ORECX CALL RECORDING BLOG

These days, many unified communications platforms offer similar capabilities, such as messaging, presence, and voice and video communications. Understandably, these unified communications platforms are now looking to differentiate themselves.

As unified communications platforms and other UC products look to advance enterprise collaboration, their contributions to the industry are often deemed evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Although incremental developments may not seem innovative, they are important to advance an industry in realistic, problem-solving ways.

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It doesn’t take great insight to realize that everyone – preteens and retirees, techies and non-techies alike – relies on a cell phone these days.  In fact, recent reports by Forbes magazine indicate that more than 80% of all employees use at least one mobile device for business, and that figure keeps climbing as mobile technology grows more accessible and affordable. Consider, too, the increasing number of home-based employees (including those in sales, customer service/support, telemarketing, and the like) who depend on a cell phone, not a landline, to perform their work. So while you may be taking great care to record the phone conversations that occur on landlines in your physical office space, here’s an important question to consider: Are you also capturing the calls that are taking place on these numerous and ubiquitous mobile devices?

For most organizations, capturing data through recorded calls makes wise business sense. The truth is, every industry has specific reasons for wanting to record calls, reasons that are unique to their individual operational, legal, and regulatory requirements. Consider the following industries and the reasons why they might want (and need) to record calls:

• Financial services: Verify trades and other customer transactions; settle potentially costly customer disputes.
• Insurance: Verify insurance coverage and pre-authorization; settle potentially costly customer disputes.
• Healthcare: Ensure that medical staff complies with regulations regarding patient privacy and medical records (including compliance with HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act).
• Retail: Ensure adherence to regulatory requirements regarding credit-card data and processing (including compliance with PCI-DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
• Telecom and Consumer: Monitor staff to ensure quality, compliant customer interactions.

And this list could go on …

When assessing call recording software for a mobile environment, make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date, flexible, and versatile technology possible. For example, one of the biggest challenges is finding a solution that can capture calls centrally and not simply on the device itself. That makes sense: If a phone becomes damaged or lost in the field, then you want to ensure that the call recordings are protected. It’s also important to find a call recording system that can seamlessly record calls on any type of mobile platform, specifically the three platforms used by nearly all mobile workers:  iOS, Android, and Blackberry.

If you’re ready to take the next step in selecting a mobile call recording provider, look for solutions that:

• Can automatically capture inbound and outbound mobile calls, regardless of where they take place
• Do not require you to enter codes, re-route calls off the mobile network, or change SIM cards
• Record calls in real time
• Do not require any new infrastructure
• Are easy to use and install
• Are affordable

As mobile technology evolves to become an ever-important aspect of our business and personal lives, make sure you have all the resources in place to capture, analyze and, ultimately, act on the vital information you can acquire by recording mobile calls.

Do you own (or have you ever given away) an old cell phone? If the answer was “yes,” you probably know why: Because as technology has changed and new enhancements to mobile phone communications have become available, we all want to upgrade to the latest and greatest models. Better technology means better performance, better ease of use, better battery life, better portability, and countless other improvements.

You don’t have to look at your old cell phone from the early 2000s to understand that it – and many other forms of technology – have evolved over time, including the technology of call recording and call monitoring software. What once offered rudimentary and fairly limited capabilities now provides the ability to record, analyze, and interpret vast amounts of data to improve customer service and operational performance.

When considering a call recording software or call monitoring software provider, look for one that comes equipped with the latest and greatest features, particularly those that can give you greater flexibility in terms of provisioning, administration, and utilization. Here are six technological innovations that you want to make sure your call monitoring software provider offers:

1. LDAP support. Look for systems that support LDAP for user identification and auto-provisioning. This capability means that system administrators are relieved of the potentially error-prone task of manually provisioning users in multiple systems.
2. A web interface that supports HTML5.  Look for systems that permit access to the system from any device (laptop, tablet, smartphone) and enables audio recording playback without any browser plug-in. Playback is native to the web browser being used.
3. Single-check emailing of media files – Look for systems that provide a single-click emailing of media files from the web interface to the logged-in user. The benefit? All that is needed is the configuration of an SMTP server for sending emails and ensuring that users have an email address configured in their profile.
4. Auto-Provisioning – Look for systems where auto-provisioning is supported primarily for use with BroadWorks and LDAP. This ensures that users and groups (or service providers) can be automatically provisioned based on incoming recordings or upon a login attempt to the web interface, depending on the platform and configuration.
5. Quality Monitoring (QM) Scorecard – Look for systems that feature Quality Monitoring (QM) scorecards, which provide a highly customizable set of evaluation criteria for reviewing, coaching and assessing agents based on the content and context of their customer interactions. These scorecards may contain any number of criteria, which can be configured with custom weighting scores or even the authority to auto-fail the evaluation of the call as a whole based on a single criteria.
6. Media Manager – Look for Media Manager, an extremely flexible tool that allows administrators to set up programs for managing recordings. Media Manager programs provide criteria-based execution of multiple functions such as copying, moving, deleting, or emailing recordings. Some examples of Media Manager typical uses are backing up or archiving recordings, setting up different retention periods for different groups of recordings, centralizing recording files in a distributed architecture, and automatically emailing recordings to their owners.  The execution trigger of these programs may be pre-scheduled (recurring or one-time) or event-driven, such as when a recording ends.

Call recording systems with advanced features such as these can enable users to significantly reduce the time their IT support staff spends on user provisioning and system management. What’s more, these advances can help ensure that supervisors will be able to easily pinpoint specific customer service issues and drive immediate improvements.

Data, data, data: It’s the name of the game these days, whether it’s acquiring it, massaging it, selling it, or analyzing it. We hear the terms “Big Data” and “Data Science” all the time and there’s a reason for that: Almost any organization doing business today wants and needs data – information about customers and employees, information that can help them make better business decisions, improve market share, and countless other uses.

Some organizations are in the data business and for these types of enterprises, call recording solutions can provide a perfect complement to the other offerings they provide. Becoming a call recording OEM can be a smart business decision for:

• Analytics companies – Call recording can push data from customer interactions to enhance your analytics capabilities.
• CRM companies – Call recording can provide a rich amount of meta data from customer interactions to enhance trending and reporting capabilities.
• Workforce optimization companies – Call recording can add the important components of compliance recording and quality monitoring to minimize risk, improve compliance, and enhance customer service.

If you’re a company operating in one of these spaces, how do you select a call recording solution that proves the most appealing to your customers? Based on an analysis of call recording trends, businesses large and small, in a variety of industries, are looking for and can find significant benefit from call recording systems that:

-          Run on commercial, off-the-shelf hardware

-          Provide an open file format, with recordings ported in industry-standard format

-          Offer multiple ways to capture data

-          Can interoperate on almost any PBX switch (Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, ShoreTel, etc.)

-          Have an open API, allowing you to pull data from any CRM system

Of course, as a call recording OEM, you’ll want the best of both worlds: an easy to install, cost-effective solution for your customers and an easy, high-margin solution for you. Such systems do exist: Systems that are low-cost to customers, provide high margins for you, and can be installed and maintained quickly, easily, and remotely. Best of all, these solutions can be easily customized and offer multiple product support tiers. They also offer a GUI that can be branded as your own, which can help to enhance your name recognition and, ultimately, market share.

Call recording can help you expand into new markets, upsell existing clients and expand your overall solutions portfolio to offer prospects even more.

Click here to learn more about how to become a Call Recording OEM.

Just like private enterprises, governmental entities often elect to monitor calls that come into or out of their organization. No, we’re not talking about conducting an illegal taping of someone’s private phone conversation with their spouse, but rather calls that are made to a government enterprise that require assistance from a customer service agent or that require an individual to disclose personal financial or health-related information.

For most governmental entities, the goal of call recording differs from that of private enterprises, where the chief motive is usually profit. Rather than seeking to drive higher profits, call recording in a government setting is aimed at improving customer service quality – that is, to help guarantee that agents are performing their jobs to the highest possible standards – as well as ensuring compliance with critical regulatory requirements.

Following are some factors to consider when choosing a call recording solution in a government setting:

Regulatory Compliance: As a governmental entity, compliance with regulatory requirements ranks as a top priority. That’s why call recording software can ensure that governmental entities comply with the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) regulation, which protects consumers from the misuse of their credit card information and carries severe penalties, totaling upwards of $50,000 per infraction. Organizations are also required to be in compliance with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act), which protects the confidentiality and security of personal healthcare information, which carries an average penalty of $1,000 per infraction.

Through the power of call recording software, governmental entities can classify calls that contain sensitive cardholder or patient information. The organization can then decide whether to delete calls with sensitive information, restrict access to those recordings to only authorized personnel, and mask or mute only those portions of the interaction when sensitive data is being communicated.

Affordability: Just like in the private sector, governmental agencies must contend with budgetary restrictions and guidelines. Fortunately, what once cost tens of thousands of dollars or more can now be purchased for just a fraction of that amount. Many call recording solutions today provide a cost-effective answer for government entities. When evaluating different options, it’s wisest to choose solutions that offer a small upfront or monthly fee, no implementation costs, no formal training, and no need for ongoing maintenance expenses.

Installation speed: Every organization – from Fortune 500 multinationals to family-owned enterprises – wants things done at the fastest possible speed. That’s true for governmental entities too. Look for a call recording solution that can be up and running quickly, in some cases in as little as 30 minutes, simply by downloading the software from the Internet. Imagine that: no fancy IT specialist required to install the system at your site or someone who must provide hours and hours of complicated training. In a half hour, you could be recording customer interactions.

Scalability: Governmental entities need flexibility and a call recording solution that can be scaled up or down depending on the evolving needs of the organization. In addition, with rapidly advancing technological developments, you need a solution that can adapt with you and can be expanded or contracted when necessary.

Organizations invest considerable resources into attracting and training a top-notch sales and marketing team. But is your team equipped with all the information they need to perform their jobs easily, quickly and, perhaps most important, successfully?

There are numerous ways that organizations can gather sales intelligence – from hiring posh consulting firms to conducting demographic studies, to purchasing massive enterprise systems to crunch reams and reams of data. Most large-scale sales intelligence solutions are designed for companies in the manufacturing, distribution and wholesale sectors, all highly competitive markets where volumes are high and margins are low. These solutions provide unique insight into customer buying patterns, helping organizations to identify and deliver up-sell, cross-sell and switch-sell opportunities. 

For most organizations, access to this critical information is more attainable than ever, through call recording software. This sales intelligence solution can enable organizations to answer questions such as:

What special offers are my competitors making? Call recording software grants you access into the workings of your competitors. For example, sometimes when a customer or prospect calls into a call center, they’re unsure about whether or not they want to make a purchase and may reveal information about your competition, as in “Well, I get a free 30-day trial when I sign up with XYZ Corporation.” This competitive intelligence can provide your sales and marketing organization with insight to help re-align campaigns or promotions.  

Where do my customers live? A call recording system can help you gather key geographical information that can be vitally important to your sales force. Knowing which parts of the country or the world are most receptive to your products or services will help you better identify specific customer segments, leading to more successful lead generation and closed sales. You can also gain insight into which regions of your customer base have the most individuals who agree to a subscription upgrade or a cross-sell, which can help your sales staff spend their time on the most promising targets.

Are my claims misleading? From recorded calls, you can learn if your call center receives numerous cancellation calls for a specific product. The meaning? Perhaps your sales/marketing messaging around the product is misleading and must be revised. You can use this information to re-train your sales force or revamp your advertising campaign.