ORECX CALL RECORDING BLOG

Mobile phone recording software is designed to help businesses (particularly financial, insurance, doctors, real estate professionals, lawyers, etc.) capture their employees' work-related telephone calls in order to monitor for customer service, compliance, dispute resolution, order verification and so on. With recent FSA mobile phone recording regulations in the UK, more and more businesses in the U.S. are considering mobile recording software for all company-issued cell phones.

How many times have you taken a business call while out to lunch?  If your salespersons or customer service people or even your stock brokers are taking such calls, wouldn't it be nice to have access to those call recordings if a dispute were to arise, for example?  This is just one example of the tremendous value mobile phone recording software can provide to your business.

Below is a list of criteria to consider when deciding which mobile recording software to purchase:

What am I going to use this software for?

• Assess the performance of my customer service staff?
• Monitor the compliance and customer service of my sales and support people?  
• Ensure medical staff or financial personnel are not accidentally sharing personally identifiable information over the phone, e.g.?
• Capture and store calls for dispute resolution purposes?  If a customer claims he/she never authorized a credit card charge, you can pull the call and play it back for them to show they did in fact provide the necessary verbal approval.

Who do I want to monitor?

• Salespeople?
• Customer service/facing employees?
• Medical staff?
• Insurance agents?
• Financial/mortgage brokers?
• Real estate agents?
• Accounting staff?
• At-home workers? (many mobile workers will use their work cell phone as their primary business line while working remotely - even at home)

How easy is it going to be to implement the mobile recording software solution and get up and running with capturing mobile phone calls?

• Can the software capture both inbound and outbound calls? It better be able to.
• Are mobile call recordings treated the same as landline/VoIP calls? They should be.
• Does the system need to route calls off of the mobile network?  It shouldn't have to.
• Can the recording software handle landline, mobile and VoIP calls all in the same system?  It should be able to.

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.