Building a Business Case for Call Recording – Tips

Call Recording is utilised in most businesses today, especially customer-facing ones. It is also used in contact centres who implement call centre software in order to boost productivity, engage the workforce and cut operating costs.

What is Call Recording:

Call Recording software records telephone conversations over a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Voice over IP (VoIP) in a digital audio file format.
It also provides you with the ability to retrieve, playback, store and share calls.

More simply, Call Recording does exactly that. It records your phone conversations and offers you the opportunity to listen back to those calls as and when you need too.

Why organisations use Call Recording:

Depending on your organisation, Call Recording will be a must-have. For example, financial institutions are required by the FCA to record all communications in order to demonstrate compliance.

Other organisations, such as contact centres, will also record conversations for a number of different reasons, such as:

• Dispute resolution – Avoiding ‘he said she said’ scenarios:

For starters, being able to record conversations over the phone allows for quick dispute resolution. In the eventuality of customers being unhappy and questioning a sale/scenario, recordings can be used to quickly resolve the situation.

Having irrefutable and documented evidence in the form of recordings can enable staff to quickly resolve disputes and support the organisation’s legal defence. Not only will this avoid unnecessary costs, it will also ensure that the relationship with the customer remains positive, by basing decisions on clear events and eliminating any speculation.

• Ensuring your employees are performing to the required standard:

Call recordings can be used to ensure service excellence, policy adherence, and regulatory compliance. Being able to listen back to calls, allows you to get a better understanding of how employees are conducting themselves over the phone and ensure they are adhering to company policies and compliance.

• Quickly addressing any customer complaints:

Use your call recordings to quickly spot any recurring customer complaints and understand the root cause of the issue in order to address it quickly and efficiently. For example, if there is a spike in calls all reporting a similar fault in a product line, the sooner you pick up on that information, the sooner you can fix the root cause of the problem and avoid unhappy customers as well as high customer service costs.

• Capture details you might have missed: 

A big part of providing great customer service is making customers feel like they are truly being heard. With call recording, you can avoid laborious note taking, and give customers your full attention, by being able to replay the call back at a later date.

• Coach and train your employees: 

The best way to learn is by example. Call Recording offers you the opportunity to replay calls and use them as examples when training employees. You can use good calls to show positive examples and bad calls to highlight areas that require improvement. Everyone in the organisation, from receptionists to top sales-people and customer service agents, can benefit from reviewing their calls as well as their colleagues.

Should you implement Call Recording in your organisation?

What you need to know if you are considering Call Recording:

If you are considering implementing a call recording solution, there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

• Understand your future requirements: Understanding your future needs will help make sure your Call Recording solution is capable of standing the test of time.
• Your environment and how it affects your call recording requirements.

Moreover, you will also need to consider if your organisation would benefit more from an On-premise or Cloud solution.

On-premise: 

Although cloud appears to be the preferred option, on-premise remains, for now, the more popular choice for Call Recording solutions, with 75% of Call Recording solutions deployed still being on-premise. Reasons for this might be:

• Security: Although Cloud technology has evolved to address the concerns over cybersecurity,  in a field like Call Recording, where privacy compliance is extremely important, some might be more comfortable sticking with familiar on-premise systems.
• Untangling the web: Call Recording rarely sits alone and is often part of a piece of bigger ‘machine’ through integration with CRM, ACD, IVR and all the other applications run in typical contact centres or organisations. Even if Cloud has numerous benefits, undoing all of the various integrations just to put it all back together might not seem worthwhile.
• Product lifecycle: Call Recording is not a cheap purchase. If you’ve made the investment and are running an on-premises call recorder that still has several years of solid performance left, why change?

However, it’s worth noting that the installation and configuration of an on-premise solution can take up to several months to complete. This includes planning the necessary hardware, licensing, setting up and making the software systems compatible. Moreover, many on-premise implementations are often hindered by significant upfront costs. These costs include the procurement of hardware (servers, headsets or phone, computers, etc.), the necessary office space for its accommodation, the software, installation, configuration and implementation. It’s also worth considering future expenses due to advanced revolutionising technology and frequent software upgrades.

Cloud:

With no upfront purchasing costs for expensive software, no setup, configuration or maintenance, no limits on usage or scalability, Cloud technology has helped to bring Call Recording down from the enterprise echelons and make it affordable and accessible to all.
Additional benefits include:

• Accessible recordings: Cloud recording is designed for retrieval via web browsers, so tend to use file formats which are much easier to export and open in other applications.
• Universal recordings: Because Cloud providers run the services from massive data centres, they can allow universal end-to-end recording of all calls with no capacity restrictions.
• Compatibility: Cloud services can operate with many different ACD and CTI platforms as possible, which allows them to attract more business.
• Lover set up costs: Typically no investment necessary in the hardware, hence these systems do not have substantial setup costs, aside from a strong internet connection.

Building a business case for Call Recording:

Now that you’re familiar with some of the different areas  Call Recording can support your organisation with, it’s time to start building a business case for it.

For starters, understand how much your business is currently spending in the following areas:

• Agent recruitment
• Agent training
• Customer disputes
• Customer attrition
• Risk and compliance
• Legal costs

Why? Because all of these costs can be significantly reduced with Call Recording and can help you calculate your return on investment (ROI).
For example:

• The cost of finding and training agents in a contact centre can come up to £5000 per agent. If you consider that the average UK staff turnover for a person working within a customer services role is closer to 20%, the cost of recruiting and training new agents every year will be substantially high. Call Recording can reduce costs by helping train agents faster and more efficiently as well as increase employee engagement by providing a clear commitment to employee training and development.
• You also need to consider the cost of assigning more senior employees’ to train and bring new agents up to speed instead of answering customer calls. Ensuring training can be performed quickly and efficiently whilst maintaining high standards, can yield huge company savings.
• Every year organisations can pay millions in disputes. Being able to resolve them quickly and efficiently by providing indisputable and authoritative evidence can save a company millions not only in payouts but also legal fees.
• By accessing the voice of the customer, organisations can access valuable business insight to improve their services and ensure organisations are improving on areas of the business that are costing the organisation money whilst maximising those delivering results.

Understanding how much your organisation is currently spending in these different areas will allow you to build a strong business case and understand when you can expect an ROI on your investment.

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