ORECX CALL RECORDING BLOG

We hear all the time that small businesses comprise the backbone of the U.S. economy. The truth might be even more staggering than you think: According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses make up 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms and are responsible for roughly half of the country’s economic output. What’s more, the SBA’s Office of Advocacy reports that small firms accounted for 63 percent of the net new jobs created between 1993 and mid-2013, with small firms in the 20-499 employee category leading in job creation.

And while small businesses may operate in a variety of different industry segments, what nearly all of them have in common is this: They have customers who call into their business, customers who require service, customers who provide the business with their source of profits. Is there a way to capture these important calls – to ensure that customer service representatives are performing properly, that customers are being provided with the highest level of service, and that the business is operating at its optimal capacity?

The answer is a resounding “yes,” through the power of call recording software.

As a small business owner or manager, it might be intimidating to think about a complex call/screen recording system, one that requires costly installation fees and hours and hours of training. It doesn’t have to be that way. Today, there are solutions that:

• Are economically affordable: Can be purchased for a little as (believe it or not) several hundred dollars.
• Don’t require technical expertise: Anyone can remotely install, operate, or manage the solution, with no special technical expertise or training required.
• Don’t need ongoing maintenance:  There’s no need for costly maintenance or troubleshooting.
• Can be up and running in less than (really!) 30 minutes.

For small businesses, call recording can offer peace of mind – not only that the quality of service you provide is top-notch but also that you are complying with any regulatory (such as PCI and HIPAA) requirements. That’s a vitally important capability, especially because fines for violations of these requirements can be financially crippling for small businesses.

Small businesses aren’t like large enterprises – and the needs they have for a call recording solution vary as well. If you’re ready to look into a call recording solution, make sure you take into account the following questions when selecting a provider for your enterprise:

1. Is the solution designed for a company of my size?
2. Will I have to pay for features really designed for a larger organization?
3. Can the solution scale to support my company’s growth?
4. Does the call recording vendor have experience with businesses in my industry?
5. Can the solution address my specific industry and regulatory requirements?

As a small business there really is no need to wait any longer.  Call recording solutions exist today that won’t break the bank and will provide you with the capabilities you need at a low total cost of ownership.

On LinkedIn across various contact center groups I asked the question: "Is call recording necessary?".  I received some very insightful responses that I wanted to share.  Here they are:

A good starting point would be for the Call Center org to answer these questions? Are every single 1 of our Agents the best they can be without any Supervisor being able to play a Call Recording back to the Agent to Coach them into becoming better? Do you have proof that an Agent could be stealing company time by dragging out calls far beyond the time they should be? Do you have protection from an Angry Consumer that turns into a she said/he said scenario & they want a refund/chargeback or complaint to the BBB, FTC or any other organization that could be detrimental to your company? (By JA)

Call Recording is one of the most basic tenets of any quality management program. Aside from fulfilling any compliance requirements tied to proof of purchase/enrollment, or cancellation, call recordings provide a quality team with the ability to monitor the customer interactions and how well the agents are serving (or selling) customers. I believe call recording is a best-in-class functionality that should be deployed to augment live call monitoring for any call center quality management initiative. Beyond simply finding agents that aren't doing well, recordings of "great calls" can be a useful training tool as well. (By JK)

I do a lot of work in the area of quality management and believe it is critical to record calls to engage agents and provide them with a means of contributing to their own learning and development. It is the only coaching method that allows for self assessment. Listening to calls with agents provides an opportunity to not only review and enhance agent orientation,  skills and knowledge but also explore customer behavior and needs. It provides a collaborative forum for teaching representatives how to interpret and apply company processes, procedures and policy in the context of a customer interaction to develop critical thinking and problem solving capabilities. When sales representatives are given the opportunity to review and deconstruct calls, our experience has shown that they become more adept at hearing verbal cues and clues and understanding the buyer's motivation. This results in better call control, more relevant, customer-focused dialogue and increased sales. Additionally recorded calls can be leveraged to assess organizational performance. Literally the 'Voice of the Customer' can be used to demonstrate to other stakeholders within the company - Sales, Marketing, Compliance, IT, Training, HR even the C-suite - what's working and what's not from a customer perspective. This is particularly powerful when speech analytics are used to quantify the magnitude of an issue and the potential impact to the organization. (By JF) 

Recording calls is critical to the success of the organization. Listening to calls with agents regardless of experience level always provides learning opportunities in a safe environment. Employee engagement is another key part , agents who contribute to the "Library of Recorded Calls" become advocates for the QA team....(By JM)

The time is right for you to seriously consider going after the real estate and legal verticals.  According to Heavy Reading, these industries are the most primed right now for business VoIP services. 

Wouldn't it be great if you had something really distinguishing among your offerings to make you stand out from the competition?  That something extra is a call recording system - a logical extension to your other business VoIP services.

Call recording can be a simple add-on service to your existing portfolio that you could very easily turn on or off for existing or new clients.  Think about the possibilities.  You would be able to:

• Upsell existing customers
• Strengthen your value proposition
• Extend your reach into real estate, legal and other markets
• Differentiate your business from other business VoIP providers
• Grow your business-VoIP practice
• Expand your footprint among SOHO/SMB businesses

Call Recording for Real Estate SOHOs/SMBs

Real estate professionals conduct a lot of business over the telephone, and new call recording capabilities will enable them to show proof of compliance (if necessary), verify what was said during a conversation, help resolve "he-said-she-said" disputes and more. Both commercial and residential brokers will have an easy-to-access record of every call they make so they can easily pull a conversation and play it back to also verify something they may have forgotten.  Often times a deal can be lost by a broker who simply forgot to do something important.  Recorded calls help agents avoid these mistakes and keep their clients happy and on board.

With the right call recording solution in your business VoIP arsenal, you will also empower your customers with the ability to search through their recorded calls for all conversations associated with a specific agent or customer or time of day. Think about how powerful and useful that will be to their business.

Call Recording for Legal SOHOs/SMBs

Lawyers and legal associates spend over 75 percent of their time on the phone with clients and their representatives.  With the ability to record client calls, law offices can maintain compliance, resolve disputes, document litigation discussions, verify fee agreements with clients, maintain case continuity between phone-based and non-phone-based conversations, and so much more.

Law firms can monitor how compliant their legal clerks and administrative teams are on the phone and easily identify and fix any problems or skill gaps.

Recorded calls are also a great way for legal firms to keep track of billable time on the phone with a client or when speaking with someone on their behalf.  It is often times very easy to underestimate (or overestimate) how much time was spent on the phone, without an accurate record to refer back to.

Again, like with real estate, the right call recording solution enables your customers

 to search and locate specific conversations associated with a particular case, for example.  This can be extremely powerful for legal entities.

Finding the Right Call Recording System

You want a call recording system that fits easily and seamlessly into your existing communications environment, is easy to use, and quick to turn on/off for customers.  You also want a solution you don't have to maintain or troubleshoot, and for the real estate and legal industries in particular, you need a Total Recording (100 percent audio/screen capture) software product that records both the voices of the two parties, and the screen of your employee.

Recording customer calls can be a nice to have and it can also be a necessity to help protect you from relevant legislation. For example, did you know that with the Truth in Lending Act, there are a number of pieces of information that must be disclosed during a customer call?

• "amount financed"
• "total of payments"
• Annual percentage rate
• Finance charge
• Schedule of payments

This is just one example of a law that sets mandates on what must be said over the phone.  Infractions can be quite costly to the organization in violation.

A number of businesses choose to capture all customer calls (compliance recording) and mine them to ensure agents are saying the proper things (or not saying certain things) during such conversations with customers. These recorded calls can also be used to settle a claim against a company who has been cited by a customer for violating behavior associated with one of these laws. 

Here's another example. 

Did you know that with the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), telemarketers are required by law to:

• Include on voicemails a toll-free number that the consumer can call to place an opt-out request? 
• Tell the absolute truth - not even little white lies about product capabilities and features are allowed

Just imagine if you had hundreds of agents a day violating such stipulations?  The resulting penalties could be huge.

A good practice for your organization is to capture agents' calls with customers to quality check whether your employees are following the correct protocols to ensure proper compliance.

There are a number of laws in the U.S. that have similar stipulations that your organization should be aware of. These include, but are not limited to:

• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) - credit card numbers need to be kept hidden from unauthorized staff
• Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) - an "opt-out" must be included on voicemails
• Truth in Lending Act (TILA) - several disclosures must be stated during the call so that borrowers are made clearly aware of all costs and terms associated with the credit (e.g. is there a prepayment penalty?)
• Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) - debt collectors must identify themselves as collectors in every communication, and collectors must notify the consumer of their right to dispute the debt
• Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act (HIPPA) - personally identifiable information must be kept hidden from unauthorized employees
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) - requires organizations to design and maintain standards to protect customer information

The best thing to do for your organization if you feel there are some of these laws (or potentially others) that may impact your contact center operation is to consult with a lawyer who can research the most pertinent legislation.

The information presented in this post should not be considered legal advice.  It is intended to simply raise awareness of the potential for violating certain laws if your agents aren't abiding by relevant stipulations. 

Implementing a Compliance Recording (100 percent audio capture) solution can help protect your business from such infractions by enabling your supervisors to assess agents for proper behavior. This recording software can enable you to easily search, find and categorize recordings based on time or date of call, incoming phone number, outgoing phone number, agent ID, customer name, etc.