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The best businesses gather as much data as possible, including data from customer service calls and other interactions. Call recording is one of the most important tools you can use to capture, analyze, and understand customer interactions over the phone.

Not only does call recording help make sure your customer service agents are doing a stellar job and following procedures, but it also helps you meet rising customer expectations: an increasingly critical goal in recent years. Heavy competition and ever-changing regulations make sticking to the rules and handling customer service calls successfully vital. With that in mind, let’s take a deeper look at this topic.

The Benefits of Call Recording

When practiced well, call recording can provide your brand with numerous important benefits.

For starters, recording customer service calls and inquiries can help your business identify unique areas for improvement. Your customers know better than any other party what’s lacking with your customer service processes, like wait times, agent tone, and solutions. As you record calls,  identify common pain points your clients and customers experience, then resolve those pain points through new initiatives.

In addition, you can use call recording to track your employees' performances. Knowledgeable, patient, and empathetic customer service agents are crucial to any organization. By recording calls and sampling them randomly, you can ensure your customer service agents answer customer concerns and complaints gracefully and respectfully.

Furthermore, call recording enables you to resolve future legal disputes with customers. It’s always good to have an audio recording of a stressful interaction on hand, just in case.

For instance, imagine a scenario where a customer claims that your customer service agent swore at them and ruined their day. If you have a recording of the call in question ready to go, you can protect your employee and explain the miscommunication that may have happened to the customer.

Given all these important benefits, it’s a no-brainer to use an answering service that offers call recording as a feature. Answering services like A Better Answer can help you staff up your customer service department and use call recording functionality at the same time.

The Different Types of Call Recording

Depending on your business and its niche, you might make primarily inbound or outbound calls or have a healthy mix of both. Inbound calls are those that come to your organization from customers or clients. Outbound calls are those made by your salespeople as they pursue leads. You should record both for maximum benefits.

For instance, recording inbound calls can be helpful as you analyze your customer service agents. With the recordings, you can provide feedback later on. With this feedback, your agents will improve their processes and communication styles with your client base.

Alternatively, recording outbound calls can also be advantageous. As your salespeople chase down leads in an attempt to acquire new clients, they and their supervisors can analyze their sales techniques, wording, and much more. Again, both types of call recording allow you to gather valuable social interaction data and make meaningful, positive changes to your company as a result.

Of course, other types of call recording can be beneficial as well. Screen or video recording, for example, can be excellent for workplaces that practice hybrid or remote work schedules. If your employees hold video conferencing meetings, recording those meetings may be a good idea – for feedback and practical note-taking. Having a recording of an important work meeting means always having a record of what was said and the goals everyone settled on.

Plus, if you record video meetings or calls, those who weren't present can view the recordings to catch up. It's a great way to make sure your remote and in-office employees always have the same information and feel like part of the same team.

How to Implement Call Recording in Your Business

Call recording can be an asset to your business, but only if you implement it properly.

Firstly, you’ll need to choose the right hardware and software for your call recording functions. Good call recording software should be intuitive, easy to use, and able to be integrated with your existing tech stack.

More importantly, the right software will have ample call-recording features. These key features include data encryption to prevent important information from being stolen, searchability through records (since your call records will expand significantly), and call tagging – a handy function for organizing calls based on type, contents, etc.

Next, you’ll want to outline call recording policies that your customer service and sales agents can follow. A good set of policies will outline:

• How recordings are created, used, and stored
• How recordings should be analyzed
• How sensitive information should not be discussed over the phone
• How recordings should be listened to privately
• Who can create and view recordings

No matter what shape your policies ultimately take, ensure that you train your employees to use the call recording system safely.

Call Recording Best Practices

Once you have your call recording system and software set up, it’s time to start using it! The best call recording practices focus heavily on ethical and responsible recording – after all, the last thing you want is for your business to get into legal hot water for recording customers without their consent.

Some smart call recording best practices to keep in mind include:

• Always inform customers that you are recording their calls
• Have employees follow scripts for sales and customer service to ensure they don’t say anything improper or legally compromising
• Always secure call recordings to protect customer privacy, particularly if you discuss sensitive information over those calls
• Store call recordings on encrypted servers
• Train your staff so they only use call recordings for training and quality control purposes, not for social gossip or marketing

Start Recording Your Calls

Ultimately, your business should certainly consider recording business calls, like sales calls and customer service calls. In doing so, you’ll better understand your customers and be able to provide ever better services across all major departments.

Fortunately, implementing call recording is easier than ever. Follow the tips above to make sure you choose the right call recording solution, or consider partnering with A Better Answer for call center and recording services combined into the same effective solution.