Unless it is a legal obligation in their industry, SMEs are often reluctant to record customer calls. They may hesitate for financial reasons, because they doubt that they will be useful or because they are unsure whether doing so is legal.
Yet, recording calls and analysing them is a goldmine of information which will increase customer satisfaction and profits.
Customer service efficiency
If you are looking at improving the efficiency of your contact centre, call recordings are invaluable. They will allow you to identify problems such as insufficient communication skills, lack of authority to make decisions or need for training, and enable you to address them efficiently.
It will also give you real examples of ‘challenging’ times with customers that trainers can use to demonstrate how they should be handled.
Last, recordings enable you to review your processes and scripts to develop best practices in your company.
Telemarketing performance
The success of a telemarketing operation largely depends on the quality of the script and agents’ communication skills. It will therefore be no surprise that recording calls should be so essential.
They will show whether there are routes in a customer’s journey that ‘block’ the flow of the conversation and could be improved by redesigning specific parts of the script. They will also be an excellent way to help agents develop their communication skills.
Resolving conflict
Human memory is unreliable. When conflict arises, it may well be that the company is at fault, but, more often, it will be that customers have genuinely forgotten the terms they agreed to in a previous conversation. Being able to replay a conversation will end all arguments and will help resolve a conflict positively and promptly.
How to use call recordings efficiently
To be able to extract relevant information without having to listen to hundreds of hours of call recordings – which would be impossible – a tagging tool is essential. Tagging involves signposting calls at pre-determined, important points of the conversation. They can be triggered when certain parts of a script are used for example, or on certain words, depending on the kind of information you are trying to collect. Listening to recordings is quick then, you just choose the key fragments you want to hear.
As to the legality of it, make sure that you consult the legislation for your industry. You must, in any case, inform your customers that their call will be recorded.
