Customer Experience 
When we think of call center recordings, we associate them with the stock message of “for quality and training purposes.” We’re not wrong to do that, as that’s the most common use case for business call recording.
However, there are plenty more — often more value-adding — uses of call recording. And that’s exactly what we’re going to introduce in this guide.
But before we get into the technical and unexpected, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to call center recordings.
What Is Call Center Recording?
Call center recording software records either/both outbound and inbound calls in business environments. When calls are initiated, your VoIP or call center technology starts recording automatically or gets triggered by a call center agent.
Typically, a message gets played to the caller. This might happen when the call gets connected or during interactive voice response (IVR) selection for incoming calls. The recording ends either when an agent decides to stop recording manually or at the end of the call if you’ve chosen to record all calls in their entirety.
Once recorded and processed (often immediately with cloud contact centers), call recordings are stored in an online repository ready for review at any time.
How long do call centers keep recordings?
Call centers store call recordings for different periods of time based on a number of things:
- Compliance with industry regulations
- Immediate quality assurance needs
- Length of customer contracts
- Cost of continuous storage
- Data privacy regulations
- Dispute resolution cases
The storage of call recordings has been a contentious topic among call center managers and financial stakeholders. Back in the days of on-premises call centers, recordings were stored on servers or had to be downloaded locally. This meant extra costs and time spent transferring recordings on a regular basis.
Today, the modern contact center is cloud-based and can handle more calls than local servers. Most contact center software has a standard offering of six months of free cloud storage with the option to download or renew storage.
How to Inform Callers That They Are Being Recorded
You can record customer service calls either by initiating a manual start, like for PCI compliance when taking payments, or by recording all calls. But before you go ahead and start recording all your calls, be aware that you must always inform customers that the call is being recorded for both ethical and legal considerations.
This starts with call recording laws. Some states have a one-party consent law, which means you’re clear as long as one party knows and consents to the call recording. Other states, however, have two-party consent laws that require all parties to be informed and agree to a call recording, noting a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Two-party consent states for call recordings include:
- California
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Illinois
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Washington
It’s good to know your state laws, but as a general practice, standard ethical and legal advice will require you to inform all parties about the audio recording. Include a friendly disclaimer at the beginning of your scripts, and many customers won’t even notice.
Call recording script example
Manual recording
Agent: “Before we proceed, I’d like to let you know that this call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes. Is that okay with you?”
(If the caller agrees, proceed. If not, handle the situation according to company policy.)
Caller: “Yes, that’s fine.”
(If the answer is “No,” follow company protocol for handling unrecorded calls.)
Automatic recording
“Thank you for calling [Company Name]. Please note that this call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes. To proceed, please hold for the next available agent. If you do not wish to have your call recorded, please let the agent know once connected. Thank you.”
8 Nonstandard Uses of Call Center Recordings
We all know that you can use call recordings for “monitoring and training purposes.” We’ve heard this message time and again. But there’s more to call recording, especially in call centers, that can uncover all sorts of company insights and add value in ways you never expected.
Consider these eight call recording use cases when thinking about your return on investment from call center recordings.
- Review calls for marketing and sales
- Gauge customer sentiment
- Identify resolution triggers
- Uncover competitive insights
- Highlight self-service opportunities
- Ensure call quality
- Emphasize “quality” in onboarding
- Gather product feedback
1. Review calls for marketing and sales
When customers call in with issues about your product or company, they give you access to raw, unedited, and unprompted details about their experience with you. During both sales and customer service calls, you can uncover a wealth of information that feeds into marketing and sales materials and processes.
When reviewing calls, look out for:
- Your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points
- The competitors your customers are considering
- Any customer objections, including price, product functionality, or contract terms
- Customer opinions about your brand or product
You’ll be amazed how freely customers volunteer this type of information. Think about how easy it is for them to say, “When we were with Microsoft, we could do XYZ” or “I heard ACME is rolling out this new feature; when is it coming to your company?”
With advanced call recording tools, you can set up keyphrase triggers. So if there’s a new feature, a specific pain point, or a monetary term you’re looking out for, configure the software to notify you every time it’s mentioned.
2. Gauge customer sentiment
How do you know what your customers really feel about you?
Sure, you’ve got key performance indicators like Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction. But what if you had the ability to measure their sentiment?
By giving scores to the tone and analyzing words used mid-call, call recording software with sentiment analysis highlights which customers enjoy interacting with you and which ones become easily frustrated.
You can then filter call recordings by scores lower than your benchmark or flag when negative words get used. From there, you can train your contact center agents on how to handle situations better and reach out to those customers who need to hear from senior staff.
3. Identify resolution triggers
As part of the sentiment analysis tool, you can also configure key phrases to trigger specific outcomes. For example, you can turn “My order hasn’t arrived” into a positive conversation by understanding what calms customers down and moves the call towards a mutually beneficial ending.
This could be as simple as “Here’s what we’re going to do” or “I understand your query.” But it could also be more complex. Customers may not respond to agents saying that they understand when the agent is not on the receiving end of the issue.
Phrases like the ones below may be more effective at winning the customer over.
- “I’m escalating this to our [specialist/manager] who will assist you shortly.”
- “Let me walk you through the steps to resolve this.”
Or, they might only be used when the issue is genuinely resolved and a customer is happy to end the call.
But phrases like the following may indicate that your customers’ focus is purely on resolution rather than call experience.
- “I’d like to offer you [a replacement/refund/discount] to resolve this.”
- “We’ve processed your request, and you should see the results by [timeframe].”
Use your call center recordings to uncover key phrases that guide calls to a faster first call resolution.
4. Uncover competitor insights
You can track key phrases of any description. So if you’re a broadband provider in the US, you might want to know when customers mention other providers like Spectrum and Comcast. Be it positive or negative, it’s great to have competitor intelligence on your side. You can use it to influence sales and reinforce marketing materials.
Think how powerful your sales battle cards and website comparison pages could be if you have first-hand information about competitors. You could take their marketing claims and relate them to real-world experience from genuine customers.
All you need to do is set up an alert for the competitors of your choosing. When mentioned, you’ll get an email with the call recording and transcript to sift through. What’s more, the best call recording software will even timestamp when your competitors are mentioned, lessening the leg work for you.
5. Highlight self-service opportunities
If you’ve got repeat callers asking the same questions, consider moving those questions to self-service. This might be done by redirecting callers to an FAQ portal or chatbot, but it could also be done by answering these queries upfront on your IVR system.
For example, if you discover that 15% of inbound calls are to inquire about your returns policy, you could play an automated message before you offer your options of “1 for support” and “2 for returns.” Doing this could dramatically reduce the number of repeat calls for this query.
This way, you free up agents for more pressing concerns and queries that need genuine human interaction.
6. Ensure call quality
Rather than simply checking script adherence, the most common use case for call center recordings, quality assurance focuses on ensuring agents provide the quality you expect your customers to receive.
Call center quality assurance refers to the practices and processes used to evaluate and improve the quality of customer service interactions in a call center environment. By maintaining standards and following set guidelines for how you treat all customers and handle tricky customers, you set the bar for other call center agents and gain a competitive edge over rival businesses.
7. Emphasize “quality” in onboarding
When new agents join your company, what does the training process look like?
For many, it’s straight to learning scripts, sitting through an hour-long product intro, and buddying up with a senior agent to listen in. But how much more effective would it be if you had a bank of poor, good, and great calls for new agents to listen to?
They’d learn:
- Which phrases work well to calm customers down
- Trigger phrases for conflict resolution
- Negative words that trigger bad responses
- How to respond to irate customers
- The right time to pause and the right time to speak
- How correcting a customer can cause friction
By listening to real customer calls, new hires will get a sense of what it’s like on the frontline. This is far more productive than sitting idle and listening to run-rate calls just in case there’s an interesting call with something they might learn.
Likewise, filtering these calls is simple and fast. With every call getting scored automatically, you can easily sort the good, great, and bad ready for use in call center training.
8. Gather product feedback
If your product isn’t working the way you intended, you need to know about it. While asking customers to participate in paid surveys is one tactic, there’s no better feedback than in-the-moment support queries.
Even when the product is working fine and the incident is down to user error, you can take this information and apply it to create a better user experience.
For example, if Jean calls in to report that her new washer isn’t working, it may simply be that she chose the wrong setting. However, for future customer use — and to ease the burden on customer support teams — you could take Jean’s feedback and make the settings easier to identify.
Of course, it could be the case that your product simply fails to work on a certain setting. Whatever the feedback, filter it into your next product sprint, feature rollout, or change request.
Nextiva: Start Recording Your Calls With the Best on the Market
When you implement call recording, you open the door to many use cases aside from basic training and monitoring. Instead of viewing call recording as a loss maker that’s only used once in a while, opt for an integrated call recording platform with advanced contact center features.
Nextiva provides a best-in-class omnichannel contact center that supports thousands of businesses like yours.
“Feedback from both agents and staff has been overwhelmingly positive. The team finds the tool comfortable to use, with next steps to deepen the knowledge transfer to empower Emergia with greater operational management of the platform.”
~Manuela Quintero
With Nextiva, you benefit from:
- Advanced features: Have access to sentiment analysis, keyword triggers, and auto-grading, to name but a few.
- Effortless setup: Integrate with your existing system, auto-record calls, and organize the calls easily.
- Flexible options: Choose between recording all calls, specific calls, conferences, or only certain types of calls.
- Security and compliance: Store data securely, manage access and consent, and redact sensitive information to comply with industry and federal regulations and best practices.
- Powerful, accurate insights: Transcribe calls, connect with analytics tools, and understand customer sentiment and agent performance transparently like never before.
- Cost-effectiveness: Pay no extra fees, since call recording is a built-in feature of Nextiva’s VoIP system.
Ready to start recording your calls?
Top AI-Powered Contact Center Solution
Transform your customer interactions with a contact center platform that saves you time and money, reduces agent and supervisor stress, and flexibly adapts to fit your needs.
