Call Recording - Have To VS Want To

"Your calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes..."

We all know those words well.

Legislation, data protection and PCI DSS stipulate that calls must be recorded, transactions monitored and sensitive data secured.

These calls must then be handled correctly and this can place stresses and strains on an IT department that is too often stretched!

The tendency is to do the bare minimum to appease legislation and be confident you are doing what you have to – the calls are recorded, the data is safe, job done…right?

Well strictly speaking yes, but is that really why you went through all the hassle of implementing the procedures and infrastructure?

Call recordings can reveal an overwhelming amount of information (more information than perhaps you may sometimes wish to know) and provides an invaluable asset in the pursuit of satisfying customer needs.

An organisations primary focus should always be to service its customer’s needs – after all businesses are traditionally set up due to their being a specific need for a service/product of some kind – and with information available easily, doing it well is paramount. It is too easy to find competitors and as such customer retention is increasingly important since battling the competition to win new business is tough and around 6 times more expensive. 

Your customer’s primary contact with your organisation will often be through the phone, it will most likely be with a customer services agent. How can you ensure that the experience they get is consistent, and in keeping with your brand identity? Well you have already installed that call recording equipment…

Call Recording and agent evaluation technology is advanced now. You can sort, sift, monitor, score and evaluate agents across parameters that you define. The benefits that this can bring your business (and your customers) are enormous. Understanding the user experience with your business can provide management with a wealth of options to improve and enhance the service that you offer to customers and the sheer volume of calls you receive will provide an almost endless stream.

Knowing where your agents are excelling and where they need improvement is just the first step on the way to making your customer experience (and service) first class. There are reports that customers are twice as likely to share bad experiences than good ones and four times more likely to buy from a competitor if they encounter poor service – according to salesforce.com.

These statistics alone should have you squirming, but I am sure you already had this suspicion didn’t you?

It is time to stop thinking that you have to do it, and start thinking that you want to do it. Balanced score cards focused on agent appraisal linked to call recording introduce excellent management tools to coach and develop, rather than just the basic requirement.

Call recording starts to deliver significant returns within the business through a shift towards understanding its uses. It can give you that 360 degree view on customer interaction and enable you to adapt skills and the approach to deliver substantial benefit. This benefit can then be transferred to customer satisfaction.