However, the FSA has made a number of key concessions and changes the since its initial proposals, and these reduce significantly the impact the new rules will have. In making these concessions, it appears that the FSA bowed to industry pressure rather than considering its primary role as a market regulator. And further, the FSA has ignored key technologies in the call recording market which could have resolved some of the industry’s concerns.

The background

In May 2007, The FSA’s Consultation Paper CP07/9 (Conduct of Business regime: non-MiFID deferred matters (including proposals for Telephone Recording)) first set out the FSA proposals for requiring call recording across “traded” areas of the financial markets such as equities, bonds, financial commodities and derivatives. Conversations by dealers and traders would be recorded, and firms such as stockbrokers, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies would be affected. The broad intention was quite clear at the outset:

The prevention, detection and deterrence of market abuse is a key priority for the FSA. Good quality recordings of voice conversations and of electronic communications assist firms and the FSA in the detection of inappropriate behaviour, and in its investigation and punishment. Importantly, the knowledge that such behaviour can be detected and may be punished acts as a deterrent to individuals who might be tempted to act inappropriately. (CP07/9, 19.1)

The FSA proposed that recorded calls should be kept for a minimum of 3 years, and that the recorded calls “be kept in such a way that they are accessible for future reference” (CP 07/9, 19.8). A detailed cost-benefit analysis was undertaken, to show that mandating call recording was a cost that the industry should bear, in order to reap the benefits foreseen by the FSA. The benefits included ‘cleaner’, more efficient markets, reduced cost of equity and increased market confidence.

The consultation - general industry feedback

Feedback from industry was sought, and the FSA published a summary in its Policy Statement PS07/18 (Conduct of Business Regime), in October 2007. The main concerns expressed by the financial services industry were:

• the FSA’s estimate of how much call recording existed already within the targeted sectors was too low,
• the FSA’s cost estimates were far too low,
• significant resources would have to be expended to find calls requested by the FSA, and
• the proposed retention period of 3 years was too long.

The rules, implemented

The final rules on call recording were published in March 2008, in the FSA’s Policy Statement PS08/1 (Telephone Recording: recording of voice conversations and electronic communications).

Far from sticking to its guns about a 3-year call retention period, the FSA has reduced retention to just 6 months. It is clear that this decision was influenced by the feedback from the financial services industry, on the grounds that the perceived cost of storage, and the difficulty of finding calls after a long period (or even a short one) would make 3 years unworkable.

However, there is one very obvious reason why this is a bad idea: the loss of calls which may otherwise aid the FSA’s investigative role. This should override the industry’s concerns.

In addition, as detailed below, the concern about the difficulty of finding calls after a long period is not a problem at all.

The 3-year call retention period

In PS07/18, the FSA took the chance to rebut industry concerns about the 3-year retention period, stating good reasons why it was necessary:

Because of the way in which enforcement cases evolve we have in some cases requested tapes over two years after the relevant incident that is the focus of our attention. (PS07/18, 19.10)

In addition, the FSA clearly spelled out to the industry some of the ways in which call recording had helped the industry in the past. The case study provided by the FSA (Splits) is a compelling argument, and one key point jumps out. The investigation commenced in October 2002, and a compensation payout of £200 million was made by most firms in December 2004. However:

Three of the firms had, by the time of the investigation, destroyed any tape recordings which had been made. (PS 07/18, 19.29)

It is not alleged by the FSA that these firms deliberately destroyed the recordings in order to conceal anything. Rather, it is clear that an increased retention time would have aided in the investigation.

In its final rule-making Policy Statement, the FSA itself admits that calls may be lost under the 6-month retention period:

However, there may be some loss in evidence in complex cases where abusive firms or individuals are identified late in the process, and requests for information cannot be made within six months. (PS 08/1, 2.64)

It appears that the FSA has bowed to pressure from the financial services industry, rather than remain true to its role as a market regulator, and has compromised the abilities of its own Enforcement division.

The call retrieval ‘problem’

A complaint from respondents to CP 07/9 (published in PS 07/18) was that:

significant staff resources could be involved in searching tapes where, for example, requests were made to have all conversations with a specific client (PS 07/18, 19.4)

This was further highlighted in PS 08/1, which stated (emphasis added):

One authorised firm was concerned that whilst recording is possible, retrieval is a big issue, especially given the large number of minutes that would be recorded under the FSA proposals. A typical retrieval for the firm takes seven working days; they currently receive about six such requests each year. The firm further stated that the Data Protection Act adds another layer of difficulty since the party listening to tapes must be totally independent of those involved and thus will not recognise (or be able to distinguish between) voices on recordings. The company may need to employ more people to search through tape recordings if the volume of requests were to rise once the coverage of taping was increased. (PS 08/1, A1.49)

This, unfortunately, is a problem for any company which continues to use a traditional hardware-based recording system. Systems of this kind were considered by the FSA and its consultant Europe Economics as part of their analysis of the call recording industry.

All call recording systems store data relating to each call. However, as Europe Economics points out, these are typically very limited. The 2 sample systems considered by Europe Economics had the ability to store the following “meta-tags”:

Solution 1: Date, time, extension number, channel number. Optional data dependant on where the system is connected: trader ID, Handset number, speaker information, private wire details
Solution 2: Date and time of call, number of caller, number called to, Call duration
(PS 08/1, Annex 3, Table 3.1)

However, when conducting an investigation, the FSA will ask for calls to be retrieved which relate to particular customers, accounts or individual trades. None of this information is stored with the call. No wonder, then, that financial services firms using this sort of technology cannot locate calls quickly, and it can take more than a week to do so. In fact, in most cases they have to listen to many hundreds of calls just to find the right one, giving rise to the above concern about the Data Protection Act.

There is an easy solution: store additional data with each call. Store the trade ID, store the customer’s unique account details, store a database reference - whatever is needed to ensure easy and quick retrieval of calls. Broadly, this process is known as “call tagging“, and it helps to locate calls instantly in the future.

Call tagging not only allows instantaneous location of a call or group of calls, it also ensures that other, unrelated, calls do not need to be listened to. This eliminates any concerns about Data Protection Act breaches.

If the FSA had more fully considered the current technologies available, it would have been able to assuage industry fears of added complexity or difficulty with extended call retention. In addition, it could have actively encouraged the tagging of calls with business-relevant data, to help improve the operations of financial services firms.

The “we can’t find the recording” ‘problem’

The same firm quoted above also told the FSA’s consultants that it couldn’t identify which of its staff was being recorded during a conversation (emphasis added):

The firm stated that one difficulty with the available technology is that if a phone call is made to employee A (who is away from his desk) and hence the call is forwarded to employee B, the call is recorded on employee A’s line. Therefore, if the FSA were to have concerns about the activity of employee B and searched the recordings made on employee B’s line, they would not find a relevant and potentially incriminating conversation. The company is greatly concerned that in such a situation, where someone remembered having a conversation with employee B and hence a request for the conversation was made by the FSA, the company would be guilty by implication if the conversation could not be found. (PS 08/1, Annex 3, A1.50)

The problem here is not uncommon, and lies with the outdated method of call recording being used. Calls at this firm are being recorded centrally, by a hardware box attached to the company’s phone system. Each telephone line is recorded, but it is impossible to determine which employee is being recorded. The same problem happens outside the regulated financial services sector, in call centres. Staff regularly hot-desk, and so recording a given telephone line or extension gives no clue as to the staff member being recorded at any particular time.

The solution, again, is simple. A flexible software system which records calls locally at the staff member’s PC captures the precise details of the staff member logged into the PC. Calls can then be retrieved instantly at any point in the future, simply by searching by the person’s name. (For some telephone switches, users are required to ‘log in’ before using the phone, and some hardware call recording systems will capture this information.)

Again, had the FSA and its consultants understood the nature of the more flexible software-based call recording solutions, industry fears such as those above would have had no bearing on the outcome of its consultation and ultimate decision-making process.

Summary

The FSA has decided on a 6-month call retention period which undoubtedly harms its ability to conduct investigations. It appears that the decision to back away from a more comprehensive 3-year period was partly driven by industry concerns about the inability to successfully and cost-effectively locate calls. Had the FSA and its consultants been more aware of current call recording technology, many of these concerns would have been rendered irrelevant. Thus the FSA would not have had to compromise at the expense of its own investigative processes.

—

(c) Veritape Ltd, 2008. For more information, please contact sales@veritape.com or visit www.veritape.com.

Here are 3 case studies which illustrate just how significant an impact Veriscope can have. But as you read, you’ll see that the results are not always those which were expected.

Sometimes, companies start out using Veriscope with one objective, but in the process of analysing thousands of conversations automatically, they uncover powerful lessons for their entire business.

• Veritape customer MM has successfully dealt with a new competitive threats in its market, and has improved its speed of response for other threats in the future. Read how they did it here.
• HTI, operating in the financial services sector, has used Veriscope to automate some of its compliance-checking functions, saving time and improving compliance. HTI also discovered a fault with their process for handling incoming calls, which they were not expecting. Find out how HTI implemented their Veriscope system and improved compliance here.
• A large outsourced call centre was able to provide rapid market research for one of its customers, by using Veritape’s speech analytics, and with no changes to their back-end IT systems. As a result, the customer was able to make a firm decision on the question “do we enter a new market?”. Click here to find out more.

For more information about Veriscope, and how it can help add real value to your business by unlocking the information hidden in your thousands of phone calls, click here or contact Veritape here.

—–

About Veritape:

Veritape provides call recording software to industry-leading organisations such as Porsche, LBM and GMAC RFC. Our clients enjoy significant staff and efficiency savings of up to 30%.

Veritape helps organisations make significant cost savings by gathering and interrogating business intelligence from hundreds and thousands of live conversations received through their telephone systems.

Essentially, we act as our client’s telephone search engine.

We will help you make better, quicker, and more informed decisions in highly competitive markets. Critically, organisations realise significant cost savings and productivity improvements directly with Veritape. Our clients regularly realise:

• up to 30% reductions in staff cost,
• between 30% - 40% increases in productivity for sales managers,
• 90% reductions in disputed transactions, and
• significant increases in lead conversion.

As well as the above operational improvements, our software solution is procured through a low-risk rental model. We are more cost-effective than any traditional hardware solution.

For more information about Veritape, please visit http://www.veritape.com.

Veritape’s ongoing innovations in the field of software call recording have been recognised by The National Business Awards. Veritape has been acknowledged in the category “Business Innovation of the Year”.

Described by Gordon Brown as the “Business Oscars”, The National Business Awards are held annually to showcase the very best of British businesses. In granting Veritape Highly Commended status, the judges of the Business Innovation of the Year award described Veritape’s focus on customers, their issues, and continual improvement:

Veritape’s “customer satisfaction measures” are fed back into the business, and “drive improvement.” The judges also noted that when considering the main criteria of the award (innovation), Veritape was “performing at a level which is well above what would be expected in their sector.” Veritape understands “the imperative of creativity and innovation as drivers to competitive or operational advantage.”

Veritape’s Head of Sales, Nadeem Hussain, said:

“Ever since Veritape produced the world’s first telephone call recording software for commercial use, a core part of our business model has centred around delivering real benefits to our customers through innovation. This has remained a key driver for our success.

Veritape’s current wide portfolio also reflects our approach. Our Veriscope speech recognition tools help our customers to extract value from their phonecalls, by performing audio searches through conversations. Think ‘Google for phone calls’ and you’ll understand just how beneficial that can be for businesses.

Currently, we’re working with major call centre operators to ensure that they meet their Payment Card Industry obligations, in relation to credit card security numbers, without impacting on their ability to record all other portions of a conversation.

Continually searching for solutions to customers’ ever-changing requirements keeps us at the cutting edge, and provides us with the competitive advantage we pride ourselves on.

Recognition of Veritape’s innovative call recording software by The National Business Awards is an exciting reflection of our ongoing work.”

—–

About Veritape:

Veritape provides call recording software to industry-leading organisations such as Porsche, LBM and GMAC RFC. Our clients enjoy significant staff and efficiency savings of up to 30%.

Veritape helps organisations make significant cost savings by gathering and interrogating business intelligence from hundreds and thousands of live conversations received through their telephone systems.

Essentially, we act as our client’s telephone search engine.

We will help you make better, quicker, and more informed decisions in highly competitive markets. Critically, organisations realise significant cost savings and productivity improvements directly with Veritape. Our clients regularly realise:

• up to 30% reductions in staff cost,
• between 30% - 40% increases in productivity for sales managers,
• 90% reductions in disputed transactions, and
• significant increases in lead conversion.

As well as the above operational improvements, our software solution is procured through a low-risk rental model. We are more cost-effective than any traditional hardware solution.

For more information about Veritape, please visit http://www.veritape.com.

—–

About The National Business Awards:

The National Business Awards recognises and rewards excellence, innovation and success. Uniquely open to organisations of all sizes and from any industry sector – public or private – the best of British businesses are able to showcase their achievements and benchmark their successes against firms and bodies of all types.

For more information about The National Business Awards, please visit http://www.nationalbusinessawards.co.uk

What does the PCI security policy say about storing credit card security numbers?

The PCI security requirements for processing credit cards state that the 3- or 4-digit credit-card verification number on the back of the card (often called CVC2/CVV2 or CID) is not allowed to be stored in any form. This is an excerpt from the PCI Data Security Standard:

                    Data Element                    Storage Permitted?
                    ----------------------------    ------------------
Cardholder Data
                    Primary Account Number (PAN)      YES
                    Cardholder Name                   YES
                    Service Code                      YES
                    Expiration Date                   YES

Sensitive Authentication Data**
                    Full Magnetic Stripe              NO
                    CVC2/CVV2/CID                     NO
                    PIN / PIN Block                   NO

** Sensitive authentication data must not be stored subsequent
to authorization (even if encrypted).

(Source: PCI Data Security Standard v1.1 Sep 2006, available
online at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/)

In addition, the PCI Security Standards Council has stated that “the PCI Data Security Standard applies to all cardholder data that is stored, processed, or transmitted, regardless of the capture or storage mechanism” (Source: PCI SSC communication direct to Veritape, complete copy available on request.)

But what about storing the details in audio format?

The security codes can’t be stored in any format. So what happens if you’re recording your telephone calls? You are breaking your agreement with your card provider and with the PCI.

What can happen if we are not compliant with the PCI security requirements?

You card provider can temporarily or permanently withdraw your ability to take credit card payments for your products and services.

So how do I configure my call recording system so that it doesn’t record the credit card security codes?

If you are not using a software-based call recording system, you are most likely unable to do this.

Why does my existing call recording system prevent me from disabling recording while the customer reads the credit card security code?

The short answer is that most call recording systems record ‘trunkside’. This means that all calls in and out of your building are recorded at the point they enter/leave your building. By default, your calls are recorded (which is good), but you have almost no control over which calls (or which part of your calls) are recorded (which is bad).

So what can I do?

You want to record your phonecalls, but you don’t want to record the sensitive portions of your credit card transactions. You need to use a software recording system which gives you complete control over all aspects of your recording.

You need Veritape call recording, and in particular, the Veritape Call Tagging module.

Veritape Call Tagging is a simple, easy method for ensuring that the sensitive portions of conversations, including credit card security details, are simply not recorded. Many companies, such as those in telesales, wish to only record part of a conversation. This is particularly useful if:

• you only want to capture the financial details of a transaction (like credit card details, etc), and not the ’sales pitch’ beforehand
• you want to NOT record sensitive details of a conversation, such as credit-card security details or medical information
• you only want to record the customer giving verbal authorisation for a transaction
• you only want to record details of an appointment arranged for a salesperson, to email to the salesperson

By using Veritape Call Tagging, you can easily link your existing scripting or CRM package with Veritape CallCentre to ensure that only the relevant portions of calls are recorded. This will then happen every time, automatically, and your Agents will not be required to do anything.

Veritape Call Tagging will improve your compliance, allow you to more fully comply with credit card payment security standards, and improve your customers’ peace of mind.

The problem in the call recording world, though, is that far too many companies get nothing for something. They are paying for call recording capacity which simply isn’t being used.

Don’t be too discrete

Traditional hardware-based call recording systems use voice-processing cards to convert telephone conversations to digital audio files. Voice processing cards are available with discrete capacities of 4, 8, 16, 32 ports… all the way up to many hundreds of ports. Each port allows the recording of one telephone conversation.

If your operation has exactly (say) 16, 32 or 256 telephone lines which need recording all year-round, and that situation will never change, then a hardware call recording system with precisely this number of recording ports may meet the most basic of your requirements: capacity. But in practice, companies change size, projects start and stop, staff numbers change; things are rarely static.

Increases

Your company needs more recording capacity, but you have a hardware system? You have a choice:

• buy a few more ports of recording capacity (let’s say 4) - in which case you have a space problem should you need to increase again soon, or
• buy many more ports of recording capacity (let’s say 64) - in which case you are paying now for something you may use in the future

The discrete nature of your call recording hardware means that you are continually building in too much capacity - and paying for it.

Reductions

With a hardware call recording system, you simply can’t reduce your capacity. You’ve bought it already. You may be able to stop paying annual maintenance payments on some of your hardware, but you’ve still spent the capital.

The solution

Veritape’s call recording software is licensed by the number of recorded telephone extensions you want to record. If you want to increase by one, take one more licence. If you want to decrease by one, stop renting one licence.

It couldn’t be simpler.

The applications

Veritape’s customers find their ability to increase and decrease call recording capacity most beneficial in these situations:

• seasonal businesses
• holiday periods
• running campaigns - just rent recording for the period of the campaign. This is particularly relevant for companies who are outsource providers, which may not require call recording on a permanent basis, or for every customer/campaign.
• project-based activity

Simply pay for what you need, and no more. Find out more here.

Technology changes quickly. Software call recording systems such as Veritape are able to change rapidly also, to:

• adapt to customers’ changing requirements,
• introduce newly-developed technology, and
• deliver bigger business benefits.

These are some developments to Veritape’s call recording software in the past 3 years:

• new Veriscope speech recognition module - brings true keyword/phrase searching to telephone calls
• new Veritape Call Tagging module - brings the ability to ‘tag’ your company’s data to recorded telephone calls
• improvements to user interfaces to enhance usability and speed of call retrieval
• new Veritape Manager functionality to enhance security
• enhanced reporting to provide critical business information more quickly and more clearly
• ability to record from analogue, digital and VoIP phone systems concurrently or separately - so that customers can migrate from one telephone system to another without having to purchase a new call recording system

If our customers had bought a hardware system 3 years ago, they would not have benefitted from any of these enhancements.

The same applies to purchases today: if you buy a hardware call recording system, you will still be using the same, unenhanced system in 3 years’ time. You will not be able to take advantage of world-leading functionality and business benefits being delivered month after month by Veritape’s R&D staff.

(Many of the enhancements to Veritape’s software come from customer suggestions. Let us know your ideas: a software solution can do anything you want.)

Why do refunds occur?

As you’d expect, the reasons for refunds differ widely across contact centres operating in different industry sectors. However, in general our experience points to:

• Miscommunication between customers and contact centre staff
• Genuine mistakes by customers or contact centre staff
• Problems with a company’s internal processes, which mean that the customer gets a different outcome than they were expecting
• (And also…) Customers trying to take advantage of the fact that companies usually have no way of proving what was said during a previous conversation

How can call recording help you?

Call recording can provide your business with easy, quick ways to resolve most of the above points. But the way in which it will help you the most is simply by providing you with facts. What actually happened during that call? Listen to the recording and find out. No more hearsay, no more ‘I said, they said’, no more disputes about the content of disputes!

But here’s the key thing: you must be able to find and listen to any disputed calls easily and quickly. Otherwise you’ll be unable to resolve a customer’s dispute in a timely manner - which can lead to further escalation and complication.

How does Veritape’s software aid call retrieval?

Nearly all call recording systems allow you to find calls using call date and time. Some give you an additional couple of fields: CLI and DDI. But in most cases, even with these data, finding individual, specific calls is still a slow and laborious process.

Veritape’s Call Tagging module changes all that. Call Tagging allows you to find calls instantly. For example, simply type in a customer’s reference number, and you will see a list of the calls which relate to that customer. You can play them straight away. No longer does finding calls need to take hours or days.

And as for finding your disputed call? It won’t take more than 30 seconds.

Now you’ve found the disputed call, what do you do?

We’ll leave that decision to you - it’s your business, and your circumstances will dictate the best course of action. But you may be interested in knowing some things that companies using Veritape’s software do with disputed calls, after having listened to them:

• Call the customer and say “I’m sorry”. (That approach may surprise you. It certainly surprises the customer. But if you discover a genuine mistake or fault on your behalf, how refreshing to be able to admit it, resolve the situation and move on.)
• Email the call directly to the customer, and then discuss it with them after the customer has had a chance to hear it. (In fact, an approach like this can often work: “Mrs Smith, I am investigating the problem you’ve had regarding your flight booking. Here at TravelCorp we record all of our calls with our customers, and I’ve located your booking call. I am going to listen to it in a few minutes, and I’ll also email the call to you so you have an opportunity to listen too. Once you’ve had a chance to listen to the call, would you do me the courtesy of calling me back so we can continue our conversation?” In this way, there is very little tension between the company and customer, and resolution can continue at the pace the customer is comfortable with. Which sometimes is not at all.)
• Start resolving internal problems which have created or contributed to the dispute - including by emailing the disputed call to the person within your business who has responsibility for your systems/processes/ordering/stock/etc. The fact that they can hear in a customer’s own words what went wrong is far more powerful than any memo you could write.

What impact can finding disputed calls have on your business?

Financially, the impact can be dramatic. One of Veritape’s customers, Autobuyer, reduced their customer refunds by 90% (and saved more than the cost of their Veritape software) simply by being able to play disputed calls to customers where necessary (although often just telling the customer that the call has been recorded is enough to amicably resolve a dispute). You can read more about Autobuyer’s experience here.

Improving internal systems and processes is another major benefit, and the impact of these changes will be determined by the current quantity of refunds and the efficiency of your business. But to put it in perspective: a major UK leisure company has recently used Veritape’s software combined with some staff training to save over £250,000 per annum by reducing their disputed calls to nearly zero.

But won’t playing calls to customers just annoy them?

Absolutely not. If your customers understand first-hand that you treat them well and act on their instructions promptly and correctly, they will have more faith in the service you provide. Being able to quickly and accurately justify your actions enhances your overall ability to serve your customers.

• Provides personal telephone and entertainment systems incorporating internet and email to hospital patients
• 130 hospitals
• 70,000 bedside units
• 120-seat centre in Dumfries, Scotland; 24-hour operation; 20,000 calls per day
• Veritape call recording software installed throughout

The scenario

Patientline installed Veritape call recording across all seats in its contact centre. Its introduction resulted in rapid reductions in average call handling time. Patientline’s Senior Operations Manager says:

Almost overnight the introduction of call recording reduced AHT by 12% and increased sales by 11%.

While this was good, part of Patientline’s reason for introducing call recording was to effect major efficiency gains throughout its business. There was clearly more to be done.

The issue

Patientline’s Senior Operations Manager describes the issue:

Once we had installed call recording, and we started listening to the calls we were handling, it very quickly became apparent that our advisors spent a considerable amount of time telling each new patient about how the system worked. You could hear the parrot style tone in their voice. I was also concerned that there could be occasions when we did not cover our bases in relation to the Data Protection Act.

The solution

Using Veritape’s software, Patientline analysed a number of recordings and identified information they could remove from the call.

In addition, we looked very carefully at the Data Protection information we needed to supply to callers and how we were currently doing it.

As part of the project approval process, a number of example calls were recorded and played at a monthly Board meeting to highlight the potential benefits of a pre- and post-amble script.

Listening to the calls was a very powerful tool and supported the case well, allowing us to edit out the parts of the call we could remove by introducing pre-amble messaging and then compare it with the standard type of call.

The benefits

Average call length was cut for all types of calls, sometimes dramatically. For one particular type of call Patientline handled, call length was reduced by 60%.

Call recording analysis had allowed us to see how very easily we could make changes to improve the way we worked. The improvements have reduced call handling time, taken the monotony out of advisors’ calls, ensured consistency, guaranteed the promotion of all our services, and assured us that we are complying with all of our Data Protection Act requirements.

The follow-up confirmation

Patientline used Veritape’s software to prove that the changes were effective.

Post implementation, call recording again allowed us to validate our original assumptions, comparing old style with new. More importantly, it allowed our team leaders and training team to tackle those advisors who were struggling with the changes which were made to their call handling scripts.

• One of the UK’s largest outsourced call centre providers, referred to here as “Company G”
• Company G’s clients include major utilities, banks and telecommunications companies
• Veritape call recording installed
• Veritape Call Tagging module installed and integrated with dialler
• Veritape Manager modules installed on all Supervisor PCs

The scenario

As a service provider working on behalf of other clients, Company G is required to maintain and prove the highest standards of performance and quality. With over 20,000 calls made or taken each day, a very small proportion of them result in complaints from the public.

As required by their performance standards, Company G investigates each of these complaints fully, and reports on them to their clients.

The problem

Company G had an existing traditional hardware-based call recording system. Finding a complaint call among the 20,000 recordings from each day was an arduous process:

• A request had to be made by the Supervisor to the IT department, to locate the call
• The IT department had to find the digital tapes on which the call was located
• The IT department had to find the call within the digital tape, and prepare the call for playback
• Jointly, the Supervisor and IT department had to agree on a time at which they were both free to listen to the call
• The IT department would then play the recorded call over the telephone to the Supervisor
• Total time for this process: approximately 1.5 hours.

Veritape’s solution

Company G implemented Veritape’s call recording, along with full Call Tagging integration with their dialler. This means that every call is ‘tagged’ with details relating to both the client for whom Company G is acting, and also the eventual customer who is called.

Finding a call now is incredibly simple:

• The Supervisor types the following into Veritape Manager’s ’search’ function:
  • customer’s phone number, or
  • customer’s name, or
  • customer’s postcode, or
  • other unique contact detail such as a customer reference number
• The Supervisor presses the ‘Find’ button
• The call is listed and can be played within 10 seconds
• Total time for this process: approximately 30 seconds.

The savings and benefits

For each call retrieved, approximately 1.5 hours of time is saved. Part of this time saving is for the Supervisor, and part is for the IT department (who no longer have any part in finding or preparing calls for playback).

For the team of 15 Supervisors, each finding about 8 calls per week, Company G has saved

15 x 8 x 1.5 hours = 180 person-hours per week

Employees at Company G typically work a 35-hour week. Therefore implementation of Veritape’s products is effectively freeing up 5 full-time jobs. With the all-up cost of each job to Company G of £30,000 per year, Company G is making efficiency savings of £150,000 each year, by running Veritape’s call recording software.

(Practically, Company G’s Supervisors are now reviewing even more calls on behalf of their customers, to improve their quality and service levels even further.)

Why rent?

Because it’s cheaper and more flexible. Consider this simple example, for a department or call centre wanting to record 75 seats.

Approximate hardware cost (upfront, capex): £ 50,000
Annual support and maintenance cost: approximately 15% p.a. which is £7,500 p.a. (assume this is for Year 2 onwards)
Installation: £2,000
Cost of capital: 5%
Amortize over: 3 years

The Equivalent Annual Cost for a hardware purchase is:

Year 1: £20,360
Year 2: £25,860
Year 3: £25,860
Total over 3 years: £72,081

Veritape call recording software, rented over 3 years is around 50% of that, and has no capital expenditure requirement.

And what if your requirements change in Year 2?

With hardware, you are constrained by the system you bought. If you need less call recording, tough; you’ve paid for it already. If you need more call recording, you may well be required to buy upgrades for your hardware system in ‘chunks’, rather than just the exact amount you need. All of which leads to more cost.

With Veritape’s software, your system can be expanded or contracted to suit your changing requirements. Licences can be added and removed, one by one.

Renting is the cheapest and most flexible way to pay for your call recording.