There
are lots of reasons why recording your calls can be good
for your business
An
increasing number of companies are recognizing the benefits
of recording calls regardless of business size. Historically,
call recording has been a high end application for call centres
and financial institutions such as brokers where high-value
transactions or a high volume of business is key.
Comvurgent PBX-2-USB technology is breaking new ground,
delivering fully digital high quality call recording for
individuals and businesses at a price affordable for all.
With low cost PC mass storage, archive of calls and user
friendly call retrieval software, the question should be
'Why shouldn't I record every call?'
Is
it legal?
In the United States call recording is regulated at
both Federal and State level. Requirements vary on
a state by state basis. Click
here to view guidance
on a State by State level. The relevant Federal Law
is 18 USC Sec 2511. State laws also apply - Click
Here for more.
There
are four fundamental reasons why an organization may wish
to record their telephone calls:
- Improve customer service
- Record transactions of value
- Comply with industry regulations
- Increase security & avoid
abuse
Some industries are required by legislation to record
their telephone calls (such as certain financial institutions
or premium rate services), others may be transacting a
high value of business over the telephone and wish to record
these transactions for playback in the case a customer
dispute occurs. Whatever your primary purpose, there are
always secondary spin-off benefits. We have listed some
of the primary reasons and benefits for each of the four
main applications below:
Improving Customer Service
A large number of companies have a team of individuals
whose primary purpose is to deal with customers over the
telephone. Often the telephone is the only communications
exposure a customer has with an organisation. It is also
true that individuals within any one organisation often
vary greatly in their effectiveness when dealing with customers,
this effectiveness translates to revenue, margin and profits.
The great benefit of recording calls in a customer service
situation is to allow the sharing of the telephone experience
across the customer services team. It may be that one particular
team member has a better closure ratio or is better at
up-selling than the others. It may be that one team member
has better empathy with a customer complaint and therefore
convinces that customer to stay or even buy more as a result
of being satisfied. There are many varied situations where
positive sharing of best practice is very beneficial.
Call Recording is also a superb tool to allow a supervisor
to review the performance of a team member and to listen
to specific calls with a view to grading or offering assistance
and advice for further improvement. Often telephone-based
staff are on some sort of commission structure, so the
concept of self or supervisor related improvement is to
the benefit of both parties if more, higher margin sales
are made as a result.
Call Recording can be critical for new employees, especially
as there is often a pressure to complete induction training
quickly and get them on the phones.
Call Recording can be seen as 'Big Brother', team members
will undoubtedly change some aspects of their telephone
behaviour as a result of implementing call recording and
you may even see an increase in productivity to cover the
investment for this reason alone, but it's also important
to respect staff privacy and their expectations to privacy,
so we recommend that you inform your staff why you are
implementing a recording system (emphasise the benefits
to them) and allow staff to be able to make or take the
occasional personal call (dependant upon your own policy)
on a telephone that is not recorded.
Recording Transactions
We may not all appreciate it, but most of us undertake
important high-value transactions over the telephone. It
may vary from a simple in principal gentlemen's agreement,
the giving of professional advice or the formal placement
of an order using our credit card.
You may wish to recall conversations for any of the following
reasons:
- Confirmation - You simply wish to
go over the detail discussed again before formally documenting
an arrangement. We can't be expected to remember or take
notes on everything when we're engaged in conversation.
Call recording is ideal to step back through the conversation
to make sure our documentation covers the 'spirit' of
theagreement and that we haven't missed anything out.
- Dispute Resolution -
We all have experiences where we made a verbal telephone
order and didn't get
exactly what we asked for. Most of us unfortunately know
someone who will always seek compensation in every situation
and will often be successful due to the 'Customer is
always right' principal. Recording the transaction allows
rapid identification & replay of the original order,
if your organisation was in the wrong, you need to know
and sort the cause before it happens again. If you were
right, you simply need to prove you performed as requested
and avoid expensive compensation and loss of reputation,
either way your company benefits and you may well find
that just in dispute resolution alone, your call recording
solution is financially justified.
- Sharing Calls With Colleagues -
If you've just finished a fantastic call with your
biggest
customer and you want to share the positive experience & detail
with your colleagues, recording and emailing the call
in a wav format is a superb way of getting their attention
and excitement.
You may also simply wish to pass on a message without
writing it down, in which case, record the message and
email it!.
Industry Regulations Compliance
This application is very specific to certain industries
that are mandated by their governing bodies to record calls.
It may be a legal obligation or part of a voluntary code
of practice for respected industry affiliates.
A growing number of financial services industries are
mandated to record calls. Medical and legal advice lines
are also primary targets due to the high levels of compensation
involved where 'professional advice' given is reported
to be at fault. Insurers who provide professional indemnity
insurance may insist calls are recorded in order to lower
insurance premiums.
Premium rate telephone services are regulated in many
countries as the caller needs to be aware of the growing
cost of extended calls and generally cannot be seen to
be encouraged to stay on the call for an extended period.
Most businesses where mandated find positive reasons for
the equipment once implemented.
Increase
Security & Avoid Abuse
In these times of increased security, the telephone isoften
the communication medium threats are made, this is simply
because the threatening party can remain virtually anonymous
and distant from the person or organisation they are trying
to affect.
Large commercial organisations are becoming the target
for security alerts as the threatening party may simply
be seeking to disrupt normal lives and generate inconvenience.
There is also an increasing trend of public workers (such
as teachers, benefit workers etc.) being verbally abused
by callers who feel they are being unfairly treated or
simply don't agree with the conclusions your organisation
may have reached concerning them. In addition, staff can
be harassed by outside callers or even internally by other
staff and it is becoming the employers obligation to protect
employees from malicious calls.
Recording calls in this situation has
two benefits, it allows the abused employee to highlight
the level of severity
of the call and also may help prove who the caller was,
or that the call was genuine abuse and not harmless banter. |
