Call Recording Software Featured Article

The Benefits of VoIP Call Recording

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

As a new reporter, I record calls. It’s a safety net in case I hang up on calls only to discover that I kept bad notes.

Even if you’re not a reporter, however, call recording can make sense. It delivers a number of benefits: It creates a record of the call for later retrieval, it augments notes, it protects against liability, it helps improve performance, and it can drive insight when combined with analytics software.

One advantage of e-mail is that there’s a record of what’s been written. A quick search of the inbox and we can retrieve what has been written with relative ease. This is not the case with calls, however, and it creates all kinds of havoc from misunderstandings and forgotten details. But with call recording, voice calls get the same treatment as e-mail. With modern search appliances, these calls can be searched and retrieved just like e-mail.

Recording calls also helps with keeping notes. As a reporter, I can tell you that nobody keeps perfect notes. There are times when things just get missed, whether because the conversation is moving too far or the pen taking the notes ran out of ink. But with call recording software, it is easy to circle back and fill in the gap when notes are inadequate—or take a first round of notes if the call required full concentration.

Financially, one important reason for call recording is liability protection. When it comes to verbal contracts, disputes can quickly get out of hand. It also is costly to protect against unfounded allegations even if the business is in the right. But with call recording, it is possible to go back in time and peek in at what actually was said. Recordings can quickly end a dispute, as it is easy to misremember details but hard to dispute the facts when played back.

Training is another area where call recording is important. It is one thing to tell someone what they are doing wrong, it is another entirely to play back a mistake and point out areas of improvement. Likewise, it is easier to show than to tell—and call recordings let managers play back exceptional interactions and models for how others in the team should perform. This goes well beyond what could be achieved otherwise.

Managers can monitor employees better with call recording, too, as it is impossible to sit in on every call but it certainly is possible to record every call. These recordings can then be analyzed with speech analytics to pick out key conversations for manual review.

Finally, call recordings can drive insight. The combination of call recordings and analytics is a powerful marriage, as it lets businesses search through voice conversations for key terms and phrases that reveal larger insights. Every interaction with a customer is data that can be used to improve a business, but most of this goes lost. With call recording and speech analytics, however, each data point can be plucked in the service of finding larger trends. This is a game-changer that businesses are just starting to discover and leverage.

Those interested in VoIP call recording will be interested in a new e-book released by the open source call recording software firm, OrecX. The e-book, “Does VoIP Call Recording Make Sense?” is available for download for free.