normal speech.

In normal speech, the vocal folds alternate between states of voice and voicelessness. In whispering, only the voicing segments change, so that the vocal folds alternate between whisper and voicelessness (though the acoustic difference between the two states is minimal). Because of this, implementing speech recognition for whispered speech is more difficult, as the characteristic spectral range needed to detect syllables and words is not given through the total absence of tone. More advanced techniques such as neural networks may be used, however, as is done by Amazon Alexa.

There is no symbol in the IPA for whispered phonation, since it is not used phonemically in any language. However, a sub-dot under phonemically voiced segments is sometimes seen in the literature, as [ʃʊ̣ḍ] for whispered should.

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