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Call Recording - Three Key Reasons Why it Makes Sense for your Organization

More than ever, telephone call recording makes excellent personal and corporate sense. Previously seen as something only large corporations could afford or manage, today's digital systems are not only easier to use and deploy, they are far more effective at collecting, recalling, and sharing data than traditional tape recording systems of old.

In business, there are three compelling reasons to record calls:

1. Accuracy - Ensure Communication Clarity and Eliminate Costly Errors

Telephone conversations happen fast and it's difficult to consistently capture everything that's said, even when taking meticulous notes. Sometimes the other party speaks too fast, too softly, or with too strong an accent that makes them hard to understand. Added complications include our own inattentiveness due to tiredness or nearby distractions. The result can be costly: wasted time calling back to clarify details - or worse - making assumptions that lead to expensive errors.

Accuracy through call recording is especially important for sales or call center agents, dispatchers, human resource professionals, & private investigators.

Getting the facts 100% accurate in every call has all sorts of business benefits: improved customer service and customer satisfaction, increased productivity, less risk and liability, and avoidance of potentially escalating disputes.

A digital call recorder (such as Algo's Enterprise Call Recorder) allows you to automatically or manually record a call. You can then easily play it back later, skip ahead to replay portions of a call, increase the playback volume and also share the call with others through email. Each call record is recorded in high quality audio for maximum clarity.

2. Verification - Archive Records for Quality Assurance, Dispute Resolution, and Regulatory Compliance

• If there is a dispute that arises in your business over what was communicated in a telephone conversation, can you easily confirm to yourself - and to the other party - exactly what was said?  
• Are there regulations or quality requirements in your business that demand documentation and accurate record-keeping of telephone calls?
• Are there periodic security issues such as threats or confidentiality breaches over the telephone that warrants serious action and follow-up?

Some business issues or transactions are so important, so serious, so potentially risky, or carry such high liability, that it is simply not enough to recall what was said - even if you have written notes. You need proof! In each of the above cases, what's needed is verifying documentation that can provide indisputable evidence.

Regulatory Compliance

In many situations, important telephone conversations, such as financial, medical or legal transactions, need to be routinely documented to verify that proper information was communicated or to clarify information in the event of disputes. This information can then be used to provide irrefutable backup and to speed resolution.

Reduced Risk and Liability

Some issues carry such high liability and risk that it would be irresponsible not to retain records. For these areas, often regulatory compliance forces such verification. In other instances, it is up to the business themselves to make that determination after assessing their own level of liability. In such cases, the peace of mind gained by recording calls and keeping good documentation can prove invaluable.

What Call Recording Offers

A common problem with verification is that maintaining documentation is time-consuming and hard to do consistently. Another challenge is being able to quickly retrieve the information when verification is needed or share information in a timely manner. Digital call recorders offer reliable automatic recording that is ideal for call verification. All calls can be automatically recorded or only those calls which match certain criteria. The call recorder can log important data about the call as well including the time and date of each call, the duration, the called number or Caller ID, and type of call. Users can also enter comments for each call to provide added detail. Call records can then quickly and easily be retrieved by searching based on a number of parameters, and easily shared with others via email.

3. Training & Quality Monitoring - Improve Personal and Corporate Performance, Assess Training Needs, and Ensure Customer Satisfaction

• Do you know how your employees sound or come across while on the telephone?
• Do their voices sound flat or uninterested?
• Do they respond well to difficult people?
• Do they miss obvious opportunities for more business?
• Do they accurately answer questions and act in the customers best interests?
• Do they make claims that cannot be fulfilled?

Most business situations can benefit from continuously improving telephone communications. That includes how we sound, our tone, our manner, how we react, what we say - and what we don't say. For that, proper training is essential.

Quality Monitoring helps you keep in touch with how your business is operating. It helps you identify and correct bad practices before they get out of hand. It also helps you identify and reward good performance. Ultimately, quality monitoring helps drive customer satisfaction and ensures a positive customer experience by monitoring telephone activity, identifying best practice examples, and incorporating them into your training processes.

Training and Quality Monitoring through call recording is especially important for call center supervisors, interviewers, government agents, customer service personnel, technical support/help desk technicians, and receptionists

Training and monitoring your staff on the telephone can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Traditionally, these tasks have always needed to be done in real-time and, with busy schedules, that's hard to do.

A digital call recorder is an important training and improvement tool because it delivers objective feedback (in the form of high-quality audio records) that can be used to measure and reward performance, expose and correct mistakes, highlight and share successful practices, and learn new behaviors that maximize the success of your telephone conversations. A digital call recorder such as the Algo ECR System not only can retain a record of all calls, it can also allow you to silently listen in to calls from any extension, in real time. Furthermore, call recorders save time by allowing you to review and critique recorded calls on your own schedule rather than having to be present as a call happens.

The Bottom Line

Many business challenges can be traced to communication problems, insufficient knowledge or training, poor documentation, or absence of effective monitoring. Recording telephone calls is an effective step to improving each of these areas.

With advanced features such as automatic and manual recording, fast data retrieval, high quality digital audio, and secure and reliable archiving, a digital call recorder is a powerful addition to any small business telephone system.

Whether your needs are to ensure accuracy, improve personal or corporate performance, provide verification or regulatory compliance, or simply to save time, a digital call recorder makes excellent business sense.