It’s been two years since the old Data Protection Act was replaced by the GDPR. The legislation represented a real challenge for existing hosted & on-premises call recording & call management system owners. Call recording technology has evolved considerably to help customers stay on the right side of the new regulations. However, that well-worn phrase:
‘Your call is being recorded for training purposes’
…is still surprisingly abundant despite GDPR restrictions. So how can businesses make the most of the latest technology?
1 – Get valuable training insights
A new starter in any business can be a huge drain on resources during the first few weeks/months of training particularly when learning systems and capturing and using data on screen. The implementation of new procedures, strategies and systems can also impact existing staff and cause a real hiatus in business performance. When screen capture is added to call recording, managers and supervisors see every aspect of a customer interaction, from beginning to end. If the employee was not in the correct part of the CRM or failed to update an opportunity the entire process can be replayed. Good practice can not only be listened to but also shown as a reference to compare and improve the business.
2 – Quality is key
How calls are handled in reality once the training is complete and processes mastered is the next vital step in customer interaction. Calls can now be automatically selected for review against a predetermined questionnaire, set by managers or team leaders. Completed questionnaires are used as a guide by businesses to evaluate how calls are handled, show ways to improve, highlight areas for reward and or training.
3 – Your calls are recorded…now what?
In the past a call recording system that searched for calls by time, date and duration was the norm. It often sat in the comms room, unused until a customer complained in a ‘he said, she said’ dispute. Some systems captured CLI and more sophisticated systems add colour marking for good/bad, training, complaint recordings or annotation during or after the call to help in the call search process. To really speed up the process and make drastic savings on time and costs speech analytics and voice recognition is an invaluable tool. It’s now possible for you to choose words or phrases relevant to the call that you need to find, upload them and quickly see (and hear) the results on an online dashboard, along with detailed transcription of the calls and translation where necessary.
4 – Measure, evaluate and improve your business
Call activity has a direct impact on sales and profit for every business. Do you measure the value of a lost sale? Or the lifetime value of a lost customer? Your investment in training staff and perfecting customer service will be wasted if you aren’t measuring and actioning missed, slowly answered and unreturned calls. Customers are often too busy to wait and will quickly turn to a competitor to buy or to social media to complain. These problems can be quickly nipped in the bud with a system that measures call metrics on live supervisor dashboards with visibility to all on live wallboards.
5 – What about Data Protection (GDPR)?
The GDPR introduced a raft of measures that presented major challenges in particular for call recording systems with limited search capabilities. These measures included the right to be forgotten, proof or refusal of consent, right to portability and the customer’s right to see their data.
If a customer decides at the point of contact or during a call that their legitimate interest is being overridden it is now possible to stop that recording. This feature is also vital to stop/start recording where sensitive charge card information is taken over the phone in order to comply with PCI DSS. A secure delete feature is also necessary to delete calls so that they cannot be retrieved by any means in the future. Call marking, and screen recording enhance the overall ability of a recorder to locate calls quickly for GDPR.
Often the requirement for GDPR compliance within a company is intertwined with protecting sensitive credit/debit card information taken over the phone (PCI DSS) and for those in the finance and insurance industry the need to satisfy the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) that financial transactions are being recorded. A call recording system that can cope with all of these requirements is vital.
Guest blog by Everton Stuart, Managing Director of Vidicode UK
Vidicode design develops and manufactures sophisticated communication solutions, such as digital telephone recorders, digital audio recorders, professional answering equipment, network fax servers and voice recorders. We have been active now for over 35 years in over 35 countries. Our strength lies with our dedicated development team and close cooperation with our distributors and resellers. Being a company driven by the passion for functional technology we aim to provide customers with solutions that are easy to implement and maintain. Flexibility is standard practice and puts our distributors and resellers in a better position to provide the best solutions to their clients. Our flagship recording solution Apresa, includes a wide range of features, including integrated screen recording, call recording and speech analytics. Vidicode is a trademark of Ecosoft BV.
