Did you know that witness testimony is often the weakest form of evidence in a court case?
It doesn't matter if someone was there. It doesn't matter what they say they saw. Human perception and memory are so unreliable that courts will often dismiss them.
That means the best way to protect your business is to record calls. This simple digital record is easy to make but provides a wide variety of benefits in return.
Call recording makes up for the human memory of your employees. It stops unproductive he-said-she-said back and forth. And it can protect you from costly liability.
In this article, you'll learn the reasons to use call recording. Business phone call recording is the solution to everything from your marketing campaign to compliance.
Table of Contents
1. Call Recording Maintains Consistency
7. Improve Customer Service and Products
8. Build Better Marketing Campaigns
9. The Best Call Recording Works Anywhere
11. Get Call Recording for Your Business Today
Call Recording Maintains Consistency
There's a chance your business uses some sort of script on how employees should conduct calls. This might be a "recipe for success" or another format for handling different situations.
These guidelines are crucial for maintaining call quality. It tells employees how you want them to handle customers, and can avoid sticky situations.
But how do you know if they're putting this into practice?
You can monitor them live as they give calls. But live monitoring isn't the most efficient way of determining employee compliance. You never know what call they're going to get, or how long it is.
Further, you want to identify the issues in problem calls. If your customer claims that an employee was rude, and your employee disagrees, who do you trust? The customer is always right, but some customers take advantage of this adage.
Phone call recording makes it clear what happened. Rather than listening to any calls that come in, you can home in on the important ones. You can avoid long calls, and maximize efficiency.
And this improves your recipe for success. You can tweak it in response to the observations you make.
Training will be ten times more effective. You can't train well without a clear view of employee performance. It's an effective strategy to use past calls as training material so employees know what sorts of situations can happen.
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Employee Accountability
There's no way to measure employee performance if you don't know what your employee is doing! They may show up early, or dress well. Other employees may revere them.
But you'll never know until you listen in.
When it comes to setting goals, accountability is key. A goal is meaningless unless you measure progress. You need to track your employees' progress to improve their performance.
The best way to do this is to let your employees know you'll be choosing random calls. Employees will have to give consistent quality service across the board, knowing that this call could be the one. They won't risk messing up a particular call.
If employees know that you're recording them, that changes their behavior, too. This is known as the Hawthorne effect. Studies show that when you observe employees, that improves performance.
Further, that keeps employees honest. You don't have to worry that they'll take advantage of you or your customers.
This protects employees, too. If they know you're recording them, they know that there is evidence of their actions. If they did the right thing, the company can protect them against malicious customers.
Sales Coaching
Call recording also helps to train your sales staff. Sales are hard, and often need the tutelage of an experienced salesperson.
Sure, you can have sales training listen live for calls. But that limits what you can do. As we've mentioned before, live listening is often the least effective way of doing things.
They might have great success while you're listening. Then when you're off the clock, they struggle.
Best of all, this allows full team collaboration. Several people can listen to the same call to provide feedback. They can listen again and again to identify pain points in the call process.
You can record exceptional sales calls for future reference. Nothing is better for sales training than to listen to how to do it right. Call recording means you can update your training with recent sales calls, too.
Protect From Liability
Your policies are extremely important for protecting yourself from liability. However, customers can claim that no one advised them about a policy. They can claim the company failed to inform them, and that can lead to a lawsuit.
Phone call recording means you can go to the source. You can pull up the phone call in question and see what they really said. If the employee did let them know, then you can provide that evidence to protect yourself.
He-said-she-said is no way to run a business. You need accountability everywhere you can get it. Call recording is a crucial layer of legal armor for your business.
Often, you can use this evidence to defuse a situation. Even if you are innocent, legal fees are costly. Proving to the customer that you did inform them warns them of wasting their time and money.
This can provide a learning experience for future employees, too. You can highlight the importance of warning customers about policy. If an employee failed to do this, you can use a call recording to show them how it caused damage to the company.
Future liability is also something to keep in mind. A customer could call years later about the same issue. If you don't have a recording of the last customer interaction, that puts you at a disadvantage.
If you decide to do call recording, make sure to back them up. Keep calls for years just in case. This could be an invaluable resource that is worth the cost of backup storage.
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Legal Compliance
On top of liability, your company needs to adhere to legal standards. If your company provides therapy over the phone, it needs to adhere to HIPAA.
Again, call recording is another layer of legal armor for your business. It provides proof that you are complying with the law. Conversely, it provides proof if you need to make improvements.
You cannot afford to fail compliance. Personal information needs protection such as with the GLBA standard. Call recording means you can identify if you are not protecting personal customer information.
Because of the Hawthorne effect, employees perform better while under observation. If you warn them of the consequences of non-compliance, they'll be very careful with all employee information.
This will improve your training material. If you have regular occurrences of non-compliance, that allows you to identify where things are going wrong. You can prevent further infractions.
A Future Record
Keeping good records makes sure your business is prepared for anything. Call recording is another essential type of record you should keep.
For example, a customer might inquire about something that happened weeks or months ago. This might be a long-standing issue that they haven't resolved. Chances are, your employees have forgotten the important details.
Business phone call recording means you can go back in time as far as you need. If a problem customer is giving you grief, you can remind yourself of their previous calls. This necessary context means they can't accuse you of something that was actually their fault.
This can also be a metric for determining how much your business has improved. If you've implemented a new standard, you can see how things compared to previous times.
Improve Customer Service and Products
Poor customer service can drive customers away forever. Customers don't have the patience to wait on the phone for long periods of time. They won't have the tolerance for rude employees who are short with them.
One of the best reasons to use call recording is to isolate calls. You can focus on the longest calls and see what's going wrong. Is the employee failing to take control, or are they dealing with customers that are longwinded?
Whatever the case, the benefits of call recording mean you can always go back. You can see exactly what they said, and figure out how future calls could go better.
If you receive complaints, you can address them personally. You can find the employee responsible and determine what happened. You can separate legitimate complaints from illegitimate ones.
Listening to how customers talk about your products and services helps to improve them. You can have product improvement listen to calls and list common issues. Rather than waiting for bad reviews, you can be proactive and fix product issues.
Build Better Marketing Campaigns
The best thing you can do for your customers is to listen to them. If customers feel like you're ignoring their concerns, they'll walk away and never come back. There's nothing more myopic than creating a marketing campaign that ignores past issues.
This is common in the video game industry. Large publishers will release games year after year that are the same. The fans provide detailed feedback about what they can do to improve.
And yet, nothing changes. Publishers lose millions of dollars when they fail to heed their fans. This can forever damage their reputation.
Reputation is everything, especially if you provide a service. Unless you're a monopoly, your customers can and will dump you for the competition. Make your marketing materials based on what worked in the past.
Call recording provides a repository of information for the marketing team. They can preen through hundreds of calls and identify a common theme. A marketing campaign built on this past evidence will be more successful than anything before it.
Plus, it's good to get a sense of how customers talk about your product. If there's a lack of enthusiasm, you want to know why. Listening to a full call from beginning to end gives you the context you need.
The Best Call Recording Works Anywhere
Business phone call recording depends entirely on your setup. Some businesses have traditional landlines. Others use a digital phone client.
Not all call recording systems are equal. They might not be equipped to handle your business's wide variety of receiving correspondence.
Many businesses are now decentralized. Employees make calls on a smartphone from their homes. You need a call recording solution that works in these unique situations.
Call Recording Is Easy
Believe it or not, you can set up call recording in minutes. There's no need for a costly, complicated system. You can download a call recording solution on your phone right now.
The best call recording gives you whatever options you need. You can store recorded calls offline, or only in the cloud. You can store the calls in a lower-quality format to save on space.
Quality service means you can implement compliance messages at the beginning of calls. You can fine-tune your call menus and call queues for your business.
Further, call recording is affordable. Your plan can cost as little as $4.99 per month. There's no need to purchase an expensive machine, run your own server, or devote a section of IT to storing calls.
Get Call Recording for Your Business Today
The benefits of call recording are widespread. It can protect you from liability, keep employees accountable, and improve your marketing campaign. You can identify call problems with precision and nip them in the bud.
Remember, witness statements don't hold up well in court. Hard evidence is what you need to set the record straight.
Get in contact today with the professionals to install the best call recording for you. Find out for yourself why call recording is an essential feature for your business.
