ORECX CALL RECORDING BLOG

8 Questions to Ask a Prospective Recording Vendor

Posted by Kevin Levi on Dec 9, 2022 11:36:59 AM

Picking the right call recording vendor can greatly impact your customer service levels, agent performance scores and even your compliance penalties. Not all recording solutions are created equal, so you need key questions to ask prospective vendors when you are looking for a new system or considering upgrading your existing one to ensure you are procuring the best solutions for your needs.

Here are the top 10 questions to ask each potential recording vendor:Untitled Design (33)

1. Do you offer call recording, screen recording, quality monitoring and mobile recording software? You want a modular-based solution that offers all four to support your organization's needs today and tomorrow. Some solutions come all-in-one and charge you for those features you don't need. Modularity is important to ensure you only pay for what you will use.

2. Does your recorder capture calls in single channel (mono) or dual channel (stereo)? Mono records both the agent and the customer on the same channel and overtalk can disrupt you from clearly hearing what each individual says. You want stereo recording which captures both parties on separate distinct channels which can be isolated upon playback.

3. Can the recording system scale up to hundreds or thousands of users? You don't know how many channels of recording you will need in six months, one year or even five years. You need a recorder that can scale with you as you grow. Look for a solution that can support as few or as many as you may need someday, ideally from five to hundreds of thousands.

4. Does the system offer speech analytics and transcription, and/or does it provide an easy pathway to procuring those added solutions? Not all recording solutions offer the capabilities and interfaces to enable a smooth migration to analytics and customer experience management solutions. You may need these added features as your organization evolves. The ideal recording system will provide a smooth pathway for you to enable this functionality when and if you need it.

5.  What is the process and cost for accessing/exporting my recording metadata to third party systems like CRM, conversational analytics, and customer experience management? Some vendors actually charge you to export your own data to these systems. The right vendor for you provides a REST API for easy export to these solutions without any charge. After all, it's your data. You shouldn't have to pay extra to access it.

6. Do you support cloud, premise and hybrid storage of my recordings? Your organization may have different locations (featuring different telephony environments) today or in the future. You need a recording solution that provides the flexibility to capture calls in each location and store those recordings how and where you need them stored.

7. Are there any restrictions on interoperability with my existing communications environment (PBX, ACD, etc.)? Many recording solutions are proprietary black box systems that do not play well with others. Your recording system must easily integrate with your current and future environment without significant customization or help from a costly professional services organization. 

8. Can you please provide a demonstration of the solutions administrative capabilities? Some systems require weeks or months of training to learn how to manage. Your recorder should be easy to learn and operate so you may begin capturing and replaying calls, evaluating your agents, and creating performance reports right away.

If you are unsure if your current or potential recording solution meets the bill, contact OrecX. Our open-source based recording solution is the most open, easy to administer and scalable recorder on the market, and we are now owned by CallMiner, the number one conversational analytics provider on the planet. Our solutions provide a direct pathway to transcription and analytics-as-a-service.

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Topics: call center recording, call recording open source, analytics

Call Recording Insights from Steve Kaiser

Posted by Kevin Levi on Jan 3, 2022 11:40:16 AM
audio snippets blog post thumnail

Steve Kaiser, former CEO of OrecX and now GM, OrecX Business Unit of CallMiner, recently participated in a CallMiner webinar. What follows are 5 audio snippets from that webinar in which he details the reasons for the CallMiner acquisition and discusses various aspects around modern and open audio capture.

Clip 1: Why OrecX joined CallMiner

Clip 2: Connecting and Enriching Audio Data

Clip 3: Securing your Audio Recordings

Clip 4: Maintaining Control of/Access to your Audio Data

Clip 5: 3 Most Important Points Regarding Audio Capture

Audio Capture vs. Call Recording Infographic

 

Topics: call recording open source

Can your Call Recorder do This?

Posted by Kevin Levi on Jul 29, 2021 11:16:59 AM

Like just about everything in life, sometimes it makes sense to make a change - sometimes for sheer betterment and sometimes simply to try something new. It doesn't mean you made a mistake. It could just mean that something better comes along. This is certainly the case with call recording software. No two are created equal, and some have capabilities others simply can't match. 

Your current business call recording solution may be doing a nice job at capturing your customer calls, but there could be limitations that keep you from getting the very most out of your customer interactions - like discovering customer insight, sales and marketing trends, compliance issues, dispute resolution evidence, workflow disruptions, agent performance issues, etc.

To be sure you're current total call recording solution is up to the task, ask yourself if your software can do the following:Best-Call-Recording-Apps_feature

  1. Record your calls on separate channels - that is both parties are captured on separate tracks so they can be distinctly heard without over-talk - this helps power highly accurate transcription and speech analytics to maximize rich discovery of customer intelligence. 
  2. Integrate 3rd party data sources (CRM,, analytics, etc.) with your call recording audio and meta data (using a common, standard REST API for simple integration) to gain a 360-degree view of the customer.  
  3. Easily record calls centrally across all your distributed locations regardless of the varying telephony infrastructure and business/technical requirements from site to site - this helps management gain a single, integrated view of interaction quality and customer intelligence across teams and regions.
  4. Continuously improve features, functionality, security and interoperability from extensive peer reviews, iterations and enhancements from a global user community.
  5. Record calls using open source SIPREC, which requires configuration of only the traffic you need to record, is extremely scalable to thousands of concurrent calls and offers auto-provisioning of users.
  6. Run in parallel with any existing recording system so you do not have to disrupt your current audio capture environment while gaining much-needed interoperability and functionality. 

If your audio capture system cannot do one or several of these things, it may be time to take a look at OrecX. 

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Topics: call recording, call recording open source

Every Business Deserves Call Recording

Posted by Kevin Levi on May 13, 2014 10:58:00 AM

Every business deserves to have call recording software but not all can afford it. Call recording software helps companies across all industries improve customer service, minimize risk, verify orders and maintain compliance.    Many systems cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy, tens of thousands to implement and tens of thousands to maintain.  Not all systems do, however. Some call recording software is much more affordable, can be installed in just minutes and requires little if any maintenance.  These are the systems that every organization has a right to own. 

BillOfRights resized 600

In fact, there should be a Call Recording Bill of Rights to ensure every business has access to call recording software, as it has essentially become a business critical application today.

Bill of Rights:

  1. Call recording software shall be affordable enough that any business in need can easily acquire, install and maintain it.
  2. Call recording software shall be flexible enough to interoperate with any technology environment.
  3. Call recording software shall be installed remotely or onsite.
  4. Call recording software shall require little, if any, maintenance and support.
  5. Call recording software shall feature at the least voice/screen recording, quality monitoring and mobile call recording.
  6. Call recording software shall be open source or open architecture to ensure full interoperability with existing systems.
  7. Call recording software shall cost nothing or almost nothing to customize and tailor to one’s environment.
  8. Call recording software shall be offered as a free trial prior to purchase.
  9. Call recording software shall be interoperable with leading PBX systems – both TDM and VoIP – such as Avaya, Cisco and others.
  10. Call recording software shall be both PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliant.
  11. Call recording software shall be installed in hours, not days, weeks or months.
  12. Call Recordings shall be portable and available in industry-standard file format.
  13. Call recording software should be easy enough to learn in just a few hours.
  14. All call recording software advanced features shall be available in all product levels - no feature stripping for basic offerings.

While call recording is obviously not a right, we at OrecX we believe it should be. 

ebook: Who Benefits  from Call Recording?

Topics: call center recording, call recording system, call center software open source, call recording, call recording open source, compliance recording

Podcast: Flexible Call Recording Solutions for SMB

Posted by Kevin Levi on Apr 21, 2014 12:42:00 PM

Video posted by Sangoma.

Topics: call recording, call recording open source

Hosted PBX System vs. Premise-based System

Posted by Kevin Levi on Apr 18, 2014 10:37:00 AM

describe the imageThere are multiple factors to consider when moving away from your existing phone system to a new IP telephony system. One of the most important decisions to make is choosing the right PBX system, and taking into consideration the company’s IT and business practices.

The implementation and future growth of the business or organization depends on an important decision you need to make at the start: you need to choose between hosted PBX and a premise-based system. The latter means you will have the company’s PBX system physically located at arm’s length, which also means full control, while the former means your PBX is hosted by an external service provider.

While there are a couple of factors that come into play, we will focus on costs and unique features that will help you choose the right PBX system. 

In the long run, cost is one of the most important factors to consider. While it’s obvious that the initial setup costs of a hosted solution will not be as high as an on-site solution, there are factors that will influence the bill in the future, such as maintenance costs.

A hosted PBX offers lower setup costs and no maintenance costs, as these costs are shouldered by the service provider. Premise-based PBX systems have higher setup costs, but potentially lower ongoing costs (the maintenance costs); however, it’s risky, because you never know how technological change will affect your existing equipment.

Besides saving you money and offering scalability, hosted PBX services come with different features and packages, such as voice recording, click-to-call widgets, voicemail to email, and performance tracking, just to name a few.

Call recording increases company productivity and helps the company to better evaluate sales people's performance. The recorded conversation can be easily downloaded with the help of an active Internet connection.

With a click-to-call widget, companies can take advantage of another way to get in touch with their customers, as a call can be initiated simply by clicking a widget that appears on the screen.

With growth being the keyword for every business, performance is an essential factor that needs to be measured, and a hosted PBX allows exactly that via reports that track calls, their length, and other important details.

After taking into consideration all the advantages of hosted PBX systems, one difficult question still remains: since more and more companies are providing such services, which one should you choose?

In order to make the best decision, here some of the most important things to consider: integration, reliability, support, and finally, the features included in the service package.

What separates Digitcom from others is the company’s 20 years of experience in the business. Digitcom has grown to become the leading provider of hosted PBX, and has won numerous awards over the years, including the prestigious CDN Top 100 Solution Providers of 2011, 2012 and 2013 three years in a row.

For more information on hosted PBX systems and to learn more about Digitcom, please visit www.digitcom.ca.

Topics: call recording, call recording open source, digitcom

Open Source Call Recording?

Posted by Kevin Levi on Mar 20, 2013 1:31:00 PM

describe the imageCall recording systems are becoming more and more of a business necessity today than a nice-to-have. Organizations need such tools to ensure highly levels of customer service, to minimize risk and to maintain regulatory/industry compliance. The problem, however, is that call recording software tends to be expensive, complex, maintenance-intensive and proprietary. These hurdles keep many companies from installing call recording systems.

 

An alternative to standard proprietary systems is to download open source call recording code and build it out to meet your specific needs.  OrecX offers such software and it can be found here.  Oreka GPL is an open source recording system for capture and retrieval of voice. Its primary application is for recording calls from VoIP telephony systems via port mirroring. It runs on both Linux and Windows. Recording can be distributed on several recorders, all reporting to the same database and Web User Interface. It supports several database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and MS-SQL.

Oreka is a modular and cross-platform system for recording and retrieval of audio streams. The project currently supports VoIP and sound device based capture. Recordings metadata can be stored in any mainstream database. Retrieval of captured sessions is web based.

If your business does not yet have a voice recording system – or if you have one but it is not meeting your needs, then an open source audio recorder is something you should seriously consider.

 

Download Oreka GPL  

 

Topics: orecx, call center software open source, call recording, call recording open source, Open source call center software

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