If you need a call recording system for your office, call centre or any other business application, how do you know you’re getting a good value service? Call recording services are usually bundled with VoIP phone systems, but it’s worth checking with your provider to ensure you’re getting the features you need.
A call recording system will record all inbound and outbound calls on an extension, securely capture each recording, convert it to voice data files and then securely store the files so they can be accessed when needed.
We’ve outlined the main features of an effective call recording system, which will help you to know if the call recording system that comes with your telephone system is fit for your purposes.
How are call recording systems used?
Being clear on how you’ll use your call recording system will help with choosing the right one and knowing which features are most important. The four main use cases are:
- Quality assurance (monitoring the quality of calls with your customers).
- Complaint management and dispute resolution.
- Training and coaching your front-line employees.
- Gathering business intelligence.
Quality assurance
A call centre recording systems is an essential item for quality assurance. When running a call centre, the business needs a way to monitor how well customer service agents are performing. In other business contexts, recording calls will be an important way to gather data on whether your customers are getting the right level of service.
Complaint management
Another use case that’s especially relevant for a call centre, recording systems can be used to securely record complaints and evidence for dispute resolution. This means complaints can be tracked and the facts of any dispute can always be verified, saving a lot of time and stress.
An effective call recording system can save time and stress.
Training
With a call recording system for your office, you can easily use real calls as examples for training purposes or offer individual employees coaching on how they manage calls. This isn’t only useful for customer service, it could also be used for sales or account management.
Gathering business intelligence
In all the phone calls made to and from your business every day, there’s a wealth of information that can be used to make your business more productive. Next generation call recording systems make it easy to find patterns, for example by analysing sentiment or identifying common themes and automatically tagging calls for review.
Essential call recording system features
Here are four features that are essential for any call recording system. These features will support the first three use cases above (quality assurance; complaints; training), though fully realising the benefits may be time consuming without the next generation features which are now available (more on these later).
1. Search functionality
If the system is recording a high volume of calls, which will be the case for a call centre recording system, it’s important to find specific calls when you need them. The most commonly used search parameters include:
- Inbound or outbound call
- Date and time
- Duration of call
- Employee name / phone number
- Customer name / phone number
You may also want the option to tag recordings according to your own criteria, to easily find specific recordings later.
2. Storage space
The amount of storage space you need for calls depends on the volume of calls and how long you need to keep them for. Most off-the shelf call recording systems offer storage on their platform for 30 to 90 days, so make sure what’s offered is sufficient for what you need. You can download the files if you need to keep them for longer, but you’ll need to make sure you have a process in place to do this. More flexible systems may offer unlimited storage, but this by no means standard.
Heliocentrix offers telephone packages that include call recording with both longer and shorter storage times to give you full choice and keep things easy.
3. Select which calls are recorded
Do you need all calls for all employees to be automatically recorded? Do you want each employee to initiate the call recording for themselves? Or a mixture, depending on their role? Many systems allow you to choose, so make sure your system offers what you need. We always walk through this with our customers, to ensure you end up with a system that’s fit for purpose.
4. Compliance
Any call recording system for your office will need to comply with relevant data protection laws and any industry specific regulations. For example, financial organisations must adhere to the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules, which require all calls to be recorded. Always check with providers about this before you buy. At Heliocentrix we discuss compliance requirements early so you know everything is covered.
Next generation call recording system features
These next four features go beyond what any legacy call recording system can do. When integrated as part of a hosted VoIP telephony system, these features save time, reduce costs and improve productivity across all the use cases mentioned above. They also unlock the business intelligence that’s hiding in your call data, without needing to spend lots of time and effort trawling through every recording.
5. Call transcription
Newer systems are now using AI to automatically generate transcripts of calls which can be reviewed by managers or copied into incident reports, for example apps like fireflies.ai. This makes the call information far more accessible, supports greater accuracy in sharing the details and allows operators to concentrate on the call instead of making notes. Automatic transcription also allows you to create automated business processes for call follow-up, posting transcripts to your CRM system, for example, or even drafting an email (based on a template) to be sent to the customer.
6. Pause recording
This may seem like an obvious feature, but not all call recording systems offer it. Newer systems, including those we offer our customers, enable individual call operators to pause the call recording when the caller is giving sensitive information like credit card details, for example. This makes it easier to comply with data protection legislation, not to mention giving your customers greater peace of mind.
7. Integration with unified communication systems
Working practices have changed and an effective VoIP phone system will now be integrated with a unified communications system that includes video calls, desk-handset calls, mobile calls and text chat services from wherever your people are working. If you want all your customer communication data in one place, choose a call recording system that works across your unified communication system, not one that only records phone calls or calls from office-based handsets.
Next generation call recording systems enable data capture across video, voice and text chats.
8. AI call analytics
Most of us are familiar with general call analytics like duration, volume, time to answer and conversion rate from calls. These are an essential part of a call recording system to gain insight on how your front-line teams are performing.
Some of the most powerful call recording systems available are now using AI to analyse calls in real-time. Automated coaching, for example, allows the system to offer tips or advice to employees based on how their calls are going.
Other useful tools are speech analytics and sentiment analytics. Speech analytics monitors for key words or topics occurring in calls. This can help understand and forecast sales or customer service demand and pivot your business accordingly. Sentiment analytics shows whether the call went well or not and could be especially powerful, providing immediate feedback as part of a call centre recording system. As soon as a call ends, the system will show a green (happy customer) or red (unhappy customer) flag and can even show whether an employee managed to turn around a difficult call.
The right call recording system for your business
We appreciate there is a lot to consider and it may be daunting for a non-specialist. Our friendly team of experts are always happy to help your find the right service, at the right cost for your business.
Another area to consider carefully is AI capability within your telephony system. The latest AI tools and technologies are incredibly valuable for digital transformation, offering a competitive edge to both large and small businesses.
Contact Heliocentrix to find out how next generation VoIP systems will keep your business future-facing.