There are many organisations and industries that are required to record their telephone conversations, whether that be legally or because of compliance guidelines set out for a specific service. This is quite common in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, finance and legal services, however, call recording can benefit many other industries as well.
Recording your calls can help your business to improve its customer service through training and continuous review of the calls to assess the level of service they deliver. It can also be used as evidence and help keep record of verbal contracts among other things. Here’s why any company that conducts any business or provides customer service over the phone should record their calls.
Customer Satisfaction
The interaction between a call centre agent and a customer is so important, the agent’s actions can make or break the customer’s experience. One wrong step could result in lost business or an angry customer who might write about their experience on social media which can create a bad image for your company, no one is attracted to a company who is known for giving bad customer service. Call recording is the only way that management can check whether the agents are doing their job properly or not.
Real-time call barging doesn’t cover every customer interaction, yes management can step in on a bad call but it isn’t practical for a manager to barge in on every call. It’s also possible that if a manager is listening in that the agent will be on their best behaviour, and as soon as they finish monitoring them they could revert back to giving bad customer service.
Training
Whether you’re training new staff or improving the skill of your current agents, call recording is a great tool for demonstrating what to do and what not to do during customer interaction on the phone. There’s nothing like learning from real situations, you might have recorded staged conversations or include a roleplay section in your training but how often do these scenarios play out like a real interaction? Recording your calls allows you to capture every type of call and customer that you may encounter, this can help you to prepare your staff for eventualities that they might not have even thought of.
Using real calls will also help you to train your staff and teach them how your organisation specifically should interact on the phone with customers, what your company standards are and what you expect of them.
Elimination of ‘He Said, She Said’
Misunderstandings can easily arise when speaking on the phone with someone, whether that is answering a customer’s question or negotiating terms of a contract, and accusations can be made by angry customers. In all of these situations call recording is so useful, it helps to shed light on a confusing situation and clarify what actually was said, without call recording it is one person’s word against another’s. In the case of the angry customer they may ask for the call to be escalated to a supervisor who hasn’t heard any part of the previous conversation, they have to make a judgement whether to trust the customer is telling the complete truth. With a record of the call the supervisor can review what actually happened, can make a decision on how to proceed and whether the agent was at fault and whether they need to be corrected.
Compliance
Depending on your industry call recording may be required as set out by service compliance guidelines as set by the FSA for example, or even laws set by the government. Businesses within the financial sector have to record all of their verbal communications, and banks, brokers, insurance and other financial companies are heavily monitored and regulated by the government and private organisations. Companies who take payment over the phone are also required record calls to maintain their PCI DSS compliance.
C3’s PhonepayPlus (PPP) approved call recording solution is a flexible application that can grow and evolve with your business. For more information about our Call Recording Systems and Solutions please contact our team.