January 1999

Pricing: Symphony CTI: $700-1,000 per channel; Da Vinci: $300-700 per seat. Both Symphony CTI and da Vinci can use Archive Media Warehouse's online storage, which costs $40,000.

Symphony CTI

RATINGS (0-5)

Call monitoring and recording may not be sexy, but it is, without question, a necessity in the business world. Moreover, the best productivity tools aren't always sexy. Sometimes, they can be downright simple - at least in concept, even if execution on a large scale can become complicated.

Large-scale call recording systems have been with us for years. Call centers, for example, were early adopters of large systems, that is, systems capable of handling dozens of phone lines, including several T1s, to improve agent training and customer service.

One provider of large-scale recording systems is Dictaphone. These systems are by no means "simple," since they scale to very large port densities, however, their concept of recording phone conversations and allowing for easy future retrieval is based on one simple premise. That is, instituting the recording of all calls, and the fast and easy retrieval of all call records, will improve customer service, employee evaluation, and employee training, as well as provide liability protection.

Dictaphone has dozens of recording products, and it covers various market niches, including handheld tape recorders. In this article, however, we will focus on two of Dictaphone's enterprise recording and quality monitoring systems, Symphony CTI and da Vinci. While these systems have similar feature sets, they also have some significant differences.

Symphony CTI and da Vinci follow similar call recording sequences. First, the call is recorded to memory, which is then transferred to hard disk, and then finally to DAT tapes. (A smart choice, DAT tapes. They're very inexpensive.) For solutions requiring immense amounts of voice storage, both da Vinci and Symphony CTI can utilize the Archive Media Warehouse (AMW) for up to 245,000 hours of voice storage. The ability to network chain up to twenty AMWs allows for up to a staggering five million hours of voice recordings!

Essentially, the AMW is an automated DAT changer filled with 128 DAT tapes. These are automatically swapped in and out of the tape drives by a mechanical arm. The AMW robotics depend on bar code readings. Each tape has a unique barcode, which the AMW robotics relies on to properly identify each tape.

Since months or even years of storage can fit on these 128 DAT tapes, the AMW reduces the legwork associated with call retrieval. For example, it eliminates the need for someone to find the right tape and insert. All the tapes are already stored within the AMW's carousel.

Since we tested both Symphony CTI and da Vinci in Dictaphone's headquarters, we didn't have the chance to delve into the usual installation and documentation issues. Instead, we simply scrutinized up-and-running systems. Thus, our discussions of each product are limited to features, operational testing, and room for improvement. However, while our coverage may seem truncated, we have included a compare-and-contrast section toward the end of this article.

Symphony CTI

The Symphony CTI system is a modular and scalable client/server design running on Windows NT with a 32-bit architecture, which makes it ideal for call centers that need to store and access large volumes of communications. The system's Selectable Telephony Input Path (STIP) supports both analog and digital (T1, E1, PCM-30) recording. Audio for thousands of agents or traders can be recorded simultaneously within the system's Scalable Channel Array (SCA), and stored within the Archive Media Warehouse (AMW) for access days, months, or even years after the fact.

The Symphony CTI system can integrate with most popular PBXs, ACDs, and turret systems, through a real-time or SMDR link to capture information related to each call. These call details are stored in an Oracle database, and can later be used to retrieve calls.

Calls can be accessed and played back over a local or wide area network, using a Windows 95/Windows NT GUI interface. With its Event-Driven Recording Module (EDRM), Symphony CTI can be customized to selectively record calls based upon real-time data. The user interface for the playback station has a Microsoft Windows Explorer look and feel, with a tree-like structure and three main windows, including the Criteria Selection View, Call Record View, and Playlist View. From this interface, users can quickly retrieve specific voice recordings simply by clicking on descriptive fields in a criteria selection view window.

FEATURES
Lock Option
This is (excuse the pun) a key feature. It allows you to lock your workstation without logging off from Symphony. Thus, you can lock your workstation and leave your desk and then continue your work where you left off when you return.

Switch Interfaces

• SMDR/CDR.
• Compatible with most popular PBXs, ACDs, and turret systems. (Note: a wide range of TAPI-compliant switches is supported.)

Advanced Call Retrieval System (ACRS)

• PBX, ACD, turret system dependent.
• Search by call date and time, call duration, trunk, extension, agent ID.
• Search by whether it's inbound or outbound.
• Search by calling party (CLID), dialed number (DNIS), and account number.

Other Search Criteria

• Channel name.
• Call tag.
• Call notation.
• DTMF codes ("local" call records).

Free Seating

• Supported with real-time or SMDR link.
• Tracks agent logon ID along with call.

Recording

• Selectable Telephony Input Path (STIP), analog and digital (T1, E1, PCM30).
• DTMF recording and decoding.
• Silent periods recorded in VOX mode.

Storage Media

• Archive up to 1,920 channel hours (DDS-3 DAT).
• Online/instant access: up to 1,280 channel hours per DRM.
• Up to a terabyte of unattended recording/online retrieval (via AMW).

Playback

• Output to speaker, headset, phone.
• Playback over LAN/WAN.
• Multi-user simultaneous access.

Security

• User access audit trail.
• Intelligent Security System.

Other Features

• Deck status and global commands for large system management.
• Long-term, cost-effective archiving to DAT.
• Real-time recording for complete event and non-event verification.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Symphony Architecture
Symphony CTI uses CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), an object-oriented, client server architecture. CORBA enables the Data Manager and Oracle database applications to reside on separate servers, supporting the more processing-intensive needs of high-volume call centers and trading floors. The architecture also provides a platform for seamless expansion into a distributed database environment.

Selective Recording
Some trading operations and call centers make a point of recording every call. Others are more selective. They choose to record only certain calls. But how to record the right calls? Utilizing Symphony CTI system's Event-Driven Recording Module (EDRM), it is possible to intelligently choose which calls to record.

Symphony CTI can be customized to selectively record calls based upon combinations of real-time data passed from your switch, or even tailored to your specific event-driven or agent-initiated recording needs. For example, you may want to block recording of extensions allocated for private or personal calls, or block recording of outbound calls made to specific area codes. Or you might want to record calls from specific trunk lines.

Direct T1/E1 Recording
The Symphony CTI system's high impedance tap is totally passive and non-interfering. According to Dictaphone, some other systems actually use "drop and insert" taps that split your T1 span, putting the sensitive communications link between your PBX and the outside world at risk by adding a potential point of failure. Supporting direct T1/E1 recording means that you can size your recording system to your exact needs. Thus, you no longer need a dedicated recording channel for each agent or trader.

Information Capture And Retrieval
Real-time recording keeps track of the time and date, even during silent periods, so you can verify what actually did or did not happen. A user access audit trail protects your recorded communications by tracking all user activities on the system.

Depending on your switch, here's just some of the information that the Symphony CTI Advanced Call Retrieval System (ACRS) can capture: whether the call is inbound or outbound; the calling party (CLID); the dialed number (DNIS); the trunk; an agent ID; the extension; the call start and end time, date, and duration. This information is especially important for finding calls in a trunk side recording environment.

The Symphony CTI system can even track the various extensions to which a caller is transferred, so you always have a complete record of the entire phone conversation. Advanced querying can be performed via a drop-down interface. Up to four criteria can be executed at any one time as well as up to five AND conditions.

In financial trading environments, free seating can make it impossible to find an important call. Traders never stay in one place. But with Symphony CTI, no matter where your traders log on, or how often - whether daily, hourly, or from one phone call to the next - you'll still be able to find calls. This is because the Symphony CTI system captures the trader's logon ID along with each recorded call.

Tape Management
System-wide deck status information is displayed on a single screen, so you'll know at a glance whether certain decks are "busy" or "free" for playback, and whether tapes need to be changed. Another powerful feature, global commands, dramatically simplifies tape management tasks for large installations. With the click of a single button, you can initiate recording or eject tapes for many decks within the system.

Playback
Recordings can be played back over a local or wide area network on a PC using a SoundBlaster compatible card, or over the phone, eliminating the need for large multi-site operations to physically send tapes from one location to another.

The main Symphony interface for query and playback of recordings is very easy to use. With it, you can select records in the PlayList View, and then set a start and end point for playing back a particular range of recordings. Up to 1,280 hours of audio can be stored online and instantly accessed by multiple users at the same time, providing they have proper security clearance. For larger operations, the Symphony CTI Archive Media Warehouse (AMW) can provide unattended recording of and automatic access to literally months, even years, of recordings with minimal human intervention.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We'd like more detailed recording of IVR/VRU sessions. Specifically, we'd like the DTMF keys pressed by the customer to be mapped to more descriptive text, which should correspond to the IVR/VRU menu tree. For example, suppose a customer presses DTMF key "3," then chooses option "5," and finally DTMF option "2" in the IVR/VRU menu. This DTMF information could captured in the Symphony CTI system's database for later display on the computer screen.

However, instead of listing the DTMF keys as "3, 5, 2" on the computer screen, we'd like to see the numbers mapped to the corresponding menu descriptions, such as "(3) Tech Support, (5) Windows 98, (2) Microsoft Outlook." This would allow someone to determine, at a glance, where the customer went within the IVR/VRU system. Otherwise, a call center manager, call center agent, or system administrator has to manually correlate the DTMF keys displayed on the computer screen with the IVR/VRU's menu structure to determine where the customer was within the IVR/VRU system.

Da Vinci

Dictaphone's da Vinci is a full-featured quality management system, developed, maintained, and serviced solely by Dictaphone, which has the obvious advantage of not dealing with multiple vendors. Based on Windows NT and Oracle for its back-end database - along with a client/server architecture, support for CTI middleware, and free seating capabilities - this product has all the makings of a truly configurable and customizable solution to suit any customer's needs.

Dictaphone's da Vinci QMS (Quality Management System) product not only records the phone conversation between the agent and the caller, but also what's happening on the agent's screens, both of which are synchronized real-time with each other during playback. In fact, Dictaphone's advanced CTI technology allows it to record the entire call from start to finish, even if the call is transferred many times to several agents. Thus, this product will track the entire lifecycle of the call, including the voice communications, and the system will track which agent is speaking to the caller at any given time via the agent ID. This capability allows for more detailed recording and monitoring, and a more precise account of each call during call playback.

FEATURES

• Rules-based scheduling (which allows for recording to be scheduled by date and time, by CTI event, or by a percentage of a fixed number of calls on a random basis).
• Embedded Internet Explorer browser.
• CTI hooks, including support for Genesys's T-Server, Dialogic's CT-Connect, and others.
• Ability to save entire calls or clip voice segments as .WAV files to share/e-mail calls.
• Call wrap-up recording, selectable up to 15 minutes. (Useful for recording what is happening on the agent's screen after the caller has hung up - such as finishing order entry, sending an e-mail, fax, etc.
• Speed up/slow down of screen playback.
• Live monitor (supervisors can remotely listen in on calls in progress to evaluate performance).
• HTML form builder (evaluation forms are displayed in a Web browser interface, which makes it easier for remote access evaluation).
• ODBC support.
• Records both the voice and the screens for the entire lifecycle of the call, even if the caller is transferred several times.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Exhaustive Recording/Selective Retrieval
One of the key points of the da Vinci system (as well as Symphony CTI) is that it has enough storage capacity (via the AMW system) to record every single phone conversation, rather than randomly selected calls, which is the approach typical of most recording systems. For instance, some recording systems are set to record 5 out of every 100 calls. In this scenario, you could be missing 95 percent of your problem calls.

Recording all the calls, and then using Dictaphone's "Computer Telephony Intelligent" system, allows you to proactively identify potential problem calls. For instance, you can identify all calls in which the caller was on hold more than 10 minutes, or calls in which the caller was transferred several times. The Computer Telephony Intelligent design uses the power of CTI to let you monitor what matters most to you. So, if you want to track calls relating to specific campaigns, calls from your biggest customers, or calls handled by your newest agents, you can do this very easily with this system.

Online Forms
Dictaphone teamed up with Communico, Ltd. of Westport, CT to integrate their MAGIC (Make A Great Impression on Customers) framework for evaluating customer service into da Vinci's online evaluation forms. Since da Vinci features an embedded Internet Explorer browser, feature-rich HTML-based evaluation forms can contain radio buttons, drop-down boxes, graphics, and other powerful Web controls. This HTML-based architecture allows for easy remote evaluation as well. Using the MAGIC framework, call centers will have the ability to measure and enhance the quality of their customer interactions, as well as benchmark themselves with the results collected versus other call centers in their industry.

Scheduling
One of the most interesting da Vinci features we examined during our on-site visit was da Vinci's powerful scheduling. Since users can be assigned to multiple campaigns or groups, you can schedule recording very easily by campaign or group as well as by individual agent. For instance, call center managers can assign all their new agents to a group called "Rookies," and then schedule more recordings for this group so that call center managers can pay closer attention to their inexperienced agents.

We also liked the way da Vinci handled templates. With da Vinci, a call center manager can define and save reusable "schedule templates," which can be applied to an agent or group of agents. Thus, common scheduling assignments and options can be defined once and then assigned more quickly. Scheduling options include the definition of specific time intervals (by day, by week, etc.), as well as a special built-in "random" template which will perform random recording for the time interval specified.

Call Record Information
Querying call records as well as storing vital data are all very powerful features built into the da Vinci system. Da Vinci supports CTI for accurately marking call start and end times, ANI, customer account number, DNIS, and other useful information attached to the call record. Any field within the customer's database or IVR system, such as agent name, time and date, extension, file name, or customer number can be used as a search criteria to create a playback list.

In addition, call information such as length, time on hold, conferences, transfers, etc. is provided via a CTI link, all of which can be queried upon later to create a playback list.

A Unified Approach
The actual recording of each call is maintained within a single "master record." This master record will represent the entire call including all transfers, hold times, and even periods of silence to truly duplicate the call experience. This unified follow-the-call approach allows a supervisor to look at the entire call experience from the perspective of the customer/caller rather than focusing on the performance of a single agent. Post-call wrap-up (data entry tidying up) and the IVR menus the caller traversed are all contained in the master record.

Managing the system components of the da Vinci system, including the Recorder, Archiver, and other components is accomplished from a centralized screen. The recorder, which includes several pieces of Dialogic hardware, is currently displayed. An alternative view, the Archiver level, can display the status of the AMW, including important information such as total storage remaining.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
The current design architecture captures the screen per agent so that the call center manager can monitor and analyze an agent's individual performance. However, we found a limitation that may be related to this approach. If you are playing back a call (both voice and screen playback), any type of calls which involved transferring the call from one agent to another agent will cause the screen capture recording to stop after the transfer. We'd like to see the screen capture recording to continue even after the call is transferred so that call center managers can monitor data entry, as it occurs, during the entire lifecycle of the call.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Symphony CTI and da Vinci products are similar, in that they both can record a vast number of calls and both have tools for querying recorded calls. Symphony CTI's GUI is a bit more user-friendly and simpler to use; however da Vinci has more features.

One major difference between the two products is that da Vinci has a distributed architecture, which allows you to have multiple systems across disparate locations, such as having the Recorder and Archiver in two separate physical locations. This architecture gives da Vinci some inherent scalability advantages over Symphony, although we should point out that Symphony CTI supports distributed databases via its CORBA architecture.

Another key difference between Symphony and da Vinci is that the da Vinci platform supports synchronized screen capture in addition to recording the voice, whereas Symphony CTI just records the voice. Dictaphone classifies da Vinci as a very customizable quality monitoring system; it classifies Symphony CTI as more of a turnkey liability/recording system.

CONCLUSION
Both the da Vinci and Symphony CTI products allow you to record calls for evaluation, training, reporting, and liability protection. Using a recording and monitoring system with powerful query tools will allow an organization to monitor, measure, and improve the customer experience, which will improve service ratings.

TMC Labs was very impressed with both da Vinci and Symphony CTI, in terms of architecture and in terms of ease of use. In addition, the user-friendly query tools were invaluable - something with which we are sure call center managers will agree.