Call Center Management Featured Article
Cloud-based Call Recording is Tailor Made for Smaller Call Centers
Most call centers today understand the value of call recording. For starters, it helps with training and can even make recruitment and hiring easier. It helps measure productivity, it can pinpoint problems in operations (when coupled with analytics) and it can protect businesses from liability.
Not very long ago, 100 percent call recording was something only the largest companies could afford. Thanks to today’s cloud-based call center solutions, however, recording is within reach of even the smallest call centers. The problem is, there are many solutions in the marketplace, and call centers that have never done much recording in the past may be at a loss what to look for, or how to match its own needs to a product’s feature set, according to a recent blog by workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software.
“With limited budgets and fewer resources, smaller contact centers cannot afford to invest in the wrong solution for call recording,” wrote Monet’s Chuck Ciarlo. “So it’s imperative to select the right call recording solution that is both cost-effective, and also provides a smaller center with the same benefits and advantages traditionally enjoyed by those with much larger IT budgets.”
With small call recording solution, it’s all about the cloud. Recording software of old, of course, was done on-premises with enough IT equipment to fill a large closet. After that, there was the problem of storing the call recordings, which was a problem even for large companies using premise-based equipment. The cloud, of course, has changed all this, and many recording solutions designed for small-to-medium sized business today operate in an entirely virtual environment, with call recordings stored in a data center and managed by a service provider.
“Cloud computing offers companies the option of transferring their IT operations into a virtual environment, where they can develop, deploy, and manage applications, and pay only for the time and capacity that they need,” writes Ciarlo. “For a smaller call center, this means the ability to significantly lower upfront costs, while maintaining the option of scaling up as needed.”
This flexibility is a bonus for many call centers that have cyclical operations with seasonal call spikes. An installed solution, of course, doesn’t scale well, which means companies must buy the maximum number of licenses they will need throughout the year, paying for capacity they don’t often need. Cloud-based solutions allow call centers to scale up and down as their recording needs change, saving money.
While cloud-based call recording solutions can offer benefits to companies of all types, their unique advantages are particularly suited to smaller operations. This way, small businesses can enjoy comparable functionality to that of larger companies at a fraction of the cost.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli