Guide to Business Call Recording

Here are some key points that companies should consider when buying call recording technology.

At their core, most recording solutions have the same technology – offering the ability to capture both phone calls and agent activity on a computer desktop, archive it and retrieve it in the future. Where the main differences occur is in the functionality, which in itself is often down to purpose. That is, whether the call recording is being used for compliance, quality assessment, coaching or business intelligence.

You may be approaching the selection of interaction recording from any one of these directions, but it’s also worth thinking about how you can leverage additional value from your recording investment through what it can do in the other areas. With this in mind, here are some questions that are worth asking vendors from an application viewpoint, as well as some generic queries and a guide to what you should look for in the answers.

1) Does the solution also allow for 100% recording or logging for compliance purposes?

Logging is the recording application that has the least functionality surrounding it. If you are selecting a recording system for quality or business intelligence purposes, it is worth considering whether logging alone will support all of your needs – both now and in the future.

2) How does the solution support the quality assessment and coaching/development process?

When it comes to quality monitoring and coaching, only a limited number of calls can normally be assessed for each agent or call type. Consequently, solutions need to give you the ability to target specific interactions by agents, contact types and so on, and the selection of these may need to be randomised to make the sample fair and significant.

If 100% recording is used, it becomes a question of whether the date/time, computer telephony integration (CTI) or other data is captured along with the interaction to enable you to select the calls that you require from your call archive. However, some solutions selectively record transactions for you, so you should make sure that CTI, desktop and other data can also be used to successfully target the calls you require.

Very often recordings will be assessed and scheduled by team leaders or centralised quality teams, and this will require calibration to ensure that all individuals consistently apply scores. Typically these scores and recordings will also be fed through to coaching staff, team leaders and agents for training and motivational purposes. Overall results may need to be communicated to the head of quality and other managers too.

Bear all of your requirements in mind. When choosing solutions, see how the workflows within the system can help or be adapted to meet the people and processes within your business.

3) Can the solution provide business intelligence?

Contact centres and the enterprises that they serve are now gaining vital business intelligence because of speech analytics within their recording solutions. This technology allows organisations to search through their archived calls and find interactions that contain references to virtually any concept or topic. So, for instance, the marketing department can look for references to competitors’ products and their prices. The compliance team can meanwhile ensure that key phrases are used within calls, and process improvement can see if customers are dissatisfied with parts of the service they receive both in and outside of the contact centre.

Of particular note within speech analytics is the advanced conceptual search technology that enables concepts within interactions to be searched for rather than just words or phrases. This dramatically reduces the time required to locate relevant calls and returns better results as the user does not have to presuppose what words will be used within the interactions they are looking for. The applications for speech analytics in improving quality, compliance, business processes, customer satisfaction and sales and marketing are already compelling and are still being developed. They are moving the value of interaction recording far beyond that produced by quality monitoring and logging alone, so it is well worth considering what business intelligence requirements you may have in the future.

4) How can I integrate other call centre systems and what value is this likely to provide?

Increasingly recording for quality monitoring is considered a part of a workforce optimisation set, including other applications like e-learning and workforce management. As such there has been greater consideration given to interoperability and sharing of information between these systems. But don’t think solely about workforce optimisation. Also consider integrating other systems within your contact centre, such as agent analytics/performance management, skills management, HR/payroll and automatic call distributors (ACDs). Exchange of information with these systems may also offer benefits. While integration is important, consider carefully what part of a solution is likely to generate the greatest value for your business. A good call recording system that closely meets your logging or quality monitoring needs may offer you a better return on investment (ROI) than something that integrates to other parts of a suite but without a clear ROI on it. Additionally, think about whether, by choosing one suite over another, you potentially compromise the capability of other systems like e-learning and workforce management, simply because of your preference for the call recording part or an integration ideal.

With the emergence of service oriented architectures (SOA) and business process management (BPM) tools, connecting systems together becomes easier to achieve. This also means that, in the future, businesses can afford to be less concerned about the pre-integration offered by suites and can instead concentrate on what functionality delivers the greatest value for them here and now.

What’s more, SOA means that organisations do not have to consider displacing all of their current and previous solution investments for reasons of integration and can continue to extract value from these.

Call Recording

More and more businesses are recognising the benefits of recording calls on their business telephone systems. Not only can it provide an accurate record of what was said by whom and when, but also avoids the need for repetition or speaking slowly.

Call Recording on your business communication system can offer the perfect aid to training, dispute resolution and trap nuisance or abusive callers.

Used in quality control, training, security or simply proving "who said what", all call for a reliable call recording solution.

From single telephone recorder units through to systems that can record 30 channels of ISDN30. Software is also available for enabling voice recording direct to the hard disc of your PC which can be archived in your usual way for future reference.

Connectivity Options:

Between the handset or headset and the base of the phone

Between the base of the phone and the wall socket

Into the wall socket

Along the cable between the wall socket and your Comms room (the place where your BT or cable outside lines come into the building)

In the Comms room on the extensions side of your PBX

On the BT side of your PBX

Advantages of recording on the extension side:

If you record on the extension side of the PBX you will be able to record calls made between extensions. If you record on the line side you will not be able to record calls made between extensions.

Advantages of recording on the exchange line side:

Most businesses have more extensions than they have outside lines, so to record every call made into or out of the company would need less lines recorded if the outside lines are recorded rather than every extension.

Because calls are digitised, recording them whether inbound or outbound is simple. This is true of current call recording systems. However the advantage of a VoIP recorded call is that it is digital and can be filed – maybe even automatically if caller ID is provided – against a client record along with duration and any other available details. It can be recalled at will for analysis/quality monitoring. Critically, the choice of whether to record or not can be taken out of the hands of members of staff making it a valuable tool in the compliance process demanded of Independent Financial Advisers by the FSA and an addition to contemporaneous notes for accountants and solicitors