Join VPI and Straumann for an exciting webinar showcasing the powerful reporting solutions for Cisco UCC Contact Centers. You'll learn how Cisco and VPI helped Straumann develop and award-winning real-time contact center performance reporting solution.

Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM ET, 10:00 AM PT
Register here.

Now you can get even more value from your Cisco UCC Express (UCCX) or UCC Enterprise (UCCE) investment. VPI, a Cisco Solution Developer, VIP and SIP Partner, has integrated its award-winning VPI Performance contact center reporting and performance management software application with Cisco. This functionality complements and enhances the UCCX and UCCE platforms greatly by consolidating data and presenting actionable, real-time information in the form of Web dashboards, interactive reports, scorecards and desktop tickers to empower contact center managers, supervisors and agents to make better, quicker decisions.

Learn how Cisco and VPI customer Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, enhanced the capabilities of its Cisco Unified Contact Center system and operations with VPI’s award-winning real-time Cisco reporting software solution.

Register to attend the complimentary Webinar, hosted by subject matter experts from Straumann and VPI, to learn how you can:

• Create and report on metrics based on Cisco UCCX, UCCE and other contact center data (CRM, ERP, QA, WFM) to meet business objectives.
• Report across multiple teams and queues, locations and Cisco UCCX/UCCE systems to get a holistic view of contact center operations.
• Perform true historical reporting with unlimited data collection – get insights into trending over time and a historically accurate representation of your agents’ group assignments.
• Create flexible grouping structures to report on groups and teams in any manner that makes most sense to your business.
• Drill through layers of data for root cause analysis and trigger targeted alerts, notifications and Coaching assignments based on performance thresholds to promptly correct performance gaps.

Scheduling Conflict? Register for the Webinar and we'll send you the recorded version.

Presenters:

Carlo Wise - IT Specialist, Straumann

Carlo Wise serves as a senior IT Specialist at Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, leveraging his strong background in all facets of telephony and network systems integration. He is an experienced IT and Contact Center professional with over 16 years of experience in supporting and implementing Contact Center technologies in small to large Contact Center environments. Mr. Wise holds a variety of industry certifications, including Cisco, CompTIA and Redhat.

Delee Shields - Channel Sales Director, VPI
 
Delee has been instrumental in working closely with Cisco in developing VPI's Cisco Developer Network (CDN) Solution Developer, Value Incentive (VIP) and Solutions Incentive (SIP) partnership programs. She is responsible for working hand-in-hand with Cisco customers and channel partners through the entire sales process. She has extensive knowledge of Cisco Unified Communications product platforms and is highly experienced in Cisco reporting software, Cisco call recording software, workforce optimization, VoIP, LAN, WAN, MAN and wireless solution design. Prior to joining VPI as a sales engineer in 2007, she worked in sales and sales engineering capacities promoting Cisco solutions as well as earning her Cisco CCNA and CCNP certifications.

August 7^th, the start date of this year’s APCO International Conference and Trade Show, is approaching fast - we are looking forward to seeing you in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!  We are particularly excited about this event as APCO selected our customer City of Edmond to share the best practices for latest-generation communications recording and quality assurance at a Training Session that has been scheduled for 4pm on Monday, August 8^th. This is a must-see presentation that breaks the barriers of what was once seen as too much to ask from recording and quality assurance technology. As a bonus, we are certain that you will enjoy the dynamic, engaging presentation style of Matt Stillwell, Director of Emergency Communications for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma and senior advisor at APCO.

In the meantime, or if you're unable to make it to the APCO Conference this year, we invite you to watch the video here to learn about:

·      Smart new ways of the City of Edmond's 911 center and other departments to record and share communications.

·      What you really need in recording and multimedia incident recreation technology.

·      How to implement an effective QA program to get better insights in less time and prepare for upcoming new standards.

If you have any questions about this video or would like to schedule a private meeting or demo with us at the conference (our booth number is 1001), please contact Patrick Botz at pbotz@VPI-corp.com. Thanks and hope to see you there!

2011 is certainly shaping up to be VPI's year - VPI Quality Pro recently received the 2010 Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions (CIS) magazine! Even better, this is the second consecutive year we've won the award. And while our most valued praise always comes from our customers, it never hurts to receive recognition from the industry. We know that selecting a call center Quality Assurance solution is a big decision, and most people rely on industry resources such as TMC and CIS magazine to help guide their decisions.

So, you may be wondering what this award is all about. Each year, CIS presents its Product of Year awards to products and companies in the contact center and CRM industries that help users deliver an enhanced customer experience. Why did CIS choose VPI Quality Pro? First, it's built on our secure and powerful VPI Empower platform. This gives users confidence and reliability. Plus, VPI Quality Pro allows users to automatically categorize and prioritize recordings by customer names, products offered, transaction values and more -- across multimedia communication channels -- so that contact centers can focus on their most critical business issues instead. Now managers have these crucial recordings at their fingertips and can act quickly to resolve issues, improve performance and increase productivity. We're proud to deliver this innovation to our customers and the industry.

Does your contact center use VPI Quality Pro? We'd love to hear what you think! Or click here to learn more about VPI Quality Pro.

Internal efficiency coupled with quality of patient care, customer service, and communications within a network of linked organizations are quickly becoming top objectives for healthcare insurance plan providers and care givers alike. Since overall quality scores will directly drive healthcare funding incentives versus disincentives, organizations face an urgent need to reevaluate their tools and processes for measuring and improving quality. And that must include a close look at monitoring of call quality and operational effectiveness in contact centers. These new priorities are driven by the fact that healthcare is undergoing a major transformation today. The purpose of the reformation is to address the many challenges including increasing costs and decreased, outcome-based reimbursement. Healthcare organizations are also grappling with internal pressures like spiraling out-of control costs, critical shortage of qualified healthcare workers and high employee turnover, combined with external pressures such as stricter CMS quality guidelines and pressure to achieve high star ratings to earn adequate funding, HIPAA compliance, increased insurance fraud and an aging population that is placing increasing demands on the entire healthcare industry.

Strikingly, only 5% of patients account for 60% or more of medical expense today, mostly due to high costs of managing chronic conditions – prevalent in our aging population. Out of the 3.8 million boomers aging into Medicare every year starting in 2011, 60% already have at least one chronic condition, so the pressure on healthcare insurance and care providers is about to grow even more dramatically. Amongst the many high level concerns to tackle, there are two significant concerns which keep healthcare executives awake at night and these are increasing operating costs and medical errors. Many leaders including federal, state and patient advocacy agencies have begun to address these critical issues by challenging previously held assumptions about these two factors. Evidence shows that elimination of errors alone leads to significant cost reductions. Therein lays the challenge to implement change to the patient experience. Historically, most efforts to manage the needs of these patients-customers have been stifled by a fragmented delivery system and lack of true care coordination. This simply will not be sustainable going forward. One of the areas that can positively impact this is at the contact center level which handles and serves patients, doctors and healthcare providers.

New call quality monitoring tools are helping contact centers within these healthcare organizations make a contribution to improve the overall experience of patients and healthcare network participants. They have helped to make significant costs reductions in training dollars through targeted coaching which helps the overall process improvement effort. All of these elements of patient care dictate renewed focus on the quality of communications among all parties – patients, healthcare plan providers, hospitals, specialty physicians, pharmacists, social services, home health, nursing homes, and a variety of ancillary providers. Periodic, intelligent capturing and assessment of information from patients, their employers, the insurance providers, the physicians and all other pertinent data sources leads to executive insights into operational effectiveness, as well as options for activities that would help address rising cost and eliminating defects. As a result, these healthcare providers are embracing innovative contact center quality monitoring tools that enable them to pinpoint critical business issues with laser-like precision. The latest-generation interactions recording and quality monitoring systems come with built-in analytics, which helps automatically sort out recorded communications according to their type and value – the financial value and the recording’s potential to provide insights into operational inefficiencies or errors. Gone are the days of hunting and pecking through all calls to identify issues.

This new generation of evaluation systems can present quality metrics automatically based on the multi-dimensional information that is automatically captured with each recording. Plus, they drive management attention to high value calls for detailed evaluation, while still providing objectivity for periodic evaluation of each agent. These systems can automatically trigger alerts or notifications when thresholds are crossed or errors occur – based on metrics that result from detailed quality evaluations, as well as data that is collected at the time of recording interactions. These early warning indicators could also be in the form of real-time dashboard graphs or desktop tickers that alert employees when certain thresholds are missed and targets are not met. Actionable nature of this monitoring system is further enhanced with automated training delivery. Coaching and E-learning content can be automatically assigned to the agents according to their individual quality scores, in addition to encouraging their progress with new learning opportunities. This has proven to help improve morale and increase agent satisfaction. These are some of the practical innovative solutions that help answer the very real challenge of managing healthcare contact center problems - in a systematic, disciplined, and productive way - the collective potential of individuals to continuously enhance the value delivered to patients, their families, and the communities in which they provide healthcare services.

In today’s challenging economic climate, analytics is changing the way companies do business and dramatically improving contact  center operations, managers want quick and  accurate insights into the effectiveness of their contact center operations in order to make prudent, timely decisions, but they don't have the time or resources to listen to and review  the vast amount of customer interactions  handled by the agents every day. 

In addition to this there is no shortage of performance metrics available from their PBX and ACD. These days there seems to be more sophisticated tools including multimedia recording, desktop analytics, instant chat, self service options in the IVR, cloud computing,  etc. Managers and supervisors today are able to choose from a myriad of options to manage performance but where do they start to do their quality evaluations in a systematic manner using complex algorithmic mathematical formulas combined with scientific methodologies and their own intuition? Therein lies their dilemma. So little time, so much to accomplish in the course of a day...

Quality monitoring systems offered today are not only to evaluate agents but also to evaluate a contact center reputation. Yes, reputation, might sound obvious but too often contact centers seem to miss this critical view point. A customer's perception of service captured in a call recording or video file says a lot about the culture of the organization. Call Center Reporting and Call Monitoring Systems are a means to an end in that one has to learn from the information and who else to translate these to actions and outcomes than the Supervisor. This has to be one of the most critical and unforgiving roles within the contact center next to the agent. Sort of being a start quarterback being called in to throw a touchdown on each attempt when the offensive team is on and the line backer when the defensive line is on.

The role of the supervisor and their agent has been so devalued over the years that it is not a surprise the attrition rates for these roles are in double digits. This is not a malaise or a disease or caused by the recent global financial crisis or globalization. We did this to ourselves. We have become part of a culture that communicates via a keyboard than by voice skills and the traditional skills that our parents taught us about being polite and respectful. We complicate the connection with our customers and prospects through voice prompts and boring scripts to keep the agents from really having a connection with the customers.

Enter VPI and it's Empower suite of products. In my humble opinion, this product is a god-send for managers, supervisors and front-line agents. VPI has truly defined the new expectation of a customer through a fresh set of lenses. It shatters the level of "mediocrity" to "excellence" in quality and performance from the customer's point of view. The power of the data can now be turned into knowledge which in turn can be turned into wisdom for coaching to excellence and that translates to actionable analytics and outcomes.

Quality Assurance is everyone's responsibility and by giving power to the people who  influence agent behaviors, then the Supervisor should be the quarterback that determines the outcome of the game. Like they said in the movie, if you build, the customers will come. VPI has started this movement by building on a framework that is supervisor-friendly for QA success. If we synthesize all these goals, the aim of QA and Call Monitoring becomes a matter of linking outcomes of calls to a customer's behavior not only the agent's behavior. As a result, contact centers can also learn what effects, if any their approach to training and coaching agents have on customers and ultimately the outcomes.

Being proactive and giving agents a larger stake in the pie by identifying areas of strength, best practices and also key training to be used for modeling success. In this way, a contact center can leverage the VPI Empower suite of products and establish guidelines and standards for handling calls instead of dictating what agents should or should not do. In the larger picture, the role of the supervisor and the agent has to be supported through all levels of the organization. As a result, success and a best practice model will show up sooner than later!
 

For the past 15 years, APCO has been carefully crafting a list of operational standards in order to ensure the best possible quality in public safety emergency communications. Now, in collaboration with NENA and associated industry bodies, this lengthy endeavor has culminated in the development of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) standards, along with soon-to-be introduced Quality Assurance (QA) standards. These new requirements are raising the bar for the quality of service required from the nation’s public safety agencies.

Quality of service is impacted by both the performance of employees and the processes in use.  Periodic, systematic quality evaluation of emergency contact center communications can provide invaluable transparency to everyone involved and expose inadequacies in both employee and process areas. This is especially critical in the current transitional period when old, inadequate communication systems are being replaced with Next Generation technologies and 9-1-1 centers are expected to handle various different types of communications - not just voice and TTY communications any more. Plus, the increasingly complex nature of public safety communications entails new regulations that PSAP centers will have to demonstrably comply with. The traditional approach to quality management is being replaced with evaluation of multiple communication streams and types involved in incidents, along with a variety of supporting evidence, such as images, videos, text documents and data. Prioritization of such evaluations is driven by significance of various incident types, so selection of recordings for evaluation has to be subordinated to that. When correctly planned and executed, the latest-generation software-driven quality evaluation can deliver valuable insights into the best course of corrective actions to support the new demands.

In response to the introduction of the new NG9-1-1 and QA standards and the difficulties faced by cash-strapped organizations in attempting to comply with them, VPI is launching its ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program for public safety and security organizations.  The program, valid from now through June 30th, 2011, stretches the tight budgets of public safety and security organizations by enabling them to affordably upgrade their legacy recording systems with VPI’s state-of-the-art VPI CAPTURE™ voice logging system and provides double the value by including free VPI QUALITY™ call taker quality assurance software. VPI CAPTURE is an affordable, NG9-1-1 ready recording system that installs quickly to reliably and securely capture, manage and share critical incident information and to provide insights to optimize workforce efficiency.

For more information, conditions and restrictions on VPI’s ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program, visit http://www.VPI-corp.com/Quality or contact us at 1-800-200-5430. 

Are you monitoring and measuring the metrics that really matter to you and your organization?

Now more than ever, contact center managers and executives need to be proactive in helping their organizations accomplish contact center optimization and tactical goals, but with so much data available gathered from ACDs, IVRs, telephone recorder software and call monitoring quality assurance tools, there's a tendency to rely upon the tried and true metrics that everyone tracks - perhaps more out of habit than as a result of the their actual value. Successful contact center managers know and understand the metrics that matter and utilize proactive communications recording technologies that enable them to actively identify and optimize rather than wait and react.
 

Download your complimentary white paper authored by one of the industry's premier research firms The Pelorus Group to learn how to develop and track "Metrics that Matter."

Current economic challenges are forcing organizations to rethink their approach to customer service and how they balance efficiency and effectiveness objectives. With regard to call center optimization, complexities have vastly increased with the growing number of communication channels and higher expectations from customers. The implementation of workforce optimization software technologies has become crucial in today's environment, ultimately resulting in increased profitability and improved strategic position in the marketplace.

Download your complimentary white paper authored by prestigious industry analyst and research firm Datamonitor, to learn:

• Key challenges faced by contact centers today

• How contact centers are responding and adapting to current economic challenges

• How using workforce optimization software technologies can help you maintain the proper balance between efficiency and effectiveness

• The capabilities and advantages of workforce optimization software technologies, including voice call recording, quality assurance call monitoring, workforce management, call center performance management, desktop contact center analytics and call center coaching solutions

Public safety emergency communications have never been on the threshold of greater change than they are today. Navigating in a complex world of tracking, digital call recording, quality assurance call monitoring, and training on interactions in today’s increasingly complex communication centers requires much more insight than ever before. This ground-breaking guide discusses the areas that public safety organizations need to focus upon in preparation for the many changes and challenges that lie ahead.

Use the promo code VPIBLOG to download your complimentary public safety communications recording and QA resource guide authored by analyst Dick Bucci from The PELORUS GROUP, to learn about:

• Successfully managing unified radio and telephone call recording in increasingly complex environments with any combination of digital, analog, and IP phones, conventional and trunked radio, and CAD systems used at multiple sites
• Achieving automated and expanded data collection for faster search and complete incident recreation
• The importance of being able to remotely access, retrieve and share interactions from your communications recording call logger in a multi-site environment with utmost security and ease
• Which calls and how many to monitor for quality in order to identify areas for training and call center coaching
• How to construct quality assurance call monitoring rating forms and perform evaluations
• How to effectively implement electronic training solutions to boost productivity and retention

Dispatch quality assurance call monitoring software is more important today than ever before. Recognized as an essential component in the quest for improved performance, efficiency and productivity, public safety organizations are now placing an increased emphasis on the capabilities and deployment of dispatch quality assurance call monitoring software. In the midst of today’s consolidation and changes, many public safety and security organizations are being asked to do more with less resources. Therefore, it is even more important than ever before to maximize the productivity and effectiveness of current employees and resources. There is tremendous value in assessing recorded interactions with dispatch quality assurance voice logging software. As public safety organizations roll out new programs, new communications recording and dispatching technologies, and Next Generation 9-1-1 initiatives, a quality assurance program using automated dispatch quality assurance tool integrated with your call recording software can be invaluable for monitoring the adoption and success of your initiatives.

Benefits of Dispatch Quality Assurance Software

Integrated dispatch quality assurance call recording software can be extremely valuable in improving the efficiency and accuracy of emergency communications. Quality assurance helps improve productivity and reduce staff turnover. With new Web-based dispatch quality assurance software tools that automatically assign the appropriate customized evaluation form, public safety and security organizations can objectively evaluate individual call taker quality or performance of multiple call takers during entire incidents, regardless of how many locations, units and jurisdictions involved. In addition to enabling thorough evaluation of call taker performance with regard to fast, efficient, accurate and high quality call handling, dispatch quality assurance software helps public safety and security organizations ensure that call taker and dispatcher processes are working properly and within compliance.

Advantages of Console Screen Analytics

Today’s advanced multimedia phone call logger and dispatch quality assurance call monitoring software solutions use screen analytics to easily capture important fields, values and data from desktop monitors and console screens. This can be achieved without requiring organizations to perform expensive back-end integrations to the applications running on employee desktops. By being able to tag data like “Incident Type” from the CAD system to recorded calls, organizations now have the ability to evaluate calls by incident type. For example, an organization may determine a need or desire to listen to all or a high percentage of calls recorded by their voice logger related to a certain incident type such as robberies, domestic violence, medical-related calls or homicide.

Additional Advantages of Automated Coaching

Public safety organizations are using the assessment scores from their dispatch quality assurance call monitoring software to improve their training programs and automatically assigning targeted, supplemental coaching to those call takers that need improvement in certain areas identified by quality assurance evaluations. With an integrated, automated coaching solution, public safety and security organizations can quickly and automatically deliver feedback and training content that addresses the needs of each call taker, dispatcher and supervisor. Advanced coaching solutions enable authorized users to access training content and reports on results of training via customized Web dashboards or desktop tickers.

To learn more about best practices for using and the latest advancements in dispatch quality assurance call monitoring software, visit http://www.VPI-corp.com/911-Quality-Assurance-Management-Software.asp

Can your current voice logging system handle NG9-1-1 communications? How effective is your dispatcher quality assurance call monitoring program?

Public safety emergency communications have never been on the threshold of greater change than they are today. PSAPs, both large and small, are now preparing for Next Generation 9-1-1 to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of mobile, multimedia and IP communications. This ground-breaking resource guide discusses what you need to look for in a new call logger and quality assurance system to meet the challenges arising from Next Generation 9-1-1.

Use the promo code VPIBLOG to download your complimentary resource guide, authored by analyst Dick Bucci from The PELORUS GROUP and sponsored by VPI, to learn:

• The goals and benefits of NG9-1-1 and how to ensure a smooth transition.

• The implications for public safety voice logging recorders - learn why the majority of voice call recording systems installed today cannot be cost-effectively scaled or modified to support NG9-1-1.

• What to look for in new call recorder software to effectively meet NG9-1-1 requirements for IP communications support, open architecture, flexibility and scalability.

• How a well-designed quality assurance program can help you monitor and improve the effectiveness of your NG9-1-1 program roll-out initiatives.

Get your complimentary copy of the resource guide "Next Generation 9-1-1 Communications Recording and Quality Assurance" today.

Call logging software comes in all shapes and sizes. Selecting the best call recording equipment for your organization’s specific needs can be tricky. Do you need to record for compliance and liability purposes? Or, are you more focused on your quality management goals? What kind of telephone voice recording does your organization currently utilize – traditional voice logging, digital call recording, VoIP call recording, or a combination? Is your organization growing or downsizing? Do you record multiple locations, and if so, is it easy to administer the communications recording system in order to access and analyze any and all recordings, by site, by group, and even down to individual calls? How many technologies do you currently have in place? Would the new call monitoring system have to integrate with any of them? There are indeed many questions to answer and issues to address in the quest for a new quality assurance call monitoring system. VPI has been listening to these questions from its customers for over 15 years, and has designed flexible solutions that can adapt to, and work within, virtually any environment – meeting the needs and expectations of organizations of all types and sizes.

For organizations seeking compliance and liability voice logging, such as public safety agencies, security companies, government bodies, and financial institutions, VPI developed VPI CAPTURE PRO. As the industry’s most secure and feature-rich audio and data phone recording software, VPI CAPTURE PRO enables organizations to seamlessly capture, assess, assemble, and share their recorded communications from a combination of telephone, radio, email and Web chat systems – traditional digital call recording and IP call recording software. In addition to handling compliance and risk management, VPI CAPTURE PRO enables federal, state, local, and private organizations to improve the quality of their mission-critical voice and data interactions and deliver first-rate customer service by acknowledging and utilizing call center quality assurance.

If you’re looking for a call logging software solution that will help you achieve your call center quality assurance goals, VPI CAPTURE PRO is by far your best bet. Whether or not you use a formalized quality evaluation process, VPI CAPTURE PRO allows you to engage in quality assurance call monitoring which will improve the customer service quality delivered by your local or locate and playback high value call recordings directly from a variety of standard reports, and leverage best practice remote employees, focusing on the most pressing business issues. You can monitor live calls across multiple locations, conveniently calls for training – call recordings are highly portable in standard formats and small file sizes.

With the VPI CAPTURE PRO voice call recording solution you can rest assured that whatever your needs may be, and whatever kind of technology and telephone voice recording you may have – both now and in the future – all of your immediate needs will be met, and you will be fully equipped to rise to every challenge that lies ahead. VPI’s open standards call recording equipment and technology welcomes change and meets the associated challenges with many options for fast and cost-effective reconfigurations in order to satisfy changes in legislation, increased capacity, new geographic distribution of your employee teams, or changes between centralized and distributed operation.
 

Voice logging systems were once very basic solutions built to record all or a sample of calls along with some rudimentary telephony data. Generally deployed for compliance and liability purposes, digital call recording systems were viewed as a backroom necessity that occasionally served a purpose whenever a customer dispute occurred. Over the past decade, the role of the call recorder has changed a great deal. The value of recorded interactions and their importance for effective quality assurance call monitoring has become a major focal point in the development of the highly advanced call logger systems available today.

Today’s flexible, elegant communications recording solutions are light years away from the clunky, hardware-based beasts of the past. Gone are the proprietary parts and expensive customizations – today’s advanced digital and VoIP recording software solutions are software based, leveraging open architecture for easy integrations and cost-effective customization. VPI’s robust digital and IP recording software solutions can be customized, scaled and adapted to meet the evolving demands of organizations of all kinds – from small- and medium-sized contact centers to global enterprises employing any combination of in-house and remote employees. VPI CAPTURE PRO is the most progressive, ground-breaking voice call recording and screen data call recording software available today. Highly reliable, easily implemented and remarkably effective in virtually any environment, VPI CAPTURE PRO can record multimedia interactions from a wide range of network configurations, TDM and VoIP telephony environments, and across any number of locations. Powered by VPI Fact Finder™, VPI's powerful desktop screen contact center analytics engine, the call logger tags important employee screen events and facts to call recordings for automated call classification and analysis centered on key business issues.

In recent years, it has become generally recognized that recordings of customer interactions contain a vast amount of intelligence about an organization’s processes, customer satisfaction, front-line employee performance, revenue opportunities, and chances for improvement of strategic position in the marketplace. Recorded interactions between agents and customers are a veritable gold mine of business intelligence, yielding insights into agent performance, product or service perception, and customer satisfaction. Intelligence garnered from customer interactions can be used to improve managerial decisions and investments made by strategic-level departments such as sales, marketing, human resources, research and development, finance, or operations.

VPI EMPOWER offers a rich, business-centric set of tools that make a significant impact on an organization’s bottom line – mitigating risk, enhancing call center quality assurance, streamlining call center reporting, improving call center coaching, and optimizing call center performance management. VPI EMPOWER combines and enhances the benefits of VPI CAPTURE PRO, VPI QUALITY PRO and VPI PERFORMANCE. Individually, each software solution is robust and powerful, but they are exponentially more valuable when integrated.

VPI, the premier global provider of contact center recording and analytics, quality assurance call monitoring and workforce optimization software solutions for enterprises, trading floors, government agencies, and emergency service providers, announced today that VPI EMPOWER has received a 2009 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC®) Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading publication covering CRM, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

"I am pleased to honor VPI for its hard work and success. VPI has displayed true innovation and excellence in the development of its VPI EMPOWER suite of analytics-enhanced contact center recording, call center quality assurance and workforce optimization solutions, and is dedicated to improving the contact center experience as well as the ROI for companies that use them," said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC.

VPI EMPOWER is a powerful, modular suite of Web-based contact center recording software and contact center optimization solutions, comprised of applications for multimedia communications recording and contact center analytics, quality evaluation, electronic learning and call center coaching, and real-time call center performance management. VPI EMPOWER marks a radical departure from the conventional solutions currently available to contact centers. Built upon the foundation of VPI’s long-established, proven technologies, VPI EMPOWER leverages VPI Fact Finder™, a ground-breaking desktop screen analytics technology that automatically detects events and data directly from application screens being used by employees and tags them to appropriate points within recorded interactions. This enables automated classification and more meaningful, targeted quality assurance call monitoring focused on key business issues, such as customer churn, first contact resolution, missed up-sell opportunities, product issues, long hold and handle times, multiple transfers or escalations, and much more. VPI EMPOWER contact center workforce optimization software delivers a significant advantage in just weeks, with an easy-to-use product that requires minimal training.

"We are deeply gratified that VPI EMPOWER has been honored as Product of the Year for Exceptional Innovation by TMC’s Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine," said Patrick Botz, vice president of solutions marketing at VPI. "This prestigious award is a testament to VPI’s commitment to providing innovative, world-class digital and VoIP call recording, call center quality assurance, call center reporting and call center coaching solutions that enable organizations to rapidly and affordably maximize the potential and profitability of their customer contact center operations.
 

Do you record or plan to record your calls and/or desktop screen activity? Do your employees discuss sensitive information over the phone? If so, there are serious telephone call recording laws and phone call recording regulations that you need to be aware of. To avoid costly violations and ensure customer credibility, you need to become familiar with the new and evolving digital call recording laws, voice call recording regulations, and industry standards that most profoundly impact organizations today. You should make a point of learning what you can do to avoid violating these call recording laws, and where to go when you need help. The information in this article on telephone call recording laws and regulations is not intended as legal advice. Always check with your legal counsel to learn more about how voice logging regulations can affect you and your organization. Let’s discuss some of the most common telephone call recording laws and phone call recording regulations impacting organizations today.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)

Established by American Express, Discovery Financial Services, MasterCard Worldwide, Visa International and JCB, PCI-DSS regulations are intended for organizations that accept credit cards and record those interactions with call recording equipment. The regulations forbid the insecure storage of unencrypted credit card numbers, PIN numbers, and other personal information in databases and digital call recording software systems. Digital call recording software systems should be able to identify, encrypt and restrict access to sensitive customer information from unauthorized users. According to the PELORUS Group, a leading independent market research and consultancy company in the financial services and telecommunications industries:

1.     Contact centers can easily become unsuspecting violators (of PCI-DSS compliance regulations) because of the practice of recording private customer information in data and voice call recording software systems.

2.     Unless agents are specifically authorized to see this information, their unrestricted access is a violation of PCI-DSS.

3.     You can avoid potential violations by investing in telephone recorder software that blocks or encrypts recordings that contain card numbers.

Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act (HIPPA)

The HIPAA Privacy Rule protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information. With regard to call recording laws and call recording regulations, it’s imperative that organizations have the ability to identify, restrict access to and encrypt specific interactions containing sensitive information from unauthorized users.

Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA)

Designed to eliminate abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices, the FDCPA mandates that collectors must identify themselves, including the name of their firm, and explain that the purpose of the call is to collect a debt. With regard to telephone call recording laws and regulations, all interactions must be day and time stamped, and all calls recorded in order to assess employee compliance.

Telemarketing Sales Rule

The Telemarketing Sales Rule prohibits sellers and telemarketers from making false or misleading statements. The Federal Communications Commission may assess a fine of up to $11,000 per violation. Seven pieces of information must be provided by the employee during the call - such as identity of the seller, the nature of the goods or services offered for sale, the full cost of all offers, etc.

Learn more about call recording laws and call recording regulations and how to avoid costly fines and legal fees with latest in analytics-driven phone call recording software – download your complimentary copy of the white paper “Call Recording Laws, Regulations and Best Practices for Ensuring Compliance,“ authored by renowned analyst Dick Bucci from The PELORUS Group at http://www.VPI-corp.com/Call-Recording-Laws

VoIP call recording software has finally come of age, offering the same advanced level of functionality and reliability as traditional recording systems. Organizations across the globe have recognized the tremendous benefits of VoIP communications and IP call recording software. New IP Communications platforms allow organizations to flatten, consolidate and extend their communications architecture. VoIP communications are also enabling a trend toward smaller, distributed contact centers.

The Significant Benefits of VoIP Communications
Reduced operational costs are often one of the major drivers for investing in VoIP communications and VoIP call recording software. In a recent survey conducted by IDC – a global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets – 63.4 percent of business respondents reported the need to cut costs as the primary reason for upgrading to a VoIP service. Overall, IDC estimates that a VoIP system can reduce telephony-related expenses by 30 percent. In a traditional TDM environment, moving and adding telephone lines can be expensive. For example, the average employee moves desks once per year and the cost to move a traditional phone is $75.14 per change, and changes can take days to complete. Whereas, in a VoIP telephony world, moves, adds and changes can often be performed via a single Web-based software interface.

Enhanced disaster recovery is also a significant benefit to VoIP communications and new VoIP recording software systems. Prior to the advent of VoIP communications and IP recording software, the ability to re-route communications during a natural disaster had been achieved via the services of multinational corporations with the budget to build alternative circuits to reroute their traffic. However, the flexibility built into IP-based voice communications has given small businesses access to the same disaster response capabilities as large corporations.

Today’s more advanced IP recording software systems also have tremendous benefits versus traditional recording systems. If planned and implemented properly, centralized voice call recording can remove the need to implement recording capabilities at remote sites and provides for more efficient use of IP call recording resources.

VoIP Call Recording Software - What You Need to Know
There are several things to consider when implementing a new VoIP call recording software system. Voice call recording systems should use open standards and protocols and be able to adapt to evolving needs in order to interoperate with future technologies without replacement. Proprietary, hardware-based call recording systems are becoming a thing of the past.

Organizations are embracing the many benefits and capabilities offered by new VoIP communications platforms. However, all too often, the ability of their VoIP call recording software system to fully leverage those capabilities is somewhat lacking. Some voice call recording software systems can only record audio in very specific environments and have great difficulty capturing all of the important call information or metadata necessary to easily search for and find important calls. Some IP call recording software systems simply hit a wall and cannot record IP telephone, radio and multimedia communications in certain environments. It’s crucial to implement an advanced VoIP recording software system that can adapt and evolve as needs and technologies change, as well as extensive functionality to fully maximize the capabilities of the latest VoIP platforms.

To learn more about the latest developments and advancements in VoIP call recording software, visit http://www.vpi-corp.com/Call-Recorder.asp