Companies today, large and small, and spanning virtually every industry vertical across the world are recording customer calls for a variety of reasons. Most notably, they capture and store these conversations to protect themselves from liability (i.e. lawsuits, disputes, compliance infractions) and to measure customer service levels. OrecX’s total call recording software suite offers solutions for all of these (and many other) challenges.
A recent OrecX survey found the following as the primary reasons why businesses and organizations record calls (total call recording and selective recording) today:
Additional Reasons: Quotes from Survey Respondents
OrecX’s call recording software (VoIP recording, TDM recording, cloud recording, mobile recording) solutions can help your organization meet all of these needs.
Oreka TR (Total Call Recording) captures 100% of customer calls and retains them for later recall and replay when/if necessary. This robust and infinitely scalable total call recording solution is ideal for settling disputes, maintaining compliance, and verifying orders. Based on an open source core, Oreka TR features a REST API and is interoperable with virtually any other system. The system costs about half the price of competing solutions and offers centralized management, remote site recording, auto-tagging of pre-selected keywords/phrases, is operating system agnostic (Linux or Windows), runs on commercial off-the-shelf hardware (COTS), HTML-based GUI and exports to standard file formats.
Oreka CR (Cloud Recording) is a cloud-based, OrecX-hosted recording solution, which is implemented literally within minutes via simple IP Address provisioning.
Oreka CR supports IETF Standard SIPREC and provides all of the functionality of our primary recording solution, Oreka TR, without the need for installation, an onsite server or ongoing maintenance.
This solution is the only call recorder featuring OWASP Level 2 protection (web application security).
Oreka SC (Screen Capture) records the screen activity of contact center agents, sales people and customer support personnel. Video is automatically combined and synchronized with the accompanying audio (agent and customer) and played back in an integrated manner as the interaction occurred. With this complete picture of what took place during a call, supervisors can identify workflow breakdowns, ensure agent process adherence, prove compliance procedures are being followed, ensure maximum desktop navigational efficiency and identify any unauthorized behavior (using Facebook, e.g.).
Oreka QM (Quality Monitoring) records a sampling of calls per agent or group for the purpose of assessing service performance. Call evaluation forms and reports enable supervisors to evaluate agents and even attach recordings right to the form, providing very specific feedback and coaching to agents. This solution offers fully customizable evaluation questionnaires, detailed reporting capabilities, form level summaries, calibration tables, section/question-level details and filters reports by date, groups/departments, agents and managers/supervisors. This can be a standalone product or seamlessly integrated with Oreka TR.
Oreka MR (Mobile Recording) is fully integrated with the Oreka TR platform and captures both inbound and outbound mobile calls. Audio is recorded in real time, and no new infrastructure is required at all.
Several recording methods are available, including using a VoIP softphone via 3G/4G on the handsets, conferencing the recording system as a PSTN number, working with a mobile-ready infrastructure, or using AT&T network based cellular voice recording (works with any handset).
Oreka TR SIPREC Recording
Oreka TR SIPREC Recording uses a SIP protocol for call recording, based on IETF standards, and it establishes an active recording session and reporting of the metadata of the session. OrecX supports SIPREC Recording for many telephony platforms. SIPREC recording is highly efficient (configure only the traffic you need to record), extremely scalable (thousands of concurrent calls), allows for auto-provisioning of users (much easier to administrate) and offers a much lower total cost of ownership. Oreka SR is also beneficial to service providers as it provides easier call recording system deployment, concurrent call capture, and auto-provisioning of customer interaction data. Today, OrecX arms over 100 service providers with SIPREC Recording.
This quote from one of our surveys says it best with regard to which positions inside an organization benefit most from recording customer calls:
“Call recording is a tool that can benefit every department. Each department may have a different perspective or way they contribute towards the customer experience and how they measure progress, but the goal for each department should be the same: to adhere to business values and overall objectives. For example, what a customer service manager is looking to occur over the phone is very different than what a CEO or sales manager may want to focus on. Each perspective, skill, and role they play builds and improves the “customer experience”. But, they are all working towards the same end goal. The key is understanding the tools available to them so that they can leverage ALL of the intelligence within their call recordings efficiently.”
(Call Center Professional, via LinkedIn)
By recording your conversations with customers using a total call recording solution, you are generating invaluable intellectual capital, which you can use to assess the customer experience, ensure compliance (PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, MiFID II, etc.), resolve disputes, verify orders and even uncover critical sales and marketing intelligence. In fact, recorded customer calls can add value to almost every area of your business.
A recent OrecX survey found the following positions within an organization benefiting most from a call recorder:
Job Description: Responsible for the daily running and management of the center, for meeting customer service targets, and identifying areas of improvement or development.
Motivation: Run a smooth call center with high performing agents, high first call resolution (FCR) rate, high customer service levels, and a low average handle time (AHT).
Scenario: Cliff is compensated strictly on two metrics – FCR and AHT – and as such, he monitors these numbers on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. He is pretty fanatical about the numbers, but it is understandable as his compensation is directly tied to them.
Using the company’s call recorder software, Cliff set up an automatic report that runs on his desktop, which shows in real time the call center’s FCR and AHT rates. The report also tells him which agents are far above and far below his pre-set performance thresholds (i.e. the outliers) so he can reward and/or incentivize accordingly to keep the numbers on an upward trajectory.
Cliff is hopeful he will receive his biggest bonus check to date at this year’s awards dinner.
Job Description: Handle incoming tech support calls from customers.
Motivation: Jasper’s team of call center agents are incentivized by their individual monthly first call resolution scores. The higher the score, the higher the financial incentive.
Scenario: Jasper is a motivated, young, tech support specialist, who is very eager to achieve the highest levels of first call resolution so he can earn some much-needed extra cash.
In addition to reviewing a few calls each week with his quality supervisor, Jasper asks for access to all of his call recordings so he can go back and learn from each one. He makes it a practice of listening to at least 5 calls each week and takes notes on what he did right and wrong, to better support future customers and successfully resolve their issues.
After three months of doing this, Jasper’s FCR score jumps 9%. He is handsomely rewarded with a $900 bonus. He uses the money to help buy a used car so he can stop taking the bus to work.
Job Description: Responsible for monitoring and assessing agent performance to identify strengths and weaknesses.
Motivation: Her bonus at the end of the quarter is tied to the call center’s improvement in customer service scores.
Scenario: Tanya is responsible for the ongoing assessment of two teams of call center agents, totaling 16. She listens to a sampling of calls each week from each agent and scores them on various metrics – first call resolution, proper greeting, resolution handling, pleasantness, up-selling, etc. She then has one-on-one discussions with each agent each week to review their quality scores and share best practices for immediate improvement.
Tanya uses the company’s call recorder and quality monitoring applications to facilitate her job. Without them, she wouldn’t have the tools necessary to assess interactions nor share proper feedback with the agents.
At the end of Q1, the company’s customer service score jumped 4%. She receives a nice bonus and is thrilled about it.
Motivation: Wants to have a pleasant phone experience and likes the idea of having the call recorded so he can ask the company to pull up his past call to verify what was said – if necessary.
Scenario: Jeremy calls his cable company about the high cost of his monthly bill. It is about $22 higher than usual. The agent quickly realizes the heightened cost is due to Jeremy’s recent approval of adding Showtime to his account. The agent claims the records show that on a date 32 days earlier, Jeremy agreed to add the premium channel while on the phone with a representative of the cable company who called to sell him on it. He asked for that call to be accessed and listened to. It was, and it was determined he in fact declined the service. His account was credited in full.
Job Description: Responsible for the customer-service strategy of the organization. This person sets the agenda for how the company interacts with customers.
Motivation: Wants to ensure customers are receiving the stellar experience they deserve so they keep coming back and refer others.
Scenario: Steve is one of those VPs of Customer Service that really is all about the customer. He cares deeply in his company’s reputation and prides himself on the organization’s consistent 94% customer satisfaction rating. He isn’t shy about throwing the lofty number around at company meetings, customer lunches and even cocktail receptions with his wife and friends.
Steve and his customer service department already use contact center call recording, screen recording and quality monitoring software to assess call-center agent performance and identify best-practice calls to highlight at the team’s weekly meeting. His supervisors also use the system daily to evaluate agents and identify areas for improvement.
He knows his company’s reputation depends largely on how well his agents satisfy his customers’ needs, and he is committed to ensuring his front-line agents acquire the skills they need. The call recording software the company uses serves as the basis for understanding this.
Job Description: Responsible for setting corporate compliance policy and ensuring all staff adhere to relevant governmental, industry and corporate regulations and policies.
Motivation: Ensure all staff comply with all relevant regulations to keep the organization from incurring costly infractions.
Scenario: Wellington is a former corporate attorney and knows the company’s regulatory environment quite well. Of late, the company has been receiving many complaints and lawsuit threats from customers about the organization’s handling of private information.
He works with the call center manager, Tom, to find out what’s going on. Tom takes a sampling of calls in which credit card information was collected and listens to those interactions. He then shares them with Wellington who also listens. They both discover the issue right away.
The call center agents’ current workflow when taking credit card information is not optimal. It requires agents to dual-populate the credit card number. To do this properly, agents are opening up the Notepad app on their desktop and typing the number in there so they can re-enter it on a later screen. This type of mishandling of personally identifiable information leaves the company vulnerable. Wellington institutes corporate policy to change this right away. Soon thereafter, the number of complaints and lawsuit threats declines dramatically.
Job Description: Responsible for the direction and management of all sales and business development operations, and for driving customer acquisition and sales revenue.
Motivation: Wants to increase sales revenue and bring in more new customers.
Scenario: Cliff is one of those heads of Sales that cares about one thing – keeping his current customers happy so they renew their annual subscriptions each year. This alone keeps the company’s revenues healthy. With a recent drop in renewals, Cliff knew he had to do something, so he enacted an offer of 90 days of free machine maintenance if the client renews his/her annual contract. He has the call center agents dialing out to existing customers to make the offers.
Jeff is running a recurring report from the call recording system that shows him how many customers were offered the free maintenance and how many accepted and renewed. He’s using this intelligence to assess the campaign’s success. Cliff also periodically listens to calls to see how customer react to the offer. He’s also contemplating running two offers simultaneously and using a similar report to measure which does better.
Jeff likes having a direct line of site to customers when running these renewal campaigns. It lets him make necessary changes quickly.
Job Description: Responsible for developing and executing a clearly defined marketing and communications strategy in support of sales and market-share growth.
Motivation: Wants to intimately understand the needs and concerns of the organization’s customers in order to better target and engage them.
Scenario: Diane has been with the company for several years but only recently was promoted to the top marketing position. She wants to take a very customer-centric approach to establishing a dialog with prospects and first needs to better understand what drives their decision making. To get this inside perspective on the company’s target customer, she takes the time to listen in on 50 calls (live monitoring) over a two-week period. She selects 12 new order calls, 13 cancellation calls, 12 successful up-sell calls and 12 product support calls.
By listening to 50 customers in all of these different capacities, she learns several things:
She works with product development to fix these issues right away and then embarks on a campaign to communicate to customers the company’s commitment to product and service excellence. Two months later she listens to another 50 calls and sees that things are already starting to turn around.
As a business process outsourcer (BPO), you are taking over a critical role your clients cannot manage on their own or don’t want to handle any longer. Therefore, you are under enormous pressure to over-perform each and every dayor you risk losing business.
With the help of the right total call recorder, screen recording and quality monitoring software in your arsenal, you stand a far greater chance of satisfying (if not wowing) your clients. But first you need to pick the right solution(s) to fit your specific business requirements, which can be dramatically different from other types of businesses.
In short, you need solutions that offer:
When you record calls you must be cognizant of potential regulations you might fall under which can impact your ability to record and store interactions. In fact, here the results of a recent survey we conducted on the most concerning regulations to contact center professionals:
Here are some tips for maintaining compliance with these types of regulations:
As a debt collection agent or agency, you fall under the auspices of many regulations, including:
You also face potential consumer-driven personal lawsuits claiming the agency did not accurately introduce/represent themselves or the agent was misleading in the information given about the debt.
Some of the many mandates these laws stipulate include:
In the United States alone, over 700 lawsuits are filed every month against collections agencies.
The easy answer to abiding by all of these regulations is to make sure your agents are doing what they are supposed to do. Call recording software that will capture every single call your agents are involved in and store it for you to recall later.
You can recall any call regarding and can search through the database of recorded calls according to agent name, customer, date, phone number, time of day and so on. Search queries are customizable so you can be sure to get your hands on that very specific call you need to settle a dispute, demonstrate an issue to an agent, and so on.
A nice add-on to compliance recording software is screen recording software which integrates with the call recorder to also capture the agent’s screen activity during every interaction. You can easily identify compliance infractions or errors of any kind and quickly address them so no further violation occurs.
In the world of debt collections, supervisors, lawyers, agents and even payers have something to gain from call recording software!
Supervisors
Have a record of every interaction to access if necessary.
Can use best-practice calls for training new or under-performing agents.
Can listen to calls to identify issues or infractions by struggling agents.
Lawyers
If litigation arises, they have a legal record of the interaction in question to thwart a lawsuit or penalty.
If necessary, a lawyer could replay the call in question during testimony for slam-dunk evidence.
Agents
Can listen to other, more successful agents’ calls to learn how to improve their own collection rate.
As a protection measure, a call in question can be accessed in which the consumer claimed harassment from the collector.
Payers
If a dispute arises, the consumer can ask for the debt collector to replay the specific interaction.
Recording customer calls can provide sales value in a variety of ways, including:
What if your contact center representatives could tag calls in which the customer said things like:
Wouldn’t those calls give you invaluable customer insight into your buyers’ wants and needs, which you could then use when selling to other prospects?
Improve Sales Skills by Monitoring Agent Interaction Performance
There is no better way to learn how well your phone-based staff is performing than to listen to your agents interacting with customers. You can then measure how well each sales person is:
Bring Others up to Speed on Sales Deals Easily
In B2B selling in particular, we often see an inside sales person handling the initial out reach call to a prospect, with the goal of setting up an appointment for the more senior sales rep to follow-up. What happens typically is the inside sales rep has the initial call and then relays pertinent details to the account executive via email or phone. This approach is less than ideal and often important details are left out in the transfer of information.
By sharing a recording of the initial prospect call, the account executive can here first hand what the prospect said word-for-word.
This exciting approach to sales communication is not necessarily new but hardly ubiquitously adopted. By recording inside sales call you can take your sales department to new heights – a level that your competitors haven’t likely risen to yet.
In a recent survey by CMO.com, Chief Marketing Officers revealed some of their most pressing challenges. Not surprisingly, things like “asking the right questions” and “understanding our customers” ranked near the top of the list.
With businesscall recording and the capture of corresponding agent screen activity, you can derive insights into the minds of your customers and prospects in the areas of:
Think of how valuable this insight would be to your marketing team for creating new campaigns to derive sales leads.
Uncover Critical Customer Insight
In order to ensure your marketing team is garnering value from recorded customer calls, instruct your call center agents to ask customers/callers the following two questions:
When this information is uncovered during the interaction, the marketing team can listen to the call recording and derive the intelligence it needs to better understand key buying drivers.
Consider segmenting calls by: