Call Recording Support – What You Should Be Receiving From Your Supplier
Many organisations such as Financial Institutions or Contact Centres implement and manage call recording solutions to ensure compliance, improve the customer experience and reduce business costs. For contact centres, for example, call recording plays an important role in their call centre software operations.
The benefits of call recording are well known, ranging from ensuring compliance for organisations who are legally obligated to record calls, to coaching and training for those who wish to improve employee performance and training.
When the right call recording system for your organisation is implemented, it then needs to be managed by the right call recording supplier who understands your requirements. Particularly for when the organisation expands and so with it, its voice recording architecture.
This is seen more commonly within the Financial Services landscape. Large banks for example, may have accumulated over time, many different recording systems, residing in different regions.
This often creates call architecture mayhem with incompatible and legacy systems, creating a real dilemma in terms of management, regulatory compliance and operational efficiencies.
With over 30 years’ worth of voice recording experience ranging from scoping the system, implementation and post support/consultancy, we know how important it is to ensure you receive the right call recording support. This can go a long way in ensuring voice consolidation, recording compliance and operational efficiency.
All too often, we have seen call recording suppliers offer little to no support once the solution has been implemented. And all too often we’ve seen this happen when organisations need their supplier the most.
3 Pointers That Signify a Call Recording Supplier You Can Rely On:
1. Look for call recording suppliers who excel in their voice recording maintenance support department long after the sale is made.
When implementing a call recording system, it’s not just about looking for a system that has all the latest features and functionalities. Yes – this is important, but you also need to consider the voice recording support you will be receiving post sale.
Tip: If you already have a voice recording system implemented, it’s not always necessary to go direct to the manufacturer for support. In many cases, customers may have a different supplier for their call recording support and decide to use an independent organisation. Steer clear of companies that don’t provide updates, meetings, statistics or provide account management representatives as part of their care package.
When scoping out a supplier, ask them questions about their service and support so that post-sale you can be confident they are flexible and reliable enough to support and maintain your voice recording system if things go wrong.
Call Recording Support Checklist
- Does your supplier have a dedicated customer service support department?
- Will you be assigned a dedicated customer service co-ordinator who will work with an engineer to ensure your support case doesn’t get ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten about’ so you don’t have to repeatedly chase?
- Does your supplier offer you a multitude of ways to contact them such as email, phone, or an online exclusive customer portal?
- Beyond listing expectations of service type and quality, does your provider’s SLA specify resolutions for when requirements aren’t met.
- Do they have a 24/7/365 service delivery capability?
- What is the average response time for your supplier? As an example, Business Systems is 24 minutes as opposed to 8 hours.
- Does the supplier offer scalable hours of cover to support the business needs and a variety of ‘managed service’ add-ons that can be included to reduce the burden if needed?
- Do the support engineers have the relevant training, certification and experience on the products that they will be managing for the voice recording maintenance?
- Spare parts holding – Do they have readily available spare parts to ensure fast support if a component of your system goes wrong?
- Can they support discontinued call recording solutions (such as Cybertech, NICE Perform or Wordnet) if needed?
2. Look for suppliers who have experience working alongside external teams
Many call recording systems sit within a customers’ increasingly complex and secure environment and are dependent on the reliability of and integrity of the telephony and network. This means it usually takes a whole team to maintain and support a voice recording system. As such, customers are now reliant on multiple teams such as Server and AV teams, (who may be in house or outsourced) to deliver a good service for their voice recording maintenance.
A supplier offering reliable call recording support will have experience working with teams such as these, to identify the root cause of any issues that are flagged up on the platform. They will then be able to recommend what needs to be carried out, by the right team, in order to resolve the issue.
In many cases, we’ve seen suppliers who don’t have the necessary experience with the whole environment and therefore cannot pinpoint the root cause of the issues and are too willing to pass the issue onto other teams to investigate. This leaves the customer stuck with the classic phrase some of you may be familiar with: – “The problem is not coming from our end!”.
3. Look for suppliers who support discontinued solutions if needed
As manufacturers release new products onto the market, older versions of call recorders may become discontinued and withdrawn with spare parts and support also being phased out accordingly. This also means your call recording system may be prone to security vulnerabilities and missing key product updates.
From experience, we’ve seen many customers accumulate legacy voice systems – such as CyberTech, NICELog, NICE Perform, NICE Interaction Management (NIM 4.1), NICE Recording eXpress, Wordnet, Verint Audiolog.
If you are currently maintaining legacy call recording systems, a good call recording supplier will be able to support you in several different ways:
A. Integrating an existing legacy call recording system with a modern solution
Rather than overhaul your entire voice recording estate, why not consider integrating your existing legacy system or systems with a more modern and up to date solution. This solution will be able to sit on top of any existing legacy (as well as live) call recording system, regardless of age, manufacturer or geographic location. The solution will then provide a single point of access for all recordings and audio files.
B. Extracting calls from a legacy call recording system
Call extraction from old call recording systems can also be achieved. This means once this is done, your legacy system is redundant. An experienced voice recording supplier will be able to achieve this through a bulk export functionality and the following steps:
- Bulk export automates extraction schedules from existing systems.
- Consultancy phase will establish call volumes and data sizes of extraction.
- A process will be created to extract the call metadata into a voice legacy retrieval platform.
- Once the recordings and metadata have been extracted, there is also the option of using this voice data to feed other solutions such as analytics, transcription or surveillance platforms.
C. Supporting your legacy call recording system
If your manufacturer has discontinued support for your legacy system and you still wish to maintain it for a set period, Business Systems can support depending on the voice recorder. In some cases, we may even be able to provide spare parts.
Common customer question: Is it more cost-effective to upgrade an old call recorder then to look for a new call recording system?
Both options are viable. The benefits of upgrading include being able to leverage existing licences on your legacy system which might mean you receive preferred upgrade pricing. As well as this, some suppliers offer integration of legacy calls into a new system.
Are You Looking For A Reliable Supplier?
When looking at a new voice recording system for your organisation, much attention is understandably focussed on the new features and functionality which it comes equipped with. However, once installed it will be business as usual and you’ll need an organisation and a reliable team whom you can rely on to support and maintain your call recording system going forward.
With over 30 years’ experience of implementing and supporting call recording systems, there isn’t much we haven’t seen. Our advanced call recording solutions are deployed and supported across some of the largest contact centres and financial services organisations globally.
60% of our company personnel operate in our Professional Services division, where we offer a 24 hours service facility with a 365 day support capability. Our large team of experienced engineers are committed to providing a first class service from multiple locations across the UK, with an average response time of 24 minutes.
If you need advice on your call recording support get in touch with our team of experts.
