Agreement with Simetric for Native Mobile Recording
We surveyed a sample of SMBs across the US with questions related to SMB call recording, and found some rather revealing results. After analysing the survey, it became clear that many businesses who could benefit from call recording do not use it, and often they have chosen not to because of concerns that only apply to legacy call recording solutions who rely on hardware. The survey results indicated a large target market for call recording that is yet to be tapped. Based on the results of the survey, this is where we think telcos are missing a trick.
Previous research from Harris Interactive indicates the importance of customer service – up to 60% of customers would prefer to pay more for better customer experience, and most significantly, 86% of customers left a company because of a bad experience. These statistics prove that providing excellent customer service is still high priority for all companies and, as call recording is widely used for quality assurance purposes, these statistics also demonstrate the importance of taking measures such as call recording to improve customer experience.
Yet the results of our survey demonstrate that, although 93% of SMBs conduct business over the telephone, a staggering 81% do not use call recording solutions from telcos for their business. When asked why, the survey (in which it was possible to select multiple answers to the question) found that 41% worried it would not be useful, which indicates a lack of education or efficient product marketing by telcos. Majority at 43% said cost was a factor. A further 39% worried about losing time to maintenance, and 35% were concerned about the security of call recording. A staggering 84% were concerned about all of the above.
However, 90% of those who don’t use call recording have concerns that actually only apply to legacy call recording solutions. Dubber has transformed call recording and communications capture to a cloud based platform, thereby eliminating the problems that relate to traditional call recording solution. These concerns are over security, implementation costs, usefulness and management.
The survey also revealed industry insights into what companies would use call recording for, and therefore provides interesting insight for telcos into the market for additional call recording functions. The survey, where it was again possible to select multiple answers to the question, found that the majority (58%) of SMBs indicated they would use call recording to improve their business’ customer service, whilst 43% would use it for dispute resolution, and the same again would use it for staff training. Interestingly, of the 43% who would use call recording for dispute resolution, 44% would be interested in smart search as an additional feature. Smart search features allow users to conduct advanced searches of their captured conversations and locate calls by various metrics that include date, location and keywords. They are a valuable tool for dispute resolution, as this relies on efficiently locating the correct information. For a survey that provided no additional information about call recording additional features, this percentage is high and demonstrates a significant target market. With some education on the benefits, this number could only increase.
Additionally, of those who would use call recording to improve their customer service, 28% would be interested in voice analytics as an additional function, which essentially act as a Shazam for human emotion. Voice analytics tools would serve a significant purpose in customer service, by providing insight into customer communications. Support and sales teams using voice analytics therefore gain an advantage in the provision of good customer service. Again, this is an encouraging start point for a target market, and will only increase as the true value of voice analytics becomes better understood by clients.
The results of the survey show that there is a large and untapped target market for call recording, with over 22.5 million SMBs in the US frequently conducting business over the phone, but not using a call recording service. The survey also demonstrates that this shocking number is in fact a result of concerns that only relate to legacy call recording solutions. As we have seen, over 22.5 million SMBs in the US are not currently using call recording, even though it could improve their productivity and increase their revenue. With Dubber, these SMBs have access for the first time to a call recording solution that has unlimited scalability, high security, rapid deployment, no upfront costs and increased relevance and functionality for everyone. Call recording is therefore an opportunity for a brand new client base for telcos: with a large target market and innovative new technology to offer them. Survey says… it’s a no-brainer.
MyNetFone confirms agreement to enable call recording
Since the first mobile generation was released in 1982, a new generation of mobile has followed approximately every decade, the most recent being 4G in 2012. As soon as the dust settled on the release of 4G however, talk became focussed on the next generation. Only 3 years later, 5G is among the hottest topics in the industry. With Telstra recently completing successful trials in Australia, expectations for the capabilities of 5G are high. Set to become available to the public in 2020, the potential of 5G is drawing closer – and it is not just telcos who are excited.
The Possibilities
The 5G upgrade will be achieved in one of two ways: either as a complete redesign of the radio spectrum that previous generations have built on, or as a more simple extension of the current 4G technology. 5G is aiming to improve not just speed, but capacity and latency as well – allowing users to experience browsing with less delay and unlimited connections. This crucial difference will ensure that 5G speeds are not just a slight upgrade, but light years ahead of the current technology.
Recent testing by Telstra shows 5G is capable of speeds greater than 20 Gbps, as well as a latency that is up to half of that of 4G networks. Dr Magnus Ewerbring, Ericsson’s chief technology officer in Asia Pacific and a partner of Telstra, said of the tests: “these early 5G trials will help drive the global standards that will ultimately cover 5G.” Hypothetically, these speeds would be fast enough to download 600 movies a minute, or the entire 6 seasons of Game of Thrones in less than 20 seconds.
These tests seemingly indicate that 5G will bring vastly improved speed, latency and capacity, as well as assisting the growth of the Internet of Things from present day figures of 6.4 billion connected devices, to a projected 21 billion by 2020. Use of the IoT is on the rise, as a number of companies have begun to experiment with its potential. Coca Cola for example, currently use microchips to track their bottles, and Amazon have introduced ‘Dash Buttons’ – which allow users to restock their favourite household products, such as Andrex and Ariel, at the touch of a button. The true potential however, is yet to be tapped. Ultimately, 5G could revolutionise the industry, bringing not only fast and highly accessible cellular browsing, but also bringing the full functionality of the IoT into our everyday lives. Ultimately, 5G will aid the creation of a digital society and economy that could connect limitless numbers of devices through one network.
For telcos, 5G represents a future revenue channel with abundant possibilities. Recently, smartphone users have been taking advantage of improved wifi capabilities, which has decreased data usage and resulted in some lost revenue for telcos. 5G represents a way to interest smartphone users in cellular browsing once more, and hence replace this lost revenue. However, the rise of the Internet of Things could result in a massively compressed telco infrastructure, as all industry sectors join together. For telcos and other companies in the technology sector, this makes staying ahead of the curve more important than ever… Cue a host of organisations throwing their hat into the ring.
So what’s the downside?
It is not just the telecoms industry who are excited by 5G, but various others who could capitalise from it as well. The result is numerous industries wanting a slice of the action, and so 5G must now fulfil multiple agendas and requirements. Media companies will want prioritised bandwidth, so that their movies can be streamed in higher resolutions. Gaming companies will expect low latency for optimum player experience. Technology companies such as Apple and Samsung are perhaps the biggest investors: Smartphones are an obvious motive, but they are also keen to involve themselves in the IoT, which is tipped to become their next big source of revenue. The development of 5G will therefore be a product of the involvement of various industries. It could be a case of too many cooks spoil the broth, or it could in fact signify the beginning of the next generation of telecommunications technology – a compressed infrastructure that joins together media companies, technology firms, transport organisations and more.
5G therefore represents the chance for telcos, governments and technology companies to unify and create new world standards of living in a digital age. Exciting advancements such as self-driving cars, remote-controlled surgery and self-ordering fridges are all possible with its release. It represents a time of growth for many companies: telecoms have the opportunity to reverse their declining revenue and rejuvenate the industry, whilst technology companies have the chance to broaden their field. A technology revolution is ahead, and the potential is exciting for companies from all industries.
However, as the infrastructure compresses, telecommunications companies invest in the IoT and technology companies begin to offer their own communications options (such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger), companies must adapt to the shifting market to stay afloat. The fate of companies such as Dell and HP, who struggled to keep up with advances in IT after the rise of cloud computing, demonstrates the necessity for companies to keep up with the technological revolution that 5G represents. Telcos, technology firms, media companies, automotive organisations and many more, all have the opportunity to profit from 5G and the IoT, as long as they are able to convert to a concentrated and interconnected digital economy. The race to 5G is officially on, and no one wants to be last.
AGM Notice of Meeting
Since the game-changing release of the first generation iPhone back in 2007, the annual reveal of the newest model is an event that has gathered a following that is borderline fanatical. Since then, Apple has continued to dominate the smartphone industry, raking in a staggering 94% of smartphone industry profits, and their popularity shows little sign of slowing down. In fact today, 395 iPhones are sold in the world every minute. The release of the iPhone 7 was as eagerly awaited as ever, however its reception has already been mixed. A poll from Fortune found that fewer people than ever are actually interested in purchasing the new iPhone. The decision to eliminate the headphone jack has proved controversial, and various techies have claimed it is too similar to the previous generation. Among the displeased are telcos. One particular new feature of the iPhone 7 and iOS 10 could potentially cause trouble for the telecommunications industry.
With the increasing popularity of online communications, VoIP services are constantly growing in demand. WhatsApp recently passed the milestone of 100 million voice calls per day, and Skype now has over 300 million monthly users. The transition away from traditional methods of communication is sure to spell trouble in the future for telcos: and this trouble moves ever-closer upon the release of the iPhone 7. A new feature allows users to answer VoIP calls from the lock screen – a feature that was previously reserved for voice calls only.
Now that Apple has increased the accessibility of VoIP calls for those who invest in the new iPhone, the opportunity for VoIP growth will only increase if this feature is adopted in future evolutions of smartphones. For telcos, an increased popularity of VoIP calls will cause a decrease in their customer usage of voice call minutes. Ultimately, this could drastically affect telco revenues, as customers who make use of this new VoIP accessibility will largely only pay for their used data. This could drastically reduce profits because voice calls are currently responsible for approximately 80% of telco revenue.
The iPhone 7 has also created another problem for telcos. The iPhone 7 has been upgraded to be capable of “lightning fast” speeds, with an LTE-A of up to 450 mbps. The problem is, there are actually very few telcos in the world who can support such speeds. This could create the problem that either iPhone 7 users will be displeased with their telco because they are unable to take advantage of the faster speeds, or telcos will need to work towards expensive upgrading. Either way, the higher speeds of the iPhone 7 could put telcos under pressure, even though they’ve already invested billions of dollars upgrading their networks to provide 4G.
The silver lining
With Apple declaring the latest iPhone as more expensive than its predecessors, telcos can cash in and offer more expensive contracts. Several UK telcos have already announced their pricing options, and EE, Vodafone and O2 have confirmed their higher price plans, forcing consumers to bear the brunt.
Various telecoms have previously voiced their displeasure with VoIP apps, stating that they are in breach of licensing conditions that telecoms themselves have to abide by. With the release of the new iPhone 7 and iOS 10, increased accessibility of VoIP calls is certain to cause further problems for telecoms worldwide.
What’s the solution?
The future success of telecoms may soon depend on their ability to adapt to the shift away from traditional communications, and alter their businesses to fit the unpredictable and ever-changing market. Accepting the increased use of internet based communications, and creating price plans for customers that offer fewer minutes and increased data, is perhaps a logical start point.
Additionally, by deploying new and disruptive services such as Dubber’s Playback, telcos can tap into brand new revenue streams to compensate for the loss of revenue in call minutes. They can even do this whilst maintaining attractive price plans, instead of irritating customers by hiking up the prices of subscriptions and bundles as they have done previously, year after year. Ultimately, innovative and agile service providers will catch the worm.
APIs began their significant rise in popularity with the launch of Salesforce’s Web API. Soon multiple large corporations were launching APIs, including ebay, Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services. The increase in popularity continued its exponential growth, and now Web APIs can be found everywhere. Communications companies are amongst the many sectors finding interesting uses for launching or using open APIs. Often, a voice and call recording API is used to improve communications, and finding the most cost-effective, scalable and secure solutions for users.
For example Dubber’s call recording solution has been constructed around an open API, allowing companies to alter the product to fit to their specific requirements. By using the Dubber open API, companies can continue building and designing the call recording solution to fit their desired functionality, brand identity, and business plan. Building requirements into our pre-existing product enables companies to save time, money and other resources. For example, Uber use the Google Maps API on their app, rather than spending superfluous time and money creating their own.
Call recording APIs similar to Dubber’s RESTful API have endless possible use cases. They present call recording as a service that can be adapted and progressed to meet the individual needs of users. Here, we list 5 innovative use cases for an open voice and call recording API.
- Telcos: Telecommunications service providers around the world have already chosen Dubber’s call recording software, and are currently reaping the benefits of our native cloud based solution. For service providers, an open voice and call recording API can be used to integrate our call recording product into their existing service, allowing them to deploy our service as part of a bundle that includes their other communications software. They are also able to benefit from our revolutionary service whilst maintaining their own brand identity.
- End user businesses: An article by Forbes writes that the chances of selling a product to an existing customer is between 60-70%, whilst the probability of selling a product to a new customer is just 5-20%, thus highlighting the importance of looking after and retaining your current customers. An infographic by Provide Support Blog suggests that 56-70% of customers will return to your service if you resolve their complaint. Good customer service and speedy dispute resolution are therefore essential to the success of a business. Call recording can help with training, dispute resolution, quality assurance and more, ultimately improving a company’s customer service. Going further, a voice and call recording API can aid integration into company CRMs, enabling customer service departments to attach recorded calls to customer data, helping to improve customer service and dispute resolution strategies over time by gaining a clear snapshot of results through detailed customer reports.
- Aiding employees with disabilities such as Autism: According to a guide written by Autism Speaks, 1 in 5 Americans have a disability. In business, the guide quotes from a national survey of consumer attitudes that 87% of Americans would prefer to give their business to companies who hire employees with disabilities. In fact, it has been found that employees with disabilities are just as productive as their peers, and have attendances that are equal to or higher. Autistic employees are one example: they make excellent employees and contributions to a company, but sometimes become stressed by the social aspects of a workplace. A service such as Dubber’s Sentiment can aid companies in hiring employees with Autism. Employees would be able to work from home or in an environment they are comfortable in, and take part in conferences and meetings via VoIP services. Sentiment could then analyze their mood, by identifying the emotional responses of the speaker through examining tone of voice, speed of speech and stress levels. Like a Shazam for human emotion. Sentiment could be operated during VoIP communications to help employers monitor the emotional responses of their employees, and ensure they are happy and comfortable.
- Reactive Keywords for call centres: Using call recording to maximise the quality of customer service and ensure returning customers has never been easier than with call recording. Using an intelligent and open voice and call recording API, call centres can track keywords or phrases, and organise customer communications. For example, using Dubber’s Zoe keywords could be implemented into existing systems using Dubber’s RESTful API, aiding customer service by creating specific reactions for keywords. For instance, the phrase “I want to speak to your manager” could reactively trigger an email to the manager alerting them, or the word “complaint”, could reactively trigger a notification to the complaints department allowing them to take immediate action.
- Risk protection audit for Banks: Banks are subject to comprehensive internal audits that play crucial roles in the ongoing maintenance and assessment of their internal processes, control and management. Using a voice and call recording API and intelligent search functions could aid this process. By highlighting and tagging certain words or phrases and creating smart transcription, automatic responses in internal inspections could be generated, which would significantly speed up the audit process.
BroadSoft provides Unified Communications and Collaboration services to operators all over the world. Put simply, BroadWorks helps operators to provide unified communications services needed by enterprise customers globally. The call recording protocol used by BroadWorks has been integrated into the very core of Dubber, allowing us to work together in perfect harmony. Without being too technical, here we describe how this partnership benefits the call recording services Dubber can provide to our users.
BroadWorks embraced a new global call recording standard when they created their SIPREC interface. The interface essentially provides a link between the service provider’s telephony environment and the recording platform, allowing companies who provide call recording solutions access to users’ conversations. If the user decides to record their calls, this interface enables them to utilise call recording software. It is the SIPREC protocol that forms the basis of Dubber’s construction. Our call recording solution has been designed to interface with the SIPREC platforms, enabling us to provide call recording to any platform that already deploys SIPREC. BroadSoft is the perfect partner for Dubber, helping our call recording solution to achieve new levels of functionality and service to our users. BroadSoft themselves have acknowledged the harmonious union as Dubber passed their rigorous interoperability tests to become accredited: “The Dubber platform and SaaS business model complement the BroadSoft technologies”.
This partnership developed further in May this year, when BroadSoft chose Dubber to be their official partner for Audio Call Recording as part of their fully managed service for Japanese telecoms, BroadCloud. This development is something Dubber has eagerly awaited, as it provides an exciting development for our growing global scope. We will soon provide our call recording solutions in association with BroadSoft’s managed service in Japan, improving our service in yet another region.
The BroadWorks motto is “simplify, accelerate, innovate”, and through our collaboration, that is exactly what Dubber has achieved for call recording services.
Simplify
Dubber’s partnership with BroadWorks simplifies call recording for our users by:
- Limiting your admin. The only administration needed to start using our recording services is a simple sign up to the BroadWorks interface
- Automatic call recording: Dubber captures calls through the SIPREC interface directly from the BroadWorks system
- Processing of data: all relevant metadata is efficiently processed, stored and presented through the Dubber Cloud Application
- No hardware headaches for end users or service providers
- No need for maintenance, upgrades or limited scalability or storage
Accelerate
Dubber’s partnership with BroadWorks accelerates call recording for our users by:
- Rapid deployment: the SIPREC link between BroadWorks carriers and Dubber speeds deployment of our call recording to users. Your service could be up and running in mere hours!
- Automatically provisioning Call Recording for BroadWorks users
- Limited administration and setup
- Hassle free testing: Dubber’s Lab operates as a call recording sandbox, allowing carriers to test our services by connecting BroadWorks lab systems to Dubber in a matter of minutes
Innovate
Dubber’s partnership with BroadWorks innovates call recording for our users by:
- Allowing unlimited scalability: Dubber’s connection to BroadWorks operates from a cloud platform, allowing elasticity of call recording services to users for the first time
- Creative ways of accessing the Big Voice Data: through the BroadWorks API allows association between Dubber users and their phone data
- Specially constructed high availability of every component of Dubber
- Meeting PCI-DSS compliance: all BroadWorks users can benefit from Dubber’s ability to help users meet PCI-DSS compliance through secure access to recordings and encryption technologies, download and sharing controls, complex password authentication, pause and resume functions during exchange of sensitive information, ability to tag recordings as ‘sensitive’, and finally DTMF masking and muting
- Global service: the partnership enables Dubber to deploy call recording worldwide: interconnect points are available to maintain a guaranteed level of quality between the service provider’s SIPREC enabled deployment and Dubber’s cloud infrastructure. New locations can be requested.
- Support for VoiP, IM and Video capture
The accreditation by BroadSoft has allowed Dubber to revolutionise BroadWorks call recording technology for service providers, by providing a service for end users that has never before been possible. As with everything we do, Dubber works to innovate our services in areas which have previously been stagnant for essentially decades. In pursuit of this challenge, we are always looking to partner with industry leaders such as BroadSoft, and through these relationships, bring improved service to both our end users and the clients of these industry leaders.
Laws and regulations put in place to protect consumers have been a large driving force behind recording communications between businesses and their customer. As remote communication overtakes face to face human interaction, it’s paramount to have procedures in place to ensure people are who they say they are at other the end of the line and also to make sure that the communication is safely recorded to resolve any incidents in future.
We’ve all come across the common line when you’re waiting to get through to a customer service agent: “This call maybe recorded for monitoring and training purposes.”. However some organisations may be recording calls to follow regulations, which you might not be aware of. Here’s are some key industries who are keeping their consumers safe through intelligent communications recording:
Contact Centres (Non-financial)
The most common use case for call recording regulations is seen in contact centres where customer service resolve an array of users’ issues. For training purposes and to resolve potential disputes, calls often get recorded at call centres. According to Ofcom’s (the UK’s communications regulator) guidance for recording calls in the UK, contact centres who look to monitor, record calls and communications are required to adhere to a combination of UK & EU legislation which includes but is not limited to:
- Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (“RIPA”).
- Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice)(Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000 (“LBP Regulations”).
- Data Protection Act 1998.
- Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations 1999.
- Human Rights Act 1998.
To summarise the legislation, a home or business user may record communications without permission of the correspondent as long as they do not share the data with a third party, where then they would need to have their consent.
Additionally through the aforementioned LBP Regulations. A business can monitor and record communications as long as they are for a series of laid out circumstances such as preventing or detecting crime or to measure quality. The purpose of most other legislation is to avoid misuse and abuse of recordings.
Financial Services
According to the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) a series of financial firms are bound by law to record and safely store their communications. These call recording regulations were put in place to “tackle market abuse by identifying and punishing those responsible”.
To begin with, only some financial services companies are required to adhere to call recording. For example retail finance advisors, mortgage brokers, insurance brokers and some others are not required to capture their communications. More stringent rules apply to firms which are in a highly influential position such as investment advisors and stock brokers.
The type of calls that need to be recorded are specifically outlined as ones which:
- conclude an agreement with any client or with another regulated firm on behalf of a client;
or
- are conducted with a professional client or eligible counterparty with a view to concluding an agreement.
Payment Card Industry (PCI Compliance)
On the back of an earlier initiative by VISA, in 2004, the major card companies aligned to form the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI DSS). On December 15th 2004, the PCI DSS 1.0 was released. Over the following years PCI DSS has evolved to not only provide greater security to the industry, but also to accommodate new technology advancements and is today the global data security standard for payment cards.
If your organisation is looking be PCI compliant then as part of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), you’ll be facing the issue of recording sensitive authentication data (SAD) when taking payments through the phone or other devices.
It is a violation of PCI DSS requirement 3.2 to store any SAD, including card validation codes and values, after authorisation – even if the data has been fully encrypted. It is therefore prohibited to use any form of digital audio recording (using formats such as wav, mp3 etc) to store CAV2, CVC2, CVV2 or CID codes after authorisation if that data can be queried; recognising that multiple tools exist that potentially could query a variety of digital recordings.
Dubber or similar services, could assist organisations to become PCI DSS compliant when it comes to recording their communication. Dubber does this in two ways:
- Dubber’s PCI integration technology with Automated Pause/Resume helps a customer to comply with the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This is accomplished by automatically muting and unmuting a recording when pre-defined system events are detected.
- The Dubber PCI Payment Node can easily implement PCI compliant payments using the new Dubber PCI Payment Node. During a call, a PCI compliance transaction is required and the process is triggered by agent. At that point the agent transfers call to the PCI Payment Node (hotkey or phone number) the Node scripts take over, requesting the relevant details (e.g. amount, card number etc). The captured payment details are sent automatically to the merchant for completion. Once the transaction is completed, the caller is connected back with the agent to complete the call.
If you’re looking to implement call recording and you’re not sure about the relevant compliance which you’ll need to adhere to, contact your industry authority for further information on specific regulations and legislations.
At Dubber we’re excited to announce a new partnership with a leading, UK based Computer Telephony provider, Mondago. Mondago specialise in providing unified communication solutions with a strong emphasis on CRM integration to manufacturers and providers of telephone systems.
Through Dubber and Mondago’s new partnership, Mondago’s flagship Go Integrator product is now able to provide as simple, automated pause and resume of calls being recorded, using Dubber’s cloud based service. A simple change in browser URL or PC client window can be used to automatically send a pause and resume command to the call recorder avoiding the need for the user to manually undertake this action using the handset keyboard. This feature is particularly useful for agents taking credit card type details over the phone.
“As Dubber has passed BroadSoft’s rigorous interoperability tests, we were able to quickly update our popular Go Integrator product to include this additional functionality. This means additional value-add to our customers, with minimal effort.” Rob Cox – Commercial Director at Mondago
“We’re excited to be integrated with such an innovative product suite and adding value to a network of users through Mondago. This partnership demonstrates the extent which cloud telephony is evolving and growing as we know it.” James Slaney – Global Manager at Dubber
For more information about this partnership, or if you’d like to find out how you can benefit from these services, just drop us a note through this form.