ORECX CALL RECORDING BLOG

Call center recording is a must-have today in the contact center.  These profit-driven organizations not only service and support customers (inbound) but many also proactively sell (outbound) the company's products and services.  These two critical business functions require certain tools in order to maintain a high level of customer service as well as ensure compliance (industry, regulatory and corporate).   

So now we know that every contact center needs call center recording and quality monitoring software, but with such high-cost solutions on the market, how can you afford it?  There are certain variables to take into account that will help you drive down the costs associated with call center recording (and quality monitoring).  They include:

1. Select an open-architecture software-based solution that lets you run the system on commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware.  This industry standard hardware is much more affordable than proprietary voice logging hardware.

2. Supply your own hardware/server.  Call center recording solution providers are not really in the business of selling hardware.  They are driven largely by their software revenue.  Many supply servers just to ensure a total solution, however, many also hike up the price a little so there's room for margin.  Go out and purchase the server on your own.

3. Pick a complete solution with no feature stripping - Pick a product that offers all of the features and functions you need without a bunch of add-on costs. Some call center recording companies offer a base version that really does nothing but audio capture.  They then charge you extra for every little piece of functionality (like call tagging, audit trails, PCI Compliance, multi-criteria searching, etc.), which significantly drives up your cost.  

4. Avoid installation costs - You should be able to purchase a call center recording solution and be able to install it yourself or have it done remotely without any additional costs.  Some call center recording companies charge thousands (or even tens of thousands) for the installation alone.

5. Rapid ROI is critical - The quicker you realize a return on your investment, the more affordable the solution becomes.  Pick a call center recording solution that installs in a day or less and has you up and recording calls within 24 hours.  This enables you to begin realizing significant value the same day, if not the same week.

6. Multiple pricing options - Be sure the vendor you select offers several pricing options, such as one-time-cost versus subscription-based.  There is often a savings if you choose one over the other.  Explore these and other options.

7. Zero maintenance required - You can actually find call center recording software that truly needs no maintenance or troubleshooting resources - really.  They do exist.  Find one of these solutions and let the software do it's job.  Put your other resources to work doing something else that's more strategic and value-add to the organization.

8. Open-API is a must - It's important that your call center recording software easily integrates with your PBX switch, CRM system, etc.  To ensure this smooth interoperability, be sure the solution you choose offers an easy-to-manage open API to help facilitate this integration.

By following these simple rules when selecting the call center recording product for your contact center, you stand a much greater chance of saving some of those ever-so-mission-critical dollars in your budget.

Call monitoring software can help your business easily and effectively identify operational issues within your call center that need attention.  It can also help you increase call center agent productivity and improve your customer service capabilities.  There is a lot of call monitoring software to choose from.  How do you know which one to buy?

Here is a list of criteria to consider when purchasing the right call monitoring software for your business.  Be sure the quality monitoring software you purchase aligns with your choices below:

What am I going to use this software for primarily?

• Assess the performance of my contact center agents?
• Identify process breakdowns in the customer interaction lifecycle?
• Understand the level of service my customers are receiving?
• Identify areas to improve operational performance and customer interaction workflow?

How interoperable is this software with my existing environment? 

• Will the software integrate seamlessly with my telephony/VoIP switch - e.g. Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, BroadSoft, MetaSwitch, etc.?
• Can this software run on my commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware, or do I need a special voice logger?
• Will I be able to pull external data from my CRM system through an API?

How difficult is it to customize the call monitoring software to my specific business needs?

• Can I customize the agent evaluation questionnaires with questions that make sense for my contact center?
• Can I change the look and feel of the solution to fit my specific brand?
• Is the software proprietary or open (ideally open source)?

How flexible are the reporting capabilities?

• Am I able to filter reports by date, groups, agents and managers?
• Can I generate customizable performance reports to enhance my decision making?
• Can I easily export and send the reports to agents and supervisors?
• Can I perform form-level summaries?
• Are there calibration tables? 

How easy is the software to learn and use? 

• Do my employees need hours of training to use the software?
• Can we learn to use the software effectively in just a few minutes?
• How quickly can I get new supervisors up and running on the software?

What does the installation process look like? 

• How long does it take to install the software?
• How long after the software is installed can we be using it effectively?
• Do we need on-site support for the installation?
• Can we handle the install ourselves?
• Do we have to wait a period of time (days or weeks) before we can gain the support we need for the installation?

These are merely some of the criteria you should consider when selecting the right quality monitoring software for your business. When choosing your product, think about these questions and ask the vendor for specifics on any other considerations you might have.  They should be forthright and open about any issues you bring to the table.

Businesses today - spanning almost every industry vertical - can benefit greatly from call recording in a variety of ways, including:

• Quality Management and Live Agent Monitoring – monitor and measure agent performance in order to identify and address areas in need of improvement, with a goal of increasing service levels
• Audit Trail and Multi-Criteria Call Searching – quickly and easily locate and access any past recording to settle he-said/she-said disputes
• Mobile Phone Recording – capture and monitor staff calls taking place outside of the office and/or after hours
• PCI, HIPAA Compliance - adhere to industry and governmental regulations for protecting personally identifiable information

Call recording is a natural extension to your other VoIP services and would be a nice addition to your portfolio of offerings. By offering call recording (and potentially quality monitoring) software, your services business will also enjoy a number of benefits.  You will be able to:

• Offer companies a broader set of services
• Provide your existing clients with more value
• Reach into new markets
• Grow your ARPU
• Differentiate yourself from other business VoIP providers
• Keep customers from going to other providers

While there are a variety of call recording/quality monitoring solutions to choose from, open source call center software installs in minutes and can be customized and branded to your business.  It is also more affordable than proprietary solutions and requires little to no maintenance.

Just think about how unique you would be as a business VoIP provider by offering call recording as a services along with your other offerings.  Check out your competition.  Almost none of them are yet offering call recording.  When you start doing so, you will be a pioneer and one of the very first.  Customers will see you as innovative and more of a full-service provider than your competitors.

You will be able to offer your customers more services, all under one roof, so they don't have to go elsewhere for what they need. 

Chances are you have already had customers ask you for call recording and you didn't know how to offer it to them, quickly, easily and profitably.  With OrecX call recording software you can!

The time is right to consider adding call recording and/or quality monitoring to your services portfolio.

Get started today! 

According to Forbes (May 2012) 81% of employees use at least one mobile device for business use.  What’s more, home-based workers are increasingly using their cell phone as their primary business line.  This includes telemarketers, inside-sales professionals, survey proctors, order takers, support technicians and so on.  Are you recording these calls like you do landline-based business conversations?

If your business does not capture business calls made over mobile phones, you can’t:

1. Settle a customer dispute by replaying the call

2. Verify customer orders

3. Monitor your staff for quality assurance

4. Ensure HIPAA, Truth in Lending, and PCI compliance

Recording for Compliance

In November of 2011, the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) imposed a federal law requiring all financial firms to record mobile business calls for compliance purposes.  FSA mobile phone recording already has many on Wall Street and beyond talking about such legislation coming to the U.S.  Many of these same U.S. firms are already jumping into mobile recording in anticipation of such impending U.S. law and also to ensure corporate compliance (such as ensuring traders follow corporate protocol when taking customer orders), like they do already with landline calls. 

Mobile-Phone Recording Technology

When contemplating which mobile recording software to implement, it is important to consider a recording system that can capture calls centrally and not just on the device itself.  If phones become damaged in the field, recordings would therefore be protected.  It is also important to employ a system that can seamlessly record calls on any type of mobile platform – from iPhone’s IOS to Blackberry and Android.  There is ubiquitous usage today of all three platforms by mobile workers.

Industry-Specific Recording Application

Different industries have different business needs when it comes to mobile call recording software.  Many firms already capture a sampling of staff/customer calls or every call.  Following is a breakdown of some of the different industry applications for mobile call recording software: 

Financial Services – Verify trades and other customer transactions; settle potentially costly customer disputes

Insurance – Verify what the insurance company pre-authorized in terms of coverage; settle potentially costly customer disputes

Hospitals – Ensure medical staff comply with regulations regarding patient privacy and medical records

Telecom and Consumer – Monitor staff to ensure quality/compliant customer interaction

These are only a sampling of industry applications.  Every vertical today can in fact make a case for recording mobile calls.  Regardless of your industry, mobile recording is certainly something you should begin considering for your business. 

In closing, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

“Do I record landline staff calls today?  If so, why don’t I also capture mobile-based business calls for the exact same reason?”  The rationale for recording both types of calls in your environment should be the same if you think about it.

If you capture a sampling of landline agent calls today to ensure quality customer interaction, for instance, why wouldn’t you do the same with your home-based agents that use their cell phone as their primary business line?  Likewise, if you record all office-based calls today made by your insurance agents (to ensure compliance and to settle he-said/she-said disputes, what about all of the other calls your agents make to the very same customers using their cell phones while outside of the office? 

With the overwhelming ubiquity of mobile phone use in business today, the time is right to look into mobile call recording software for your organization.

Call 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.