Ahead of this year's holiday season, consumers charged more to their credit cards for second straight month. Robust holiday spending is driving the speculation that U.S. consumers are shifting their use of credit and debit toward credit. Early spending patterns do suggest that total credit card spending is increasing, as it has all year. Worldwide, consumers carry more than 1 billion Visa cards alone. More than 450 million of those cards are in the United States. The number of U.S. identity fraud victims rose 12 percent to 11.1 million adults last year. Credit and debit card fraud is the No. 1 fear of Americans in the midst of the global financial crisis. Concern about fraud supersedes that of terrorism, computer and health viruses and personal safety – one in ten Americans have already been victims of credit card fraud. Software.net found that as many as 40% of its transactions were fraudulent. Expedia.com lost $6 million due to fraudulent credit card purchases.

During the holidays and throughout the year, contact centers that engage in catalog sales, up-selling and/or cross-selling, service providers, and collection companies that take payments in the form of credit or debit cards can become unsuspecting targets of cyber criminals. The card information is typically entered by agents into a CRM or other sales automation software and may be recorded by voice and screen recorders. And there it resides - thousands and even millions of card records inviting remote criminals or even greedy employees to extract consumer card data for personal gain or sell into a sophisticated secondary market.

The payment card industry (PCI) established a Council to define technical standards aimed at minimizing the risk of cyber crime to the misuse of credit cards. The Council subsequently issued a Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which details security requirements for members, merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit cardholder data. Contact centers and other organizations that accept credit card payments are generally prohibited from archiving sensitive information such as account numbers and security codes after payment authorization has been received. Compliance to PCI-DSS is now mandatory for all non-credit card 'issuing' organizations dealing with credit, debit and ATM cards, as defined by the PCI Security Standards Council - size of an organization and its annual sales are no longer a factor for exceptions. While being compliant to PCI DSS - an already daunting task - is the first part, it it also required that you prove your organization's compliance to PCI-DSS. This PCI Audit is performed either with a set of questionnaires or by a Qualified Security Assessor, external to the organization.

On October 28, 2010, the Payment Card Industry Standards Council made a major update to the PCI Data Security Standard to clarify it. PCI DSS version 2.0 went effective on January 1, 2011. In PCI DSS version 2.0, the PCI DSS standards were clarified to require that no sensitive credit card information be stored within recorded calls, even if those calls are encrypted. The standards committee made the change because of the availability of sophisticated malware that could penetrate encryption algorithms. Organizations that do not take action by December 31, 2011 to ensure compliance with these new PCI call recording requirements could face costly fines. 

Achieving PCI DSS Compliance

To help organizations ensure compliance and avoid costly fines, VPI has developed an effective, affordable solution. The VPI CAPTURE PCI call recording system has the ability to detect when an agent enters an application screen with sensitive information, when sensitive information is inputted, and when they leave a screen containing sensitive information.  The VPI telephone voice recording system then has the ability to promptly mute sections of recorded audio and mask screen video during this sensitive portion of the call.


To further secure sensitive information, the VPI CAPTURE PCI DSS call recording system help you:

• Secure File and Data Transport and Storage Encryption – VPI uses built-in end-to-end data encryption and key management to secure the SQL database that holds attributes of all recordings. The media manager provides for AES 128, 192, 256 or variable bit encryption/decryption when files are stored and accessed from the media manager.
•  Ensure Authenticity with File Watermarking - Every call within the VPI system is wartermarked in real time to ensure authenticity. VPI offers a powerful application to validate the authenticity of any WAV file.
• Monitor User Activity with Detailed Audit Log Reporting – VPI records all user activity within the system so that organizations can conduct full trace audits to determine who accessed any recording in the system and when - for playback, export, or any other critical events.

Leading industry analyst firm, Gartner, predicts that employees will account for up to 80 percent of contact center budgets in the increasingly demanding world of customer interaction. Such a substantial investment cannot be left to chance, yet, it is often an area that is overlooked and rarely reviewed by managers.

Like many other industries in which employee performance is crucial to the customer experience, the utility industry provides an essential commodity to the public. As they are often under intense scrutiny, utility companies must also take steps to minimize their exposure to liability issues. For utilities that provide direct service to retail power customers, the large volume of customer service calls they manage demands both courtesy and accuracy on the part of call center agents. And, consequently, their contact centers need reliable and effective quality monitoring and training solutions. Similarly, "upstream" energy providers specializing in transmitting power to other utilities need interaction recording systems to accurately record 100% of their service and event calls to and from their technicians (and other utilities) for liability protection and to recreate major incidents.

By now, most successful utility contact centers have already adopted baseline call recording and quality monitoring solutions –  the fundamental building blocks for any type of workforce optimization solution. However, although useful, these solutions can be of limited value if they are outdated, early generation quality monitoring applications,  and may be due for review and reevaluation..

The good news is that quality assurance technologies have evolved significantly. They have now reached  the point where they can enable contact centers to focus the entire process on what really matters and what can make the biggest impact on business performance – all without losing objectivity in the assessment of agent performance.

Anticipate and Plan for Agent Satisfaction to Maximize Operations and the Customer Experience

Customer service and help desk environments have traditionally been known as high-turnover environments, where employees tend to consider their positions to be transient or temporary. There are many things that contact centers can do to overcome this challenge.

To anticipate and reduce  turnover, it is best to give agents some time away from the phone for cross-training and multi-skilling. Allowing agents to respond to email or perform other administrative duties while they are mastering the skills of becoming expert contact center professionals makes their jobs feel more fulfilling and enables them to provide a better customer experience.

It is also crucial to provide ongoing training. This will keep agents engaged, alert and empowered to quickly and accurately resolve customer issues. In fact, with today’s tightly integrated quality monitoring and coaching software tools, skill development can be highly personalized according to the needs and objectives of each agent.

The Right Technology Can Help

In addition to process improvements, implementation of the latest technologies can be crucial to the continued success of utility contact centers. When liability and accuracy are the challenges, it is vital to adopt an interactions recording solution that can record 100 percent of calls and data interactions. Using an advanced telephone call recording solution, utility companies can determine what to retain, for how long, and on which storage device by implementing flexible, intelligent business rules. Recordings can be unified across audio and data sources and multiple locations while users can freely search, locate, playback and share using instant searches and filters.

The beauty of a completely integrated suite of workforce optimization applications is the interoperability. Each technology application – recording, QA, performance management, analytics, coaching, E-earning – has valuable capabilities, but multiple solutions can work symbiotically to provide even greater results. Beyond the immediate improvements in contact center performance and lowering operating costs, workforce optimization solutions allow for quick decision making, which helps resolve customer issues.

By adopting advanced technologies for monitoring quality and optimizing customer service — including analytics-driven call center quality assurance systems that help identify and automate routine contact center tasks — utility companies can dramatically improve performance and profitability. The decision to choose one solution instead of another depends on the specific utility’s needs, goals and circumstances. However, with modular workforce optimization software suites, there is a sensible, financially sound path for every budget and objective.

So many of our customers today are conducting business over the phone, which frequently includes processing credit card transactions. We all know how crucial it is to keep that personal data safe and secure – protecting the identities of the buyers and the reputation of the companies taking their sensitive information.

What some companies don’t know, however, is that in October 2010, the Payment Card Industry Council made a major update to the PCI Data Security Standard that tightened the rules for recording and access to sensitive credit card data. Like many other regulations, the requirements are detailed, the information is overwhelming and it may be hard to discern whether or not you are truly prepared.

PCI DSS version 2.0 went into effect on January 1, 2011. Organizations that do not take action to ensure compliance with these new requirements by December 31^st, 2011 could face costly fines and possibly even revocation of their rights to process credit card transactions.  Larger organizations will be required to pass PCI security audit to prove their compliance. VPI is here to offer insights and guidance.

For a limited time, you can download your free copy of the Call Recording Guide to PCI DSS Compliance authored by chief analyst, Dick Bucci, from Pelorus Associates, to learn:

• How the new PCI DSS requirements will affect your organization
• Important PCI DSS requirements that impact telephone call recording and call center quality assruance
• How to protect against breaches of sensitive card and personal information without sacrificing performance management, quality assurance call monitoring and call center coaching and training
• Six alternatives for preventing unauthorized recording, storing and access to sensitive credit card authentication data
• Best practices for securing at-home and remote employees

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."

Want to Learn More about the Call Center Recording Software, Quality Assurance Call Monitoring and Call Center Workforce Optimization Software Market, Key Trends and Products?

VPI is pleased to be able to offer you this exclusive opportunity to get your copy of the executive summary of DMG Consulting's comprehensive annual Call Center Quality Assurance/Telephone Call Recording Product and Market Report. Offering 35 pages packed with valuable information, this guide is essential to navigating in the complex market of contact center workforce optimization software technologies.

Use the promo code LINKEDIN to download your complimentary report summary authored by renowned industry analyst and research firm DMG Consulting, to learn:

• Which call center optimization technologies help call center managers achieve contact center optimization 

• Key technology trends that are altering the direction of contact centers

• How to take your call logging software program to the next level and increase productivity while enhancing the customer experience and agent satisfaction

• The direction workforce optimization software technologies are heading and how to best leverage them, including Telephone Voice Recording, Call Center Quality Assurance, Call Center Performance Management, eLearning, Call Center Coaching, Surveying, Contact Center Analytics and Workforce Management (WFM)

• Comparison of workforce optimization software suites vs. stand-alone solutions

• How industry regulations are impacting voice call recording 

• The new strategic role of contact center managers

• Return on investment (ROI) analysis and workforce optimization software 

• What to expect in the future and more!

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

Phone call recording software plays a key role in many industries. It is a mandatory requirement in the majority of public safety organizations and within various industries, such as financial services and healthcare. With so much valuable information in vast number of customer interactions, the overwhelming majority of many organizations are now using call logging software. Telephone voice recording software helps many organizations optimize the customer experience, improve agent call quality, and minimize risk by providing receipts of oral commitments for dispute resolution, preventing privacy leaks and highlighting questionable employee conduct.

Analytics-Enhanced Call Recorder Software Solutions

Full-time voice call recording software with rules-based records retention, combined with the use of integrated desktop screen analytics, is in high demand by organizations to comply with increasingly complex privacy compliance regulations, including PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard). These new, analytics-enhanced telephone voice recording software technologies are helping organizations of all sizes identify sensitive information that should be protected from access or replay by unauthorized users, such as consumers’ credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, references, family members, etc. Analytics-enhanced call logging software technologies are also helping with the identification of certain types of interactions that matter most with regard to business goals and economic circumstances.

The Benefits of Desktop Screen and Telephone Call Recording

Many organizations are now adopting high-volume desktop screen recording software. Using phone recording software to review screens in conjunction with the corresponding call audio can expose and improve application navigation and workflow processes to reduce call and post-call handling time. Screen recording software is also a very valuable tool for evaluating the quality and efficiency of Web chat interactions. Voice and Data call recording equipment enables managers to see how front-line employees are handling multiple chat sessions simultaneously on one or multiple desktop monitors. Voice logging software is also being used to optimize the use of email and Web chat. Training managers are using the multimedia screen and voice recordings as best practice training clips, and to monitor the quality of email responses and Web chat sessions.

A Secure Digital Call Recording Software Solution

Full-time voice call recording software is essential for helping organizations manage compliance and liability issues. However, it’s imperative to implement a system that will guard data from unauthorized access with granular user and data security rules and end-to-end AES 256 encryption with key management. A comprehensive audit trail log should record all user activity within the system so that organizations can conduct full trace audits to determine who accessed any recording in the system and when – for playback, export, or any other critical events.

To learn more about the latest advancements in phone call recording software, visit: http://www.VPI-corp.com/Phone-Call-recording-Software.asp

Telephone voice recording solutions are essential for recording agent-customer interactions and associated telephony and screen data. However, in this new age of cyber crime and identity theft, the inevitable emergence of strict regulations to help protect sensitive customer data has resulted in many organizations being forced to scramble to update or replace their existing phone audio recorder solutions in order to adhere to the latest legislative guidelines.
 

The PCI-DSS, a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing payment account data security, was developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, including American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc. International, to help facilitate the broad adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis. Announced in January 2010, PCI-DSS requirement 3.2 states that organizations must not store sensitive authentication data subsequent to authorization – even if encrypted. Sensitive authentication data consists of magnetic stripe (or track) data, card validation code or value, and PIN data. This data is deemed particularly sensitive as it can be used by to generate fake payment cards and create fraudulent transactions. 

The PCI-DSS regulations are requiring organizations that handle credit card transactions over the phone to delete all archived recordings that contain sensitive authentication data. In order to comply with these new regulations, many organizations are having to delete all of these verbal receipts because the process of listening to the contents of potentially hundreds of thousands of call recordings would be cost prohibitive and labor intensive. Unfortunately, the many calls that do not contain sensitive data will also be deleted – calls that should be retained for quality assurance (QA) purposes and liability management.

VPI’s rules-driven call logging software solution enables organizations to maintain PCI compliance by identifying the calls that cannot be accessed and archived due to data sensitivity issues as well as those that can be safely archived for use in QA and liability management. The VPI CAPTURE PRO call recording software solution leverages unique desktop screen analytics that can detect events and data directly from application screens – such as an employee entering sensitive credit card authentication data into a field on screen – and tags them to the recorded interactions. This enables automated classification for deletion of all audio and video recording files containing sensitive authentication data and helps ensure compliance with the latest PCI-DSS regulations. And as an added bonus, VPI's phone audio recorder makes valuable non-sensitive data related to the interaction – such as call date/time, call direction, Customer ID, Agent ID, sales or collections amount, number of transfers, and hold time – is still kept and made available in interactive reports for analysis into key business issues and opportunities. For more information on VPI’s compliance call logging software solution, visit: http://www.VPI-corp.com/PCI

In addition to offering highly advanced screen analytics capabilities, VPI's phone call logger provides built-in end-to-end data encryption and key management, file watermarking, and detailed audit log reporting. Cost-effective and very affordable, VPI solutions enable organizations to gain a lasting advantage – with open standards and service oriented architecture, the VPI telephone voice recording solution has the flexibility to grow and evolve in order to adapt to your changing environment. VPI customers benefit from unsurpassed versatility and ROI as the unified platform supports virtually any PBX – digital or analog, TDM or VoIP, individually or blended – with a unified interface and industry standard file formats.

Call center reporting software has, for some time, been evolving from the very basic, disparate technologies of the 90s to the tightly integrated, multi-dimensional software suites of today. Once upon a time, the standard call center performance management system implemented in organizations worldwide consisted of a telephone system, a call logger, an ACD and a CRM solution. Times have changed with the emergence of powerful new performance contact center analytics solutions designed to rapidly boost contact center performance and operational effectiveness – enabling organizations to discover, diagnose and manage issues before they have a chance to adversely impact customer satisfaction.

In order to survive, compete, and truly maximize the productivity and profitability of an organization, managers need much more information than the call center performance management systems of the past could provide. There’s only so much that anyone can do with dozens of disparate reports and spreadsheets of data relating to nothing in particular. Even though customer-agent interactions and the associated telephony data represent a veritable goldmine of business intelligence, the old call center performance management software systems had no way to enable users to access, analyze, and act upon the intelligence. VPI developed VPI PERFORMANCE to empower contact center agents, managers, and executives with actionable, targeted information to drive real-time, multi-level performance improvements through innovative call center reporting and contact center analytics tools. The VPI PERFORMANCE call center performance management software collects and consolidates real-time and historical performance information from multiple telephony and business systems, delivering critical key performance indicators (KPIs) in a timely and relevant manner for each user. With a powerful combination of real-time consolidated call center reporting, root cause performance contact center analytics, and targeted call center coaching and messaging, VPI PERFORMANCE enables contact centers to drive continuous, proactive improvement – crucial for cost containment, contact center optimization profitability.

VPI PERFORMANCE Web-based reports allow managers to conveniently access, analyze and drill through data to quickly identify the root cause of problems or successes - even down to the recorded interaction from the integrated VPI contact center recording system - and immediately change business direction based on actual customer responses and employee performance. As soon as the problem or success is determined, VPI PERFORMANCE call center performance management software ensures the delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time with employee desktop dashboards, tickers and scorecards. Managers and supervisors are equipped to manage the here and now – to take immediate actions to solve immediate problems, rather than trying to handle yesterday’s problems next month, or worse, never managing them at all. Managing based on old information is likely to result in once happy, high-value customers taking their business elsewhere.

Unlike the old call center reporting solutions, VPI PERFORMANCE enables managers to expedite performance improvements through automated, targeted intervention. They can easily automate the feedback and call center coaching process and empower front-line employees and supervisors to be highly effective. The solution helps to maximize time and cost efficiency – electronic call center coaching and learning fits smoothly within existing workflow, is a powerful supplement to face-to-face training, increases retention rates for new information and expedites ramp-up. With timely access to actionable information, managers can rapidly improve sales conversion, collections and quality of service while realizing significant savings in areas such as: agent attrition, quality scores, first call resolution, average talk time, idle time, sickness and absence, average hold time, and much more. With VPI PERFORMANCE, the entire organization will quickly begin to benefit from increased productivity, customer loyalty, and revenue.

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.
 

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