Like social media, call recording has become standard for many businesses and their contact centers. Business phone call recording offers many benefits as a must-have feature to provide quality assurance and training, ensure regulatory compliance, build customer personas, record verbal contracts, and offer legal proof.
Customer demands are ever-changing as are your business needs. There are many reasons your business might want to record phone calls, and with a Teltik business phone plan, you can. But how do you record a phone call? What is the best way to record phone calls?
The Benefits of Recording Calls for Business
From paying bills to taking orders, nearly everything in the modern age is automated. Recording phone calls automatically, or via a tap on your smartphone, is to be expected by an entrepreneur who keeps up with technology and uses it to their advantage. Here are five benefits of recording calls for business:
1. Monitor Quality Assurance and Training
“All calls are recorded for quality assurance and training,” drones the automated voice while a customer is on hold. It’s the standard announcement before a customer service representative picks up on the other end of the line.
Recorded phone calls ensure representatives get the most out of their training, and managers better monitor the success of that training. It allows you to gain insight into a representative’s performance to see if they may need additional guidance.
You can use various customer scenarios to source examples of what not to do and what to do from real life interactions. You can also use the recordings to ensure you are maintaining quality assurance standards and creating satisfactory customer experiences.
2. Keep Up With Regulatory Compliance
Many businesses must abide by stringent regulatory compliance laws. For example, medical industry businesses have to comply with HIPPA regulations to protect patient information by following the Declaratory Ruling and Order issued by the FCC.
Business phone call records help administrators stay in compliance by reviewing the exact details shared on the line. You can ensure that representatives follow regulatory compliance laws and implement guidelines into their policies for doing so, in order to avoid unfortunate and illegal errors.
3. Build Customer Personas
The data logged during a call helps a business improve its products and services. However, call recordings better your business by helping you understand your customers in detail, from who they are, to anticipating their future needs, in their own words.
Marketing teams should also listen to call recordings. The marketing department can use these interactions to build a customer persona and turn the data for different demographics into tangible identities to serve. For example, if Gen Z people keep calling to request an update to a product, your company can alter the product and learn more about strategically positioning it on the market.
The more authentically your business can relate to its customers, the more they, in turn, will engage with you and remain loyal.
4. Form a Legal Verbal Contract
How legally binding is a verbal contract? For an oral agreement to become a legally binding contract, it must contain an offer, an acceptance of the offer (or its counter-offer), an intention to form legal relations and consideration (quantifiable items of exchange).
If an oral agreement is recorded, then it makes the fact that a verbal contract was formed easier to prove should a legal dispute arise. The litigation that ensues could easily crush a small business and do significant damage to the reputation of a larger business. A contract over phone is just as binding as one made on paper. Think of the recording as the “paper” for the body of your agreement, and one that’s more likely to stand up in court.
5. Offer Legal Proof
Aside from verifying the details of a verbal contract, you can also use saved phone recordings to protect your business against scams and fraud, and to help your employees block scammers. Use the recordings to train your representatives on fraud schemes. Recorded calls also come in handy if an employee is suspected or accused of fraud.
Keep in mind that each state has its own laws about consent regarding recording phone calls and what can and cannot be used as legal proof in court. Maintaining legal and moral ethics when it comes to recording calls will keep your business safe and your customers happy.
The Ethics of Recording Business Phone Calls
Can companies record phone calls? There are several considerations to keep in mind when recording business phone calls. Your organization will need to choose the right approach to technology for your requirements and fully understand the legal requirements for ethically capturing business conversations.
What are the laws on recording conversations? Federal law requires one-party consent, but the states each have their own regulations.
In some states, all parties in the conversation must give their consent to make it eligible as legal proof. In two party consent states, all subjects involved must be informed that they are being recorded before the act of recording begins.
In one party consent states, only the consent of one person is required to record the conversation. In this case, if you are doing the recording, you don’t have to tell the other party you are recording. As an example, Washington D.C. only requires one party consent.
Some states also have unique exceptions in some of their call recording regulations. In Hawaii, an otherwise one party consent state, all parties have to be notified that they are being recorded when in a private area, such as a personal residence.
When running a business, transparency in how a customer’s data is used maintains their trust and loyalty. This inherent fact poses a question of ethics that businesses must decide for themselves in advance, beyond call recording regulations.
Savvy and Secure Ways To Record Phone Calls
Previously, phone call recording was limited to the largest businesses that could afford the hardware and features required to record, store and manage all the recordings. In the Technological Age, many methods are available to serve your specific call recording needs, such as an automatic call recorder, an in line phone recorder or CRM with call recording.
Now, cloud services make call recording possible for businesses on the move, like digital nomads.
It’s as simple as downloading an app for your pocket-sized small business. Are you an Android or iOS user? Remember, not all call recording apps are built the same.
Each call recording app has its benefits and limitations corresponding with its price tag or lack thereof. Some apps won’t record calls automatically. You have to dial a specific number as a three-way conference call where the additional line records the call which you can later access. You can store the recording yourself, for a price, or some apps will store the call for you, for a higher price.
A better to option is to choose one of our business phone plans that automatically records calls, which you can access in your call history across devices on the cloud. Small business phone plans have higher security levels than you may be able to afford currently, protecting sensitive customer data.
Some call recording technology integrates with the business’ marketing automation platform (MAP) or customer relationship management (CRM) software. With a host, the provider stores the calls which the user can access through an online management portal. From there, you can listen to, assign interactions, download, or delete calls. Make sure this information is encrypted for security purposes.
With call recording, you can gather customer data ethically with CRM programs, and monitor social media for engagement levels. Listen to your recorded calls, let your customers speak for themselves, and get to know them.
Combine all of this data to build customer personas to better the experiences of your consumers, as well as to improve your services and products. With a plan from Teltik, you can drive your business to success while protecting your brand and the people behind it.