The Insider’s Guide to Live & Legacy Call Recording Part 2

It’s Part 2 of The Insider’s Guide to Live & Legacy Call Recording and we would like you to meet ‘IT Ian’. In this series, Ian has to address 3 commonly faced issues:

• Supporting multiple systems from different manufacturers and/or service providers
• Finding a solution provider who offers end-of-life support
• Ensuring the testing & monitoring of the entire voice domain

Meet Ian

Ian is the IT Manager of a large multi-national company. He is responsible for ensuring business continuity and that the company’s IT systems are all fully operating. This includes their call recording infrastructure which he knows is by no means straightforward. Ian is looking for a way to simplify it. What are some of the options available to him?

Problem #1: Supporting multiple systems

Dealing with multiple systems means Ian has to deal with numerous issues including:

• Liaising with different manufacturers and/or service providers for multiple recorders
• Keeping track of numerous support contracts
• Keeping track of each recorders end of life (EOL) software, hardware and OS announcements
• Tackling shrinking budgets and pressures by the finance department for cost efficiences.

Solution

In this situation Ian needs to simplify his call recording infrastructure. Instead of having to keep track of multiple support contracts as well as each recorder’s EOL software/hardware announcements, Ian needs a solution that will be able to provide a single user interface to access and manage the entire estate of recorded calls.

Such solutions are able to access calls from multiple systems regardless of age or manufacturer, whereas when the aging hardware does become too risky to retain, they can re-archive all calls onto one secure server. This means Ian will save on support costs, by only having to maintain one solution instead of multiple. Internal resource will also be saved, as time previously spent managing obsolete systems will be eliminated.

Problem #2: Finding a solution provider who offers EOL support

It has been playing on Ian’s mind for some time now that older versions of some of their call recording systems have been discontinued so manufacturers support has now ceased. Ian knows this is a risky situation. Particularly if one of their recorders stops working and a request comes in to facilitate the playback of a call that should have been recorded for governance or quality monitoring purposes.

Solution

Whilst it was not top of Ian’s agenda when they purchased their systems, finding out what the manufacturer’s policy for EOL is should have been a key component in the buying process. Depending on the organisation’s internal policies and the industry in which it operates, retention periods for call recordings vary and may change over time (for governance, quality, regulatory and/or consumer data protection purposes). In this situation, support capability for legacy call recording systems can suddenly become a serious concern.
To solve this, Ian needs to consider a service provider who offers beyond end-of life support long after the manufacturer has ceased support for the system. When looking for a provider who supports EOL, Ian should consider the following factors:

• Their Support credentials & capabilities (references, accreditations, spare part availability etc)
• Their Service & Support pricing
• Their Service Level Agreement

Problem #3: Testing & monitoring of entire voice domain

Last week, Ian received a call from his despairing compliance colleague asking why they couldn’t find a really important call from a few days back. Ian investigated this straight away and, as per Murphy’s Law, realised that for a period of 5 minutes on that specific day the recorder was not operating. After a full investigation (although Ian carries out daily resource-intensive checks on the systems), Ian realised that this issue had been occurring for over a month.

Solution

There can be many reasons as to why a call may go unrecorded. This can range from missing call data, to a disconnection between the telephony switch and the call recorder. Unless Ian can put together a 100% fool proof manual testing process, (which is almost impossible to achieve due to the resource required and the possibility for human error), call recording failures will go unnoticed with important calls going missing.
To resolve this, Ian needs to consider an Automated Service Assurance solution, which is based on robotic process automation technology, to manage the testing and monitoring of his entire voice domain (though not limited to only voice).  Automated Service Assurance technology will ensure real-time call recording failures are rapidly spotted by performing automated active, as well as passive tests on a regular basis (daily, weekly etc). In addition, any failure to record will be automatically reported by monitoring and referencing call data from the telephony switch to the associated voice recording.
If you need more advice on your call recording system then contact our team who can offer best practice advice and simplify your concerns. Don’t miss our next series in The Insider’s Guide to Live & Legacy Call Recording where you’ll be meeting Anna who works within the Emergency Services Sector.