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Just to show that real life is stranger than fiction, we thought we would share this with you. Regular readers of the column will remember that two issues back in the interests of Air Traffic Control we ran a ‘nonsense-contest’ asking readers to identify a 1950’s airport from a tiny old sepia photo and a bunch of misleading clues. An impossible task we thought and one that kept the editorial team here chuckling for days. Well the laugh is on...

Vocal IQ version 2, offers mid sized call centres a time saving program which helps ensure that the most important calls are the ones evaluated. The software allows supervisors to set up ‘rules-based recording’. This function allows management to decide exactly what is recorded and to mark important calls for evaluation. An example of its use is where managers decide to mark particular calls of interest e.g. 5% of inbound calls to the Sales Team which came in on a...

not as hard as you may think! A common goal to all users of  a Call Recorder systems is the need to search for recorded calls against meaningful criteria and quickly recover them for replay. As long as the calls are resident in memory or HDD this is possible but once they have been archived to discreet media the process stops dead in its tracks. This generally means that calls for the last few weeks are easily recoverable whereas the...

As more organisations utilise IP telephony, NICE have added an active VOIP recording facility to their offering. Up until now if IP calls were encrypted for security purposes, it was not possible to record them. With the new active VOIP recording facility, encrypted calls can now be captured and replayed just the same as any other calls. Enhanced recording applications on IP telephones NICE is launching a new series of phone applications for the Avaya and Alcatel IP environments, which...

...more efficient CEMEX is a global building solutions company and leading supplier of cement, ready-mixed concrete and aggregates. CEMEX decided that expanding their use of call recording at two sales and shipping distribution sites, Colchester and Nottingham, could greatly benefit the business by enabling networking capability and improving access to calls. These sites house a combined total of 55 agents. As Business Systems offer a choice of recording systems from different manufacturers, the company was uniquely able to supply and...

Vocal Recorders latest offering uses phrase and trends analysis technology; a facility that is set to become part of the standard toolset for contact centres that intend to drive their businesses based on knowledge and market intelligence. Vocal CallMiner offers complete speech analytics which is a tool to extract key business information from recorded telephone calls. Calls can be 'batched' or 'selected' and then mined overnight using specialist servers; the system then converts audio to text, ready for interrogation. Search...

...A backup tape? An entire team based on the number of recorders in this picture! Well done to the Monitor's archive team for finding this lovely example of a Racal recorder-wall at Barclays' treasury room in London. Yes, they really did stack them that high and yes it did cause problems. The average tape-changer needed to be 6'4" to comfortably handle the upper decks. Although Hollywood would probably present this scene as the nerve centre of CIA monitoring operations (machines...

Hosted network based telephony services provide instant additional capacity How many times does the delay in acquiring and setting up technology slow down a business opportunity? How long does a typical IT project last and how many months does it take to iron out the glitches? We all know the list goes on and the old adage of 'time is money' comes back to haunt us with startling reality. It does not have to be like this because other options...

Don't forget that manufacturer support for Wordnet Series 2 and related applications such as Recorderlink and SARA ended in May 2006. If you use these systems you should have scheduled replacement by now so as not to be caught out if things go wrong. If you have planned to continue using these systems for the foreseeable future, then you are running your system at risk and we would strongly advise that you consider enrolling in our a Long Term Support...

In a move that will significantly enhance its customer offering, Business Systems UK Ltd completed the acquisition in April of the telephony services provider OPEX Hosting Ltd. OPEX is a provider of network-based telecommunication services, which are hosted and maintained on behalf of customers. This complements Business Systems' core business of the provision of Call Recording services by offering customers a totally flexible and reliable alternative to the traditional single-site CPE (customer premises equipment) installations. Many of today's business methods...

For mid-sized call centres a new release in the Vocal Recorders range, Vocal Interaction Quality Version 2, now offers a 'dashboard' facility similar to that of the high-end quality monitoring packages. This facility gives managers a 'homepage', which can be customized to provide a snapshot of up to 16 reports in chart format. Managers and evaluators can therefore see the overall status of the call centre by viewing multiple charts on a single page. For example, reports such as 'Quality...

Tele-conferencing is a well-established business tool and adding 'call recording' to it makes it even better. 'Vocal Conference' requires no hardware or software; it's a virtual recording service that sits in the network as part of the teleconferencing bridge and that brings a whole raft of benefits to you the user. Firstly, because it's a service there is no capital cost, the charge is 'pennies' on a per-minute basis and part of the overall conference charge. Secondly, because it's in...