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  The 10 Questions You Should Always Ask Before Selecting a Recording Solution
 
Today's contact center is a rapidly changing environment where customers call the shots and management aims to increase revenue while keeping costs down and maintaining good service levels. At the same time, customers' expectations have risen at Internet speed. They require a more highly skilled and effective agent to help them. Additionally, customers want to communicate through multiple media - telephone, e-mail, Web chat and fax - making the environment more complex. To add to the complexity, economic pressures are putting constraints on business resources. Reduction in headcounts are being made daily and competitive pressures have increased three-fold. Executive-level management expects contact center managers to enhance service levels, increase customer loyalty and in general, be more effective with less people and resources.
 
With the cultural change in contact centers and the present economic condition, a paradigm shift is occurring in contact centers. Companies are having to re-evaluate their processes and search for ways to improve performance in order to affect customer satisfaction. More and more businesses are realizing the role their agents play in influencing their customer relationships, not to mention impacting the bottom line. Businesses are now beginning to realize that if they capture customer interactions, both voice and screen, and evaluate calls immediately, not only can they understand customer needs better, but also quickly identify areas for agent improvement and training that will improve overall customer satisfaction.
 
Recording technologies - quality monitoring and logging solutions - which capture customer interactions, have been around for years, but new technology advancements are significantly impacting the industry. The enhancements in recording software have made it possible to maximize the value of customer interactions by not only providing a method for capturing agent-customer contacts, but also an important tool for training agents, collaborating with the entire enterprise and improving customer satisfaction. With all these advancements and new technologies, any contact center manager will tell you that the selection of a recording system is not an easy choice. The decision to purchase a quality monitoring or logging solution needs to be evaluated based on the needs of your contact center and the business goals you ultimately want to achieve.
 
So how do you proceed to draw up the best plan of action for your recording needs and how do you select the best solution for your contact center? The key is to ask the right questions. Let's take a detailed look at the 10 questions you should ask yourselves and vendors as you evaluate and select the best recording solution for your needs.

1. What is the goal for monitoring at our organization?
   The very first thing you need to ask is what is your goal and why do you want to record customer interactions? This seems very simple, but if your goal is training, it is much different that if it is only a legal necessity. Do you just need a method for reviewing customer communications and evaluating agent skills? Define the needs of your environment and select the solution that provides the tools you require.

 

2. How do we currently evaluate our contact center's quality of service?
   Are you monitoring currently? Is it manual or automated? Do you currently log every call or record select calls? The key question to answer is what are you doing and is it working? Have you improved the quality of your customer interactions and maintained a team of satisfied employees? Do you currently record all calls but can't access the database easily or have difficulty retrieving the calls you are looking for? Do you conduct time-consuming manual monitoring that often is very subjective? Selecting a solution that provides a more efficient method for measuring your contact center's quality of service will have a dramatic impact on your environment.

 

3. Do we need (currently or in the future) the ability to record voice and screen?
   Do you have plans to use Web chat or e-mail in your contact center? If so, then you need to find out if the system records voice only, or also provides screen captures of agent activities. Combining screen capture with audio recordings provides the ability to better review the agent's skill at navigating business applications and helps supervisors determine training needs.

 

4. Is it a mandate to log all calls at our organization? If so, why?
   This may seem obvious, but when asked, most contact center managers do not know the reason why. Many contact centers monitor only because it is expected. You need to ask yourself what you are going to be doing with the recorded calls and what is the purpose. Are you currently logging calls only for auditing and legal purposes? If you currently have a logging solution in place, do you end up taking a random sampling of the logged calls to evaluate them manually? This is important to distinguish, as the type of solution you select is closely tied to what you want to do with the captured call.

 

5. How easy is the system to use?
   Make sure that you ask the vendor how recordings are retrieved and how they are organized. For example, some systems require specific details (date, time, etc.) to retrieve a recorded call, others are arranged by agent. You have enough to worry about; make sure your recording technology helps rather than hinders you. You need a system that allows you to easily access, play back and evaluate calls, as well as streamlines and automates tasks.

 

6. Will the system integrate with our current environment?
   As with any new application, the ability to leverage your existing resources is imperative in order to keep costs down. You have to ask whether the system will provide a flexible integration platform, one that doesn't require you to purchase significant hardware. Does the system allow you to integrate with solutions from leading PBX/ACD, e-mail and Web chat vendors? Will the system integrate with your existing hardware and software solutions? What type of interface do you want for your various users?

 

7. How scalable is the system?
   Will the system expand as you grow your contact center and add more functionality? Will it enable you to migrate to more advanced functionality at any time with a simple software upgrade? Make sure you calculate these future costs.

 

8. What is the system's functionality - i.e. does it include complete reporting and evaluation tools?
   Are robust reporting and evaluation tools standard components of the system? Look for one with a wide range of standard reports, such as Quality versus Productivity, Training Group Effectiveness and Average Quality Score by Group. And, what if you want to create your own reports? Will the system allow you to easily generate custom reports? Does it let supervisors easily create evaluation forms based on pre-defined metrics? If you want to easily create reports and custom evaluation templates, then you need to ask these questions to make sure the system will give you the functionality you need to evaluate your contact center's quality and efficiency.

 

9. Do we want agents to have access to their recorded customer interactions?
   Is it important in your quality and training initiatives to give agents the ability to play back and review their customer interactions? Do you want to enable agents to initiate recording at a moment's notice? No matter what the answer, it is important to keep in mind your desired outcome and your monitoring goals. Research consistently shows that by allowing your agents to review their interactions and evaluations on a regular basis in a private, non-threatening environment, they are more motivated to improve their skills and feel more empowered and in control.

 

10. How do we currently train in our contact center and would we like options for training agents at their desks?
    The answer to this question should be in line with your overall monitoring goals, but you also need to ask if your current training is working. If it isn't, you may want to consider additional ways to make monitoring a part of your training process, not just your quality assessment. To augment classroom training, for example, would you like the ability to deliver training, evaluations and customer interactions directly to agents' desktops? Do you want agents to receive ongoing feedback without leaving their desks? If this is part of your goal, then the system you select needs to provide the tools to allow you to not only evaluate service quality, but also the ability to use recorded customer interactions for training your agents.