Call Recording: Definition, Purpose, and Tips

To go deeper into the topic, let’s imagine that we have measured such a significant metric as the FCR rate - and it’s lower than the generally appreciated 70%. What should the next step be? If customer dispute resolution isn’t provided during first contact, then the problem lies in the quality of assistance provided by agents - they either work too slowly or can’t detect the root cause. 

Thus, it is the main issue of using only metrics. They help you to identify the problem in a few seconds, but they don’t answer where it exactly lies and who is responsible for it. In this way, how to resolve the problem? We guess it’s clear that we need an additional tool to get to the bottom of it. 

By the way, this tool has a name and it’s extremely popular across the industry. Call center recording is the magic wand that helps you to find issues, understand the resolution tactics, and implement them. 

So what are the benefits of call recording? How to choose contact center call recording software? How to use contact center recording?

We will answer all the questions, just read further.

Call center recording: definition

Call center recording is the process of recording agent phone calls to track their performance and detect imperfections, mistakes, improvement areas, and other points that are vital for better results and productivity, and agent efficiency. Call center recording is used in all models of contact centers - inbound and outbound call recording, sales call recording, and so on. This method helps you to see agent skills and models of behavior and service providing on a real sample. As every customer contact is unique and personalized, call center recording helps to see how contact center agents adapt to every customer, resolve their request, show empathy, use other soft skills and do various things that determine their qualification and professionalism, as well as customer experience and satisfaction. 

You may think that to implement call center recording some third-party software tools are required, but it is false. All-in-one call center software includes call center recording solutions, so you don’t need to pay and install additional software anymore.

Why should you operate a call center recording?

As it has been said above, call center recording is a key to comprehensive contact center analytics of agent performance and productivity, as well as the main tool for understanding customer sentiment, interactions and expectations, and the level of their satisfaction. In addition, call center recording plays the first role in agent training, as it is the only way to show them the real conditions of their work. In the call center agent onboarding process call recordings are also crucial, as you can’t let new hires come and start servicing customers from the first day, but how to make them understand how this process works? Play some call recordings with them and show the strengths and weaknesses of every single phone conversation. 

Engage call recording in all possible situations to stay assured that agents do their best to provide customer service that meets the terms and conditions of SLA and customer expectations. 

VoIPTime call center recording features

Our modern contact center software is developed to contain all options and features that can boost your service quality, customer engagement and customer satisfaction, and experience. Let’s discuss what are the real opportunities that are proposed by our call center recording function.

Better training quality

As we have already stated, the only way to train agents is to point to their own mistakes and imperfections. You can spend months describing to them the highest standards and best practices of customer service during lectures, but it is unlikely that they will be able to put it into practice without a clear example. Another fact is that people show better training results when they train on their own mistakes, and what can be better than call recordings in this case? 

Use recordings during one-to-one coaching sessions, to keep agents comfortable and focused(no one loves when his performance is evaluated in front of the whole contact center team). Point to moments where the agent has done well, and where he needs to improve. Discover the lack of skills, if it exists, to develop a training plan for gaining them. Look for product knowledge to make sure that the agent knows everything he oughts to.  

Compile entire lists of recordings with a similar topic, mistakes, or vice versa, and excellent performances to show them in a row. Such compilations will become the most vital part of your training resources, as the real examples of contact center operations and customer service providing. 

Сall quality assurance control scorecard

To always be acknowledged of agent performance and control it in accordance with your service level requirements and standards in real time, use customizable quality assurance scorecards. This function allows contact center supervisors to fill these cards after listening to any call recording they’ve chosen. The scorecard may contain any queries you want: has the agent done actions or mentioned things that are necessary according to SLA, has the agent greeted the caller by name, has the call been held, has the quality of assistance been, and so on? Usually, evaluation is carried out by assigning a score - 0, 0.5, 1. Such quality assurance check-outs have to be done regularly, at least once a month. 

Their wide customizable and advanced options allow you to organize control without losing focus on your main business goals, standards, and SLA terms. 

CRM integration

Have you ever thought about the time spent switching between various tabs? It takes around 30 days per year, so it is crucial to avoid this useless issue. Our solution offers CRM integration to have access to all necessary customer data in the same interface where all call center operations take place. Compare customer data to already existing call recordings to find out if the agent has provided service that met customer needs and has been enough affordable. 

Another great option is the CRM dialer - the ability to call customers directly from the CRM, without going to another window or tab. Even this little time-saving can be great if the necessity to call the client is found out during working in the CRM interface.

Call center recording benefits

Now we are done with features, and it is time to move to the real benefits of utilizing recording of calls tools. 

Boosted customer retention

As call recordings directly influence the quality of your workers’ performance control, you can achieve higher customer retention rates, as all troubles, both existing and potential issues, will be at hand. If you listen to most phone calls recorded, you know what problems clients are facing, what worries them, and where they want to see changes and upgrades, and you can build improvement plans at the same moment as you hear them. 

Effective onboarding

Onboard newbies using real samples of conversations with real clients - both negative and positive ones. This approach will let them understand what soft and hard skills are needed to deal with customer requests, how to communicate in the right way, and how to avoid conflict situations and popular mistakes. Finally, just send recordings to them so hires can listen to them even at home - no location or time limits for training.

More personalized service opportunities

Recordings point not only to agent performance but also to the personality of every customer. In addition to CRM integration, you can use recordings to learn your regular customers better and provide a personalized approach to each customer. Some conversations can also help you find out potential problems to solve using a proactive approach, or issues that haven’t been detected or haven’t been considered huge problems before. 

Call recording legal regulations

When we talk about law regulations in the USA, it can be a little confusing because of the wide differences in regulations between different states and federal rules. 

To avoid starting an endless law discussion - let’s leave it for lawyers  - we will say that, in general, there are two main models of legal regulation of call recording, and that is the reason why while contacting a customer support department, you always hear “This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes” - it is required for regulatory compliance. 

Most states - 38 - adhere to the practice of unilateral permission to record.

Another 11 states adhere model of bilateral approval to recording. 

One state, Vermont, doesn’t have any bill to regulate recordings, so federal law is used, and it adheres to the unilateral model of regulation. 

In this way, the well-known and a bit annoying phrase “This call may be monitored or recorded for service improvement aim” covers both types of regulation - it shows the call center’s approval for recording, and if the caller doesn’t hang up the call, he also agrees that call will be recorded. 

For some industries, there are also additional regulations, such as PCI or PHI. First, one relates to bank cards and has its own compliance requirements of what information can’t be recorded, and what requires additional authorization. PHI is about medical care, and as the info about a person’s health is under the coverage of the HIPPA bill, you have to follow requirements and never record the forbidden information. 

Types of tools to record conversations

Private Branch Exchange (PBX) model

The classic solution for mostly internal communication. It also can offer a call recording option, but it needs to be individually developed and installed, and this may take much time and effort, as well as your provider having to know about this work and allow it. 

Different apps

The worst choice - is free or badly designed apps to record calls. They are used mostly by agents who want to record calls, but you as a business owner or contact center leader haven't given them any instruments. As a consequence, you get the occasion when all agents operate various apps, recordings are impossible to collect into one store and analyze, and all the work is useless.

All-in-one call center solution

That is exactly what we offer - the solution that covers all your needs and has all functions and features that are needed for a successful and modern contact center. Various communication channels with an omnichannel approach, call monitoring, workforce management, contact center insights, and reports, outgoing calls auto dialer, IVR and other self-service tools, automatic call distribution, and intelligent routing - here is all that you need.