Top 10 ways to use call recording for your business

Call recording has come a long way since its humble beginnings in the early 1900s when it was mostly used by military personnel on ships and air traffic controllers. Like most technologies, call recording required bulky equipment that continued to slim down over the years.

What is call recording?

Call recording is the ability to capture a phone conversation and save it so it can be played back later. The digital age of the early 2000s moved call recording and storage equipment out of the office and over to internet cloud storage. This made call recording more affordable, easier to use, and available to even the smallest of businesses.

How do businesses use call recording?

Here are 10 top ways to apply this handy resource:

1. Train employees: Be on the lookout for calls that demonstrate exceptional support, grace under fire, respect for a caller’s time, or knowledge about your business, and share these calls in employee training sessions. On the flip side, call recordings can identify poor performers who need help. Conversations from real employees are more impactful than generic scenarios.
2. Review sales calls: Find examples of successful sales tactics to use when training new sales agents. Listen for ways to offer one-on-one coaching tips to an agent who may have missed an opportunity to close a deal or suggest a different solution.
3. Archive conversations for recordkeeping: Customers often speak faster than you can take notes. It’s great to be able to refer to a recorded call to double-check the details for orders, follow up with answers to special requests, and verify information from an interview.
4. Enhance employee performance: Employees who know their calls are being recorded have a good incentive to go the extra mile for customers. Managers can praise those who excel at customer support, or coach those who need to refine their customer relation skills.
5. Resolve customer disputes: A recorded call can verify what was discussed during a call; this is especially helpful in avoiding problems when customers disagree about order details, delivery instructions and payment expectations.
6. Monitor compliance: Certain industries, like healthcare, finance, and contact centers are mandated to comply with strict guidelines. They can use call recording to make sure employees are adhering to the laws that pertain to their business.
7. Identify training gaps: When reviewing call recordings, you may notice common questions or issues that employees struggle to address. Provide training on these topics to help your team be more productive and resolve issues on the first call.
8. Gain insight into customer thinking: Analyzing conversations helps you identify what products, services, features and trends are generating calls, as well as flag problems. That data can be applied to refining your marketing and product development efforts.
9. Protect brand reputation: Managers who randomly listen to recorded calls can hear if employees are being helpful and considerate to all callers and living up to your business’s values and policies. If they aren’t, use the recordings as teaching moments to demonstrate how the call should’ve been handled.
10. Find communication inefficiencies: Are you getting a high volume of calls for basic information, like your location and hours of operation? That’s a signal to check that your website, online business directories and all marketing materials include the information your customers and potential clients are looking for.

How do you record a call?

The way to record a call depends on your phone service provider but most, including Mitel, Nextiva, Ooma and RingCentral, allow businesses a variety of options to set up call recording. For example, you may want to record all incoming calls and out-going calls, or just calls to a certain department like your support center. Or you can give employees the option to record calls on demand. Learn how to set up Ooma Office call recording.

Do you need permission to record a call?

It depends. There are many laws regarding consent and a number of states require that all parties on a call must agree to be recorded. Check out the Justia website survey regarding consent information in 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. But, even if your state only requires one-party consent (you), it’s polite to let callers know you are recording them. If you’ve called a major company recently, you’ve probably been told that your call may be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes.

How do you store call recordings?

Call recordings are generally stored in your call logs found in your service provider’s online account management portal for a specific period of time. You can download the audio files on your computer and organize them in folders for easy retrieval, as well as offload the files to an external hard drive or server if you need long-term storage.