Did you know that almost one in every 25 jobs in the US is within the contact center industry? Pretty thought provoking, huh? But just what does the future hold for the people, processes and technologies of this constantly evolving environment? As the leading developer and provider of contact center workforce optimization solutions and services, we at VPI decided to compile a list of compelling statistics that are shaping the future of customer contact and our solution portfolio. Check it out:

Customer Experience

1) Even in a negative economy, customer experience is a high priority for consumers, with 60% often or always paying more for a better experience. (Source: Harris Interactive)  Tweet This Stat!

2) 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience, up from 59% 4 years ago. (Source: Harris Interactive)  Tweet This Stat!

3) 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. (Source: Harris Interactive)  Tweet This Stat!

4) 59% will try a new brand or company for a better service experience. (Source: American Express)  Tweet This Stat!

5) The top three drivers for investing in customer experience management are:

• Improve customer retention – (42 %)
• Improve customer satisfaction – (33 %)
• Increase cross-selling and up-selling – (32 %)

(Source: Aberdeen)  Tweet This Stat!

What These Customer Service Statistics Say about the Future of Contact Centers

These stats make it clear. Your company’s customer service simply can’t be ignored. Customers are choosier and more discerning than ever before. If you neglect the quality of your customer service you will lose key customers to your competitors. Interestingly, these customers are actually willing to pay more for better service and a superior experience.

Self-Service and Call Automation

6) By 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. (Source: Gartner)  Tweet This Stat!

7) The number of consumers preferring automated self-service has doubled to 55% in the last five years. (Source: Convergys)  Tweet This Stat!

8) US contact centers spend $12.4 billion annually verifying the caller is who they say they are. 59% of calls require identity verification, but only 3% of these are handled entirely through automated processes. (Source: ContactBabel)  Tweet This Stat!

  9) The IVR accounts for an astounding 27% of the total call experience. However, only 7% of organizations currently offer an IVR solution that delivers a better experience (CSAT) than their live agent experience. (Source: JD Power & Associates) Tweet This Stat! 

What These Self-Service Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

Self-service is growing by the minute. Your customers’ preferences are rapidly changing. They expect and demand immediate service and satisfaction. These days,regardless of age, gender or occupation, customers expect almost instant gratification when it comes to customer service – they have tools at their fingertips that provide constant and immediate communication. They don’t want to have to wait on hold and they don’t want to have to repeat their information. Can you live up to their expectations? It’s crucial to adapt to your customer’s self-service needs or you may be left behind.

Artificial Intelligence is now being applied to self-service to make it smarter, faster and better. To learn more about the next generation in voice self-service – Virtual Call Agents powered by Artificial Intelligence – watch this short video and listen to these virtual agent call audio samples.

At-Home Agents

10) There are an estimated 3 million Americans who work primarily from home today, an increase of 61% since 2005. (Source: Forrester)  Tweet This Stat!

11) An estimated 60% of contact centers utilize home agents today in some capacity and the forecast is 80% by year-end 2013. (Source: Customer Contact Strategies)  Tweet This Stat!

12) More than half of the contact centers in the U.S. today, 53% have some percentage of their agent population functioning from a home office. More than 70% of those currently supporting at-home agents plan on increasing the number of their at-home agents in 2013. (Source: National Association of Call Centers)  Tweet This Stat!

13) Ovum expects the number of home-based customer service agents to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 36.4%, one of the strongest expansion levels of any outsourcing market sub-segment. (Source: Ovum)  Tweet This Stat!

14) By 2016, 63 million Americans will telecommute. (Source: Global Workplace Analytics)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Home Working Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

Working from home is becoming an increasingly common practice – quite possibly the single biggest phenomenon changing the customer contact landscape in over a decade. Telecommuting offers employees a flexible schedule and higher job satisfaction rate. Without the limits of geography, employers benefit from the ability to cherry pick candidates from a vast labor pool beyond the confined radius of a brick-and-mortar facility. Consequently, more and more companies are hiring at-home agents, but this means they need a way to monitor the performance and productivity of the agents.

To learn more about best practices for implementing a successful at-home agent program,  download your complimentary white paper on ‘Call Center At-Home Agent Best Practices,’ authored by analyst firm DMG Consulting, and consider attending one of Michele Rowan’s world-class ‘At-Home Agent Strategies for Success Workshops.’ As the former VP of Performance Management at Hilton, Michele led the expansion of the Hilton@Home program from 200 to 1000 at-home agents, and has since helped hundreds of other organizations successfully deploy home working programs.

Quality and Performance Management

15) Only 31% of organizations closely monitor the quality of interactions with target customers. (Source: Forrester Research)  Tweet This Stat!

16) Two-thirds of organizations view access to real-time or nearly real-time metrics is a very important capability. However, very few companies (8%) receive their metrics as soon as they are generated. Fewer than one-fifth (18%) receive them on the same day, while at the remaining companies it can take up to four weeks for the metrics to be delivered. (Source: Ventana Research)  Tweet This Stat!

17) 92% of contact center leaders see high value in sharing metrics in real-time with front-line agents. The top 5 metrics of greatest value when shared in real-time with agents are # of calls in queue, service level, customer satisfaction, schedule adherence, and first contact resolution – in that order. (Source: Good to Great: Rapid Results with Real-time Performance Management, A Saddletree Research Paper, 2012) Read the full benchmark research report.  Tweet This Stat!

18) 60% of all repeat calls are process or training driven – business processes are not in place to meet the customer’s need, and agents have not been given the training required to meet the customer expectations that have been set by marketing or elsewhere in the business. (Source: Frost & Sullivan)  Tweet This Stat!

19) Organizations that focus on frequent training see advantages in first call resolution - 65% vs. 58% for those who don't. (Source: Parature)  Tweet This Stat!

20) Only 31% of organizations recognize and reward employees across the company for improving customer experience. (Source: Forrester Research)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Quality and Performance Management Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

Clearly, these stats show that companies need to pay more attention to agent quality and performance management in order to maximize the potential of each employee and provide the training the agents need to be successful.

When empowered with real-time performance metrics and information, front-line agents and supervisors thrive. The problem is that most contact centers struggle to extract customer insights from multiple siloed systems and applications that share data. It takes time and resources to produce spreadsheets and reports that have already become stale and outdated by the time they're delivered. Fortunately, with the availability of Real-time Performance Management software, the ability to consolidate metrics from multiple disparate contact center telephony and business applications and deliver them just-in-time to agents, supervisors and executives has now become an affordable reality.

To get more value from Quality Assurance efforts, it’s important to re-think your approach to Quality Assurance (QA). Traditional QA which has been primarily focused on monitoring and improving internal agent quality and compliance for the past 30 years, is now also being used to uncover valuable insights to improve business operations and customer satisfaction. The emergence of workflow automation and embedded analytics with new QA solutions are helping customer facing organizations around the world reduce the manual steps required by most traditional QA programs by 60 to 80 percent. Better yet, analytics-driven QA takes you straight to what really matters – delivering insight into critical business issues and opportunities to improve customer experience and revenue outcomes.

Multi-Channel

21) Contact channels other than the phone, such as email, Web self-service, chat, and other online techniques, now account for more than 30 percent of customer service engagements. Web self-service and email dominate this mix. (Source: CFI Group)  Tweet This Stat!

22) 25% of consumers utilize one to two channels when seeking customer care and 52% of consumers utilize three or four channels. (Source: Ovum)  Tweet This Stat!

23) 57% best in class companies measure support center success across email, chat, web, and voice, and 62% use integrated voice response (IVR). (Source: Aberdeen Group)  Tweet This Stat!

24) In the US, 21% of online shoppers prefer live chat, close to the same number as those who favor using the telephone (23%) and ahead of social media (2%). Email remains the most popular method for online shoppers to communicate with customer services, with 54% saying they prefer this method. (Source: BoldChat )  Tweet This Stat!

25) 60% of adults aged 25–29 live in households with only wireless telephones. (Source: Centers for Disease Control)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Multi-Channel Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

Today’s contact centers are using many different channels to reach their customers. In this era of constant, ‘round-the-clock communication, customers expect to be able to interact with a company through any channel – whether via phone, going online or even live Web chat. In addition, an increasing number of businesses and contact centers are implementing live chat to meet this rising demand. In addition to being able to evaluate and analyze voice interactions with customers, organizations need to place equal or greater weight on the ability to assess and extract insights from self-service, Web chat, email and social media conversations. This leads us into the next major trend – Speech and Text Analytics.

Speech and Text Analytics

26) Currently, there are 3,170 active, successful speech analytics implementations. (Source: SpeechTech)  Tweet This Stat!

27) Speech analytics was one of the top two fastest-growing call center tools in 2012 – the adoption of speech analytics grew by 59% and Web chat jumped by 60%. (Source: ContactBabel)  Tweet This Stat!

28) Speech analytics was among the top five technologies evaluated, with 24 percent saying that they intended to evaluate it for purchase in 2012. (Source: Saddletree Research) Tweet This Stat!

29) The speech analytics market is projected to continue to expand over the next several years, growing by 25 percent in 2013 and 20 percent in 2014. (Source: DMG Consulting) Tweet This Stat!

30) Speech analytics solutions are currently in use in 24% of all organizations, predominantly used by services, outsourcing and finance organizations. There is an appreciable amount of interest in implementing a new speech analytics system or replacing the one they have within the near future, especially in the medical sector (45% of companies), insurance sector (54%) and retail (40%). (Source: ContactBabel)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Speech Analytics Statistics Say about the Future of Contact Centers

These statistics clearly demonstrate that speech analytics may be the fastest growing trend impacting the future of contact centers today. The possibilities are endless. Speech analytics allows you to identify calls that can be better handled, helps you improve First Contact Resolution and reduce customer churn, and enables you to increase sales and collections by sharing best practices.

Social Media

31) More than 50% of Facebook users and 80% of Twitter users expect a response to a customer service inquiry in a day or less.(Source: Oracle)  Tweet This Stat!

32) Failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers. (Source: Gartner)  Tweet This Stat!

33) 56% of customer tweets to companies are being ignored. (Source: Huffington Post  “100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures from 2012 )  Tweet This Stat!

34) 19% of consumers who had unsatisfactory service interactions shared their experiences through social networks in 2010, a 50% increase over 2009. (Source: Forrester)  Tweet This Stat!

35) Customers who wrote about their contact center experiences on social media sites and then received follow-up from the company rated their overall satisfaction with the contact center experience nearly 20%higher and are 15% more likely to recommend the company than those who received no follow-up. (Source: CFI Group)  Tweet This Stat!

36) Servicing via social media boosts customer satisfaction by 15-20%. (Source: CFI Group)  Tweet This Stat!

37) 80% of users prefer to connect with brands on Facebook. (Source: Huffington Post)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Social Media Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

Social Media has had a huge impact on the future of the contact center industry. After interacting with your company, a customer can immediately vent theirfrustrations or share their positive experiences with the click of a button. This is why customer service you provide is more important than ever before. Additionally, since word now travels so fast, companies can lose business opportunities if they don’t regularly respond to their customers’ requests and comments on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs and others. With the advent of Social Media, QA is becoming more important than ever before as it takes just seconds for a customer to rave about or complain and bash a brand to thousands.

Cloud Computing

38) By the end of 2015 more than 18 percent of contact center seats will be delivered by cloud-based contact center infrastructure providers. (Source: DMG Consulting)  Tweet This Stat!

39) At year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud. (Source: Gartner Predicts)  Tweet This Stat!

40) 57% of cloud computing users feel that it actually increased their security when compared to traditional methods for computing and data back up. (Source: Mimecast)  Tweet This Stat!

What these Cloud Computing Stats Say about the Future of Contact Centers

The following great questions were asked during the recent APCO training Webcast on Public Safety Quality Assurance Best Practices and Tools. Please find below our answers for your review:

Quality Assurance Software Questions and Answers

Does the VPI QA system come with quality evaluation forms? If so, how would we customize them or add new ones?

Yes, VPI’s QA system is delivered with sample evaluation forms that have been developed based on best practices of our customers. These forms can be used as templates – you can modify, delete and add any number of questions, skills and sections.  One or more questions can be associated with each skill – answers to those questions during the quality evaluation session are automatically aggregated for a total score for each skill.  You can also create any number of new forms from a scratch, simply following intuitive graphical user interface.

Will the VPI QA software work in a situation where telecommunicators both call take and dispatch multiple, overlapping calls?

Yes, absolutely.  The system does not just associate different forms to different telecommunicators.  This form association is done based on the type of call taken and the type of work done.  Naturally, you will have different criteria for dispatching vs. call taking – these requirements can be either combined in the same evaluation form yet still separated into sections (in a tabbed interface), or you can have different forms for each type of work, depending on specifics of your call flow. Concurrent, overlapping calls are recorded as separate audio/data files which can be then evaluated separately.  With this said, you may also group multiple recordings (such as when evaluating the entire incident) into an “incident” collection that you save under a custom name and then this set of recordings can be evaluated with a single form that contains all needed sections or elements.  In summary, VPI’s QA system is very flexible and adaptable to virtually any center and situation.

We are a small countywide dispatch center with only 6 fulltime personnel. Does the QA program scale well for small dispatch centers as well as for larger ones?

Yes.  Agencies of all sizes should have a QA program in place.  The per-seat pricing of the software allows for easy incremental scaling. Beyond that, since you create your own process, evaluation criteria and forms using VPI software interface, it is completely scalable and adaptable to your evolving needs.

How would multiple evaluators access this system on-site or off-site?

VPI’s QA system is browser based, which means that it does not require installation of any software at user workstations.  It can be accessed by any number of authorized users via your LAN or WAN connection to your local Intranet or “private cloud”.   Evaluators could even review and evaluate calls remotely from off-site locations, using secure remote connection such as VPN.

Since during the training phase you evaluate a trainees’ skills, knowledge and abilities, could this software serve as a type of DOR for the OJT Phase?

Yes.  You can build in any evaluation form you wish.  This would provide excellent documentation by allowing you to save the audio files to the evaluation for ease in future retrieval.

What audio recorder platforms can you work with?

VPI’s QA system can coexist with any full-time recording system, including the VPI Capture NG9-1-1 ready recording system. For public safety agencies that currently have an existing full-time recording system, the VPI Quality software bundle comes embedded with its own built-in quality recording module to record console audio for quality assurance purposes.  All console audio is recorded and calls are then automatically selected using a business rule or manually selected for QA evaluation. If calls are not selected for quality evaluation within a period of time that you define, they are deleted to free up space to record future calls for quality evaluation. The quality assurance application and the quality recording element share the same the hardware platform.

What CADs can the VPI QA software integrate with?

VPI integrates with major CAD brands, including Tiburon, Intergraph and Tritech and provides a variety of integration options for any other CAD system as well. The CAD data is used for automated classification and visualization of recorded call taker and dispatcher calls and screens for fast evidence assembly and value-driven analysis – by incident types, numbers, severity, and/or other parameters. The integration is a passive, one-directional intgegration where we pull data from CAD systems and use it, but do not feed any data back to CAD.

Does the QA form software interface with Intergraph (or other) CAD systems?  If so, in what way?

Yes, VPI’s QA evaluation system successfully integrates with Intergraph CAD.  CAD data can optionally be captured and used to drive the selection of the most important calls for evaluation.  Intergraph CAD (or any other CAD including TriTech, Tiburon, etc.) system provides incident data, such as incident type, ID, severity and the like.  When this data is attached to relevant call recordings, it serves for classification of calls by incident types (or severity) which then helps with prioritization of recordings for review according to their significance or urgency.  For example, your local requirement may be to evaluate ALL domestic violence calls, but only samples of other types of calls.  The system can pull all domestic violence (or any other incident type per your setting) calls for evaluation and automatically attach the most relevant evaluation form to those calls, all of which is then served in the “to-do” list of assigned evaluator(s).

If you would like to/need to, can you still "hunt and peck" for calls?

Absolutely.  You can set up the call selection for QA in any way you want. It can be a combination of calls that are selected automatically by a system rule that you define, calls that you select manually as needed, and even calls that may be flagged by dispatchers/call takers for review.  Hunting and pecking for calls o be evaluated is really easy with VPI’s recording systems – either search by any number and combination of criteria (date/time, employee ID, call type, call length, radio ID, etc.) or you can simply respond to system reports and notifications of abnormal calls.

Is this a paperless system?

Yes, it can be completely paperless.  All interfaces, forms and reports are electronic.  Printing of any reports or details of QA evaluations is available but not required.

If our telephone system is on a separate server than our CAD system, can it all still be integrated?

Yes, we can pull data from multiple sources and attach it to appropriate recordings, enhancing the quality evaluation process as well as reporting on incidents in general.

What is the licensing model for the QA system - site license or by seat?

Pricing for licensing is by seat/position.

Coaching / E-Learning Questions and Answers

What is your definition of coaching? Is it formal training, simple discussion, notes on QA form or something different?

In general, coaching is a personalized learning process (or program) that provides timely support to employees. In some cases, coaching may be a short verbal conversation with personnel while reviewing the quality evaluation form.  However, for documentation purposes, you want the majority of your coaching to have some written component that should effect a change in performance and behavior, and a quiz to ensure there is retention and that learning did take place.

Does the VPI QA software facilitate E-learning? Does it allow for the development of messages and quizzes with questions on e-learning and messages? Does it report on when the dispatcher has viewed and acted upon all of it?

Yes, the VPI Coaching software allows you to create business rules that will automatically deploy coaching assignments based upon scores to certain questions, skills or overall scores on the evaluation.  You can also create quizzes and include them with training to confirm comprehension of conveyed information.

Any learning course can be associated with a quiz that is automatically started at the conclusion of the training content.  Quiz results are included in the training report of each employee.  Messages to call takers/dispatchers can be triggered based on a variety of events, such as specific QA scores, passing/failing scores in quizzes, and the like.  You can set up the messages to require acknowledgement.  Report / quiz / message assignments as well as their completion and acknowledgments (as appropriate for each) are listed in coaching reports that show dates and times associated with each action.

Can you tell if they actually read the document? Does it show how much time they had the document open?

Yes, this is a part of standard tracking of e-learning assignments.  Coaching / E-Learning reports show dates and times of all content and messages sent to each dispatcher/call taker as well dates and times of when the content was accessed and completed.  When SCORM compliant content is used, the system can also report on very granular details of the learning process, such as the amount of time that each employee takes with each quiz question, section of the coaching content, and the like.  This will provide valuable hints regarding most common struggles that need additional attention.

Will the coaching sample be the same across the board or will it change depending on the situation?

Coaching assignments should fit the situation.  Some errors are generic, such as talking too rapidly, and that type of learning content could be prepared and used for all call takers.  You may design a variety of other learning modules and associate them to evaluation questions or skills, so that they are automatically selected when ratings in various areas do not reach desired minimums.  Each employee would then receive a different collection of learning modules, according to their specific knowledge or skill gaps.  In addition to this, other coaching materials may need to be created when warranted, in the form of a Personal Improvement Plan (PIP) to address specific, individual performance deficiencies that cannot be addressed with generic content.

Do we create the coaching or do you all create the coaching session?  Are the coaching and learning assignments pre-made or is it something that needs to be developed by the PSAP?

Training managers or supervisors select content from a variety of resources (APCO, your own recorded calls that show best practices, specific cases posted on-line, etc.) and add custom-designed content that reflects your specific policies and requirements.  The VPI software then takes care of automated (and also manual, when desired) assignments of coaching content to individuals in your PSAP center, as well as tracking of coaching status and resulting improvements.

Can we use our own recordings for coaching purposes?

Yes, absolutely. Any standards-based files can be used, to include recordings from your logger.  When recordings are captured by VPI systems, you receive an interface for redaction of sensitive sections of call and screen recordings.  You can also add notations (such as to clarify why various sections of the call were or were not handled properly) and pop-up messages to maximize the learning experience.  These customized, modified recordings are saved as copies in order to protect the integrity of original recordings.

The following excellent questions were asked during the recent APCO training Webcast on Public Safety Quality Assurance Best Practices and Tools. Lori VanGilder, Manager of Quality Assurance Services at Replay Systems, APCO Institute Adjunct Instructor and prior Communications Supervisor in Florida, provided the following answers below for your review.

Our QA program is viewed by the dispatchers negatively. We offer several training steps to assist the dispatcher in improving. What advice do you have to make the QA process a more positive experience?

First of all, it is great that you do have a program in place.  If there are negative perceptions of the program, start by asking if you utilize the evaluations on the employees annual review?  If so, this provides documentation of all the times they did great, and not just a supervisory file of the occasional negative situations that occur.  I would also ask if everyone on the staff has been trained on the program to understand its process and objectives.  Lastly, perhaps you want to try ensuring that you are including motivational feedback and not just the documented deficiencies.  Are you sending out positive feedback on great performance?  And is it timely? Also, are you sending out informational responses with your QA regarding stress management?  Try to make the program "feel" more empathetic to the Telecommunicators.

Our agency has had QA established for quite some time; however, the scores were always very high and rarely pointed out errors that needed to be addressed. Now, there is a new supervisor completing the QA (previous dispatcher/trainer) and she is fair grading all the same across the board. Many dispatchers/call takers are offended and upset with the supervisor because errors are now being brought to their attention. She also uses positive feedback and constructive criticism when necessary. Is this negativity a typical phase that centers go through and what can we do to help the morale.

Unfortunately, what you have described is very common occurrence.  If the program has been in place and not fairly administered, the new person completing the evaluations faces some challenges.  I would recommend starting out with a training session for the entire staff regarding the policy that governs your quality assurance program.  In that training make sure everyone is aware of the grading standards and what is viewed as compliant/non-compliant/ and exemplary for scoring.  There are going to be some hurt feelings, however stepping forward and addressing the issue should also garner her some respect from the team.

Once the criteria is well understood, we would recommend that you introduce some elements of call taker / dispatcher participation into your QA process.  For example, you can have them flag some of their calls for evaluation – such as those where they did exceptionally well.  Be quick to recognize them for the work well done as soon as such calls are reviewed. You can also allow the call takers/dispatchers evaluate some of their own calls, following the same process as the supervisor.  People typically rate themselves more strictly then when third party does it – listening to their calls after the fact provides a different experience than when they are involved in the call for the first time. These evaluations would be subject to supervisory review and finalization.  We also recommend that call takers/dispatchers receive a copy of their evaluation with embedded call/radio recording for review and specific, constructive comments that can be entered into the evaluation if they believe that their rating was unjust. The evaluator may still revise the ratings (if the employee feedback is valid) and finalize the evaluation thereafter.

What statistical data suggests that "many agents are under-motivated, and see QA as only punitive"?  We have had QA in place for years - and that is not the case here.

You are indeed in a very fortunate situation.  This data is published by a variety of organizations to include:

• National Academies of Emergency Dispatch
• 911Trainer.com
• 9-1-1 Magazine whose team conducted an extensive research to assess many aspects of today’s QI/QA at 9-1-1 centers and published results in their magazine.  They queried dispatchers, supervisors, QI/QA personnel, managers and EMD system providers – in all states around the nation.
• Individual sharing posts from dispatchers can be found on social media sites (LinkedIn and Facebook) and in blogs
• Apart from this information, multiple attendees of our Webinar meeting posted comments about their centers experiencing this same situation – their dispatchers/call takers view the QA process very negatively

Do you suggest one person do all QA work or divide it up by Shift/Supervisor? And if it is divided up, would it be a good idea to have supervisors only evaluate those not on their respective shift?

The answer would depend upon your agency staffing.  In some cases there are too many calls to be reviewed by one person for this to be practical, and in others one single point of contact is an excellent idea.  The most important thing is to ensure that any and all evaluators are grading the same way- that is considered calibration of the gradings.  Also, it is important that those who conduct the evaluations understand the need for confidentiality, otherwise a Telecommunicator could become embarrassed and end up with a negative perception of the program as a whole.

In some states, medical QA is protected from legal discovery (i.e., it is not available for use by attorneys in lawsuits. Is there any similar protection for dispatch QI?  If not, another approach is to not maintain QI info as a permanent record - meaning use it for improvement then delete.

Unfortunately, we are not able to advise an answer for the legal implications as each state has their own statutes.  Please turn to your own agency’s legal division.

Do you recommend Q&A if you are not a 911 center or the main emergency answering point. You get the occasional emergency call that you transfer to the 911 center but for the most part you only answer non-emergency or after the call type calls. If you do, what type do you recommend?

Yes. Quality Assurance can be conducted in any type of call center.  Any personnel who are coming in contact with the public on telephones can/should be evaluated to ensure that the contact is positive for everyone. Your evaluation forms would follow the requirements and criteria that are relevant to your organization and its objectives.

I am a working Supervisor, how much time is dedicated to the QA program?

To conduct a complete evaluation, document it and apply some coaching/learning  (if needed) can take approximately 20 min per call.  If the call is exceptional, obviously that time is greatly reduced.  Assignments of coaching/e-learning can be automated, so that it is automatically triggered based on results of you QA evaluation. 

What is the business model for using ReplayQA? Per call evaluated, monthly fees, etc.?

ReplayQA pricing is based upon call volume and system needs.

Is there anything in CALEA, APCO or NENA certifications that require QA programs in Communications centers?

Yes.  All of them have standards that require Quality Assurance.  APCO Mini Telecommunicator Training  Standards, APCO P33 certification standard, Calea does have a QA standard, NENA call processing standard 56-6 and NFPA standards 1710 and 1221..

How important is calibration of QA? We have 4 people review the same call for monthly random QA. Then calibrate any scores with a 10 point variance?  It's a lengthy process.

Calibration is excellent and it is great that you are including it in your quality assurance program.  It sounds like there is not a lot of effort invested into the objectivity of your evaluation process.  You should be able to reduce the number of calibrations needed by clearly outlining what specific conduct or performance equates to each grade.  These internal standards can be conveyed in a meeting format and reinforced via electronic training where the standards are reiterated.

What is the legal liability associated with disposing of QA recordings and coaching documentation? Is ALL QA discoverable?

Unfortunately, we are not able to advise an answer for the legal implications as each state has their own statutes.  Please refer to your own agency legal division.

Does RePlay QA hire independant contractors to work from home doing reviews

Yes, Replay hires experienced Telecommunications professionals to perform as Assessors and complete the evaluations from their homes.

Do you see any negative issues with having call takers and dispatchers doing the QA reviews and not just supervisors?

If the grading criteria are firmly established in your policy, then the grading should be consistent, regardless of who performs the evaluation.  However, the confidentiality issues may prevent evaluations done by call takers or dispatchers from being a good idea, unless you are referring to agent self-evaluations.  We do recommend self-evaluations. In general, the personnel conducting the evaluations need to be capable of keeping the information in the evaluations confidential so as to not embarrass or discredit a peer, which would create a negative view of the entire program.

My agency currently has a QA program and we have an initial evaluator and 2 additional raters per call. Our program takes an average of all three scores for the call-takers final score. Is this overkill to have 3 evaluators. Do most QA programs only utilize one rater?

Your agency clearly has seen the need for calibration of the ratings on the evaluations, which is great.  However, we do see having three people evaluate the same call as a redundant, likely unjustified usage of time and resources.  Perhaps you want to look at the grading criteria for your evaluations and work to remove all subjectivity so there can be more belief that the correct ratings are issued by a single evaluator.  Organizations typically perform one calibration session once or twice a month, which has been shown to suffice as long as grading criteria are clearly defined and the evaluation forms use the proper selection of grading choices to address each evaluation question.  For example, 10-point sliding scales invite more variance between evaluators than 3 or 5-point scales. Yes/no answers may be most appropriate with questions that relate to accuracy, and the like. 

There are many people who believe that expectations such as the 1221 standard on call processing times (< 60 seconds for 95% calls) is unrealistic when performing EMD on EMS calls. Would you comment on that please?

There are many recent discussions on this topic on APCO PS Connect.  Yes, the standards are very high.  However, you have to keep in mind that many agencies who have a separate call taker and dispatcher, as well as smaller agencies where your partner can dispatch while you continue talking to the caller, are meeting the standard by sending the call to the dispatcher as soon as basic information is obtained and then updating the screen and the responders after the initial dispatch.  That helps a great deal with the call processing time.

Currently, we cannot buy software so how do we best start a QA program?

You can conduct a QA program completely without the software.  Create a paper form or use MS Excel and define your grading criteria there.  Then randomly select calls from your recorder to evaluate and tabulate the results. If budget is an issue, you may also want to consider leasing the VPI quality assurance software for an affordable monthly payment.

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.

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!

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