How is Business Call Recording Useful in Phone Systems?

While each and every business interaction is important, the ones that happen between a business’s support team and its customers over the call are highly critical. Stats reveal that 92% of customer interactions occur over the phone. Interestingly, 30-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.

Such facts clearly reveal that live phone support plays a crucial role in the success of a business. The way your business calls are handled makes the difference in whether the clients stick or go away. No matter if you are a small business or a large enterprise, call recording emerges as a powerful tool for enhancing customer interactions and improving the overall operational efficiency of the business. Call recording, therefore, becomes a vital part of a business’s operations and is widely used to analyze business calls.

What is Business Call Recording?

It is the process of recording incoming and outgoing business calls which is done either automatically or manually as per need. Traditionally, hardware devices were being used to record calls, but with the advent of internet technology, cloud-based call recording software such as KloudTalk is being popularly used by businesses around the world.

KloudTalk, a cloud based phone system, lets you set up call recording instantly with just a few clicks. The recordings can be easily saved so that they can be accessed later. Individual and multiple recordings can be downloaded for playback and review. Recording can also be customized for specific incoming or outgoing calls as required. For added convenience, all recordings can be sent as an email attachment.

How Business Call Recording Works?

Generally, a business call recording system works in the following manner:

1. When an incoming call arrives, the call recording system intercepts the audio signals from both the sender and receiver side.
2. The system then converts the voice signals into digital format in the form of binary data that can be processed, stored, and transmitted digitally.
3. This converted digital data is stored in a secured database. Since you are using a business phone system, the data is stored on the secured servers maintained by your vendor.
4. Authorized users can access the recordings from the business phone system’s user interface. They may also use different filters for date, time, etc., to search for specific recordings.
5. Upon selecting a desired recording, the user can playback the recorded call audio to review the conversation.
6. Based on the specific requirements of the business and the legal policies, the recorded conversations are stored for a definite period of time. Some systems automatically delete recordings based on preset rules.

Benefits of Business Call Recording

Access Recordings From Anywhere

One of the biggest benefits of call recordings through a business phone system is that it offers the convenience of accessing recorded conversations from anywhere. For example, a remote team manager can access the call recordings between his team members and customers to evaluate performance and find areas of improvement. With this ease of accessibility, a business can ensure that critical conversations can be monitored and evaluated to improve business operations. 

Offers Key Insights

Call recordings are the interactions that happen between agents and customers over the phone call. These recordings when utilized in a proper way can be a gold mine to understand customer preferences, problem areas, and behavior of the customers. A business can analyze call recordings to find popular trends and understand the specific needs of the customers in a comprehensive manner. For instance, customer support managers can identify the common concerns or queries raised by the callers. By receiving such insights, managers can make changes to their products and services so that they align with the expectations of the customers. 

Supports Quality Control

This is one of the key areas where call recordings play a very critical role. By monitoring the recorded conversations between agents and customers, a business can check adherence to communication protocols. They can identify the areas of improvement and implement suitable customer service techniques for better communication. For example, the owner of a restaurant can check call recordings to see whether staff members are taking orders accurately or not. 

Use Cases of Business Call Recording

Call recording for business can be used by businesses dealing in different types of industry verticals such as real estate, hospitality, travel, finance, etc. Customer support teams and sales teams are two main categories that can benefit greatly from call recordings.

Recorded calls can be utilized in different types of situations faced by a business as mentioned below:

Enhanced Customer Experience

Phone calls are a crucial communication link between your business and its clients.  This is evident from the fact that Customer Satisfaction is considered the most important call center KPI by 95.7% of contact center professionals. Further, it has been found that 61% of customers said they would stop dealing with a company as they did not experience good customer service from them. Managers can listen to recorded calls to see if the employees are maintaining the call quality standards and delivering customers a delightful experience.

Another interesting study reveals that more than 76% of consumers contacting customer service of a business expect the representative to know their product and history with the company.

This means that call recordings can be used by employees or agents to get to better know their customers so as to make their buying journey more satisfactory.

Monitoring Employee Performance

Only 13% of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs.

This percentage highlights the importance of attending customer calls with an attentive attitude. By assessing employees’ conversations with customers, businesses can rate the performance of the employees. Supervisors can ensure that the agents adhere to scripts and maintain professionalism when interacting with customers. They can use call recordings as real examples to provide feedback to employees. 

Moreover, when employees are aware that their conversations can be heard at any point in time, they are more mindful of their work. With all this, there are high chance that some businesses might see a drastic improvement in the performance of their employees.

Provide Training to New and Existing Employees

With call recordings, a company can get to know the strengths and weaknesses of individual employees. The evaluation made by managers and supervisors can be used to prepare training sessions – both one-to-one and in groups. Even the new employees can be trained by showcasing use cases from recorded calls to make them understand what went right during customer calls and what did not work. Moreover, call recordings can be used to figure out special and effective techniques used by top-performing employees which can be shared across teams for learning and raising overall performance standards. 

Used as an Evidence for Dispute Resolution

There are various scenarios in which call recordings can be used as evidence, as mentioned below:

• Customer Complaints: Businesses often receive complaints from customers about unsatisfactory service due to miscommunication. In such cases, call recordings serve as factual records of the interaction thus helping in bringing clarity to the situation. 
• Contractual Agreements: Many times, business agreements are discussed and agreed over phone calls. So if the call is recorded, it can be used as evidence of the terms and conditions, in case any dispute arises. 
• Order Verifications: If your business requires taking orders or reservations from customers over the call, then the chances of complaints regarding incorrect or missing information are likely to arise. For such issues, call recordings can be referred to to confirm the details provided by the customers. 
• Legal Fights: Legal battles with unhappy customers can be resolved much more easily if the business has call recordings as a piece of evidence. For instance, if a customer claims that the agent or representative misguided them, then call recording can provide protection in such cases.

To Know Consumer Opinions

A 5% increase in customer retention can produce 25% more profit.

By listening to recorded calls, business supervisors can get to know what customers think about the brand, their expectations, and their perceptions. They can get to know the overall experience shared by the customers over the call. Moreover, recording calls can be a good way to figure out the most useful product enhancements or any new ideas by referring to suggestions made by customers during conversations.

Another way to get the best out of call recordings is to understand customer experiences about your competitors. This can help in addressing the current gaps in your services and differentiating your business in the market. All this information can be very helpful for the management in planning business products and services along with marketing strategies to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.

Remote Work Management

Remote working is the new workplace norm. However, it becomes difficult for the supervisors and managers to evaluate the performance of their support agents as they are not working in the same physical office space. This is where call recordings come into action. By listening to the call recordings, a company can evaluate the performance of an employee quite easily. 

Best Practices for Call Recording 

If you are recording calls using a business phone system, then you must consider ethical practices to ensure effective and responsible call recording:

• Inform Your Callers: It is important to obtain consent from the callers before the call is recorded to maintain transparency and compliance with the laws. The message informing the callers should be given at the beginning of the call.
• Define the Purpose: While it is important to inform the callers about call recording, it is equally important to outline the purpose of doing it. Your purpose could be quality assurance, training compliance dispute resolution, etc.
• Educate Your Employees: You must educate and train your employees about the call recording policies and procedures. They must know how to handle sensitive business information during the call.
• Secure Storage: As a business, it is your responsibility to ensure secure storage for the call recordings. This is important to prevent data breaches and access from unauthorized parties. Ensure that your business phone system offers effective access controls.
• Retain Calls as Necessary: Determine the appropriate retention period for recorded calls based on business requirements and legal mandates. Delete recordings that are no longer needed to minimize data storage risks.
• Anonymize Data: When using data from recorded calls for training purposes, it is best to anonymize PII i.e. Personally Identifiable Information to ensure the privacy of the customers.
• Regular Audits: This practice is a must to ensure compliance with regulations governing call recording. By conducting regular audits, it becomes easy to identify and address any potential problems.

By adhering to these best practices, you can effectively use call recording while ensuring the privacy of your customers, maintaining legal compliance, and leveraging the benefits of recorded calls.

KloudTalk – Call Recording Software for Customer Support Calls

Majority of the modern day small business phone systems are equipped with a call recording features. You can give it a try to KloudTalk which is a user-friendly and robust cloud phone system for small to medium enterprises and provides the facility to record business calls with full ease. KloudTalk is packed with advanced features that bring more flow and efficiency to your business operations.

Record Business Calls with KloudTalk – Get Started!

We cannot ignore the fact that “88% of contact centers claim customer experience and expectations are the driving force of growth.” Besides call recording, KloudTalk offers several other features such as Call Reporting, Business Phone Numbers, and Click to Call Buttons, Multilevel IVR, Text to Speech, Voicemail, etc. All these features are extremely useful for streamlining business communication functions and delivering better customer service.

The bottom line is that if you are a small to medium-sized business, say a call center with more than 1 employee handling the customer calls, then a cloud-based phone system with a call recording feature is the best option for you. If you are not using this technology, it is high time you put it in place right now. You can also read our blog post on Why You Should Record Your Business Calls

Note- This post has been updated with latest information on 23-08-23.