Afraid of recent call recording industry consolidations?

Are you a customer of the call recording industry giants?

Have you recently seen your system become consolidated into a larger conglomerate of companies?

Companies who face uncertainty in the wake of the recent acquisitions worry about being supported or being forced to upgrade to the new, "better" brand. Of course, maintenance rates and add-on pricing may also increase. It's a valid concern.

Please post comments relative to your concerns and we'll discuss in more detail.

What's the most frequent use for call recording: quality assurance or liability / verification?

We asked this question to a diverse group of call center professionals. Among the responses:

"My company does not use call recording software; however, we often find the need to partner with entities that do supply such capabilities for our customer base. We sell solutions that provide E911 support for Enterprise customers. Being that a 911 call more then likely is some sort of emergency, most customers have strict requirements for call recording. In these cases, I would assume the need will be much more for liability protection, though I could also see need to review 911 calls from a training perspective." - e911 solution provider

"Most catalog companies I’ve spoken to are heavily into sales and customer service, so training seems to be the most important issue." - Call Recording Sales Executive

"Some are recording sales confirmations for high ticket items but for the most part they capture unique identifiers as a means of certifying the purchase." - Call Center Consultant

"I’ve found that most catalog centers I’ve reached out to have expressed a need for employee development vs. legal/liability recording," - Regional Sales Manager, Call Center Recording Solutions

"Depends on the industry, of course. For catalog companies, it's definitely QA" - Call Center Software Programmer

"It would seem to me that certain e-commerce industries, such as catalog companies, would definitely start out call recording to help meet their quality initiatives, but I could see more and more of them starting to record all calls for liability reasons and dispute resolution. They definitely need to encrypt calls if they are accepting credit card orders over the phone." - Marketing Executive

What's the most important feature added to Virtual Observer?

An informal poll was taken on Thursday, March 15th, asking what employees felt was the most important enhancement added to Virtual Observer in its' nearly decade of evolution.

The two most frequent responses were, in no particular order:

* Media Lists: the ability to package media files
This functionality was added to the base Virtual Observer feature set as an introduction to the power of using VO for training purposes. Supervisors can compile a set of the best calls and then export a media list to cd, network folder, email or web page. Now you've got a "Greatest Hits" for new employees to learn from, among many other useful applications.

* VoIP Recording
Giving VO the ability to record on VoIP systems unchained the software system from being compatible with only TDM/analog, digital and legacy phone systems. Now VO works with almost all major vendors, including Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, 3com, Mitel, SIP-based VoIP systems, and many more.

Much can be said about Media Encryption, Visual Playback, and Live Desktop as well. It's hard to pinpoint the single most important feature in the VO call monitoring system.

New Call Center Industry Search Engine

We've helped to create the world's first search engine designed to specifically feature relevant call center results. Several call center vendor websites are already indexed by the engine and specialized keywords have been associated with those sites. Try some searches, either on the sidebar of this blog, or go directly to the search engine here:

Call Center Industry Search Engine

Featured Virtual Observer Add-On: Media Encryption

The Virtual Observer Media Encryption module will help to prevent unauthorized playback of your recorded customer events. The module utilizes standard 256-Bit "Advanced Encryption". The encrypted media is stored on your network and only authenticated users can decrypt and play back recordings.

This has incredible value for any companies that need to comply with Visa's "Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard".

Any company recording conversations or screen activity that includes credit card numbers will need to make sure recordings are encrypted.

Virtual Observer's (VO) granular security ensures a high level of control for administrators and multiple levels of authentication.

With VO's "Media Encryption" module, you can rest assured knowing your valuable customer data is protected.

VO's "Agent Auditing" module is especially a good fit with Media Encryption as it allows administrators the ability to follow a trail of activity by user.

Quality Monitoring Case Studies: Start Small and Think Big

We've got two distinct case studies that show the value and diveristy in what we can deliver to different customers. It's all relative to our "Start Small Think Big" philosophy of providing the right solution at the right time. Some of our competitors seem to force feature-overload on new customers to justify the high price tags. We'd prefer to sell our solution at a fair price, and keep the customer for life. This is also reflected in our pro-customer upgrade pricing: regular updates AND full version upgrades are provided at no charge for supported customers. Again, some of our competition will force their vulnerable customer base into what is basically a complete re-buy of the system at a price close to the original purchase price. Sound familiar?

The first case study. "Start Small" tells the tale of a convenience store chain who leverages the value of VoIP with call recording and quality assurance at an affordable price.

The second case study, "Think Big" examines how a large enterprise with 1000 agents are getting amazing value out of call monitoring with Virtual Observer.