The benefits of call recording are now available on demand. Once only provided as an always-on service deployed for regulatory compliance or contact centres, now businesses can choose from a range of call recording plans and capture their calls at the touch of a button.

2018 is set to be a year of digital transformation, when organisations take their first steps into the cloud and begin to reap the benefits. Looking to the future of communication, phone calls will retain their value and advances in speech intelligence technology will allow businesses to unlock their priceless data.

How to record your calls

A move to the cloud means a move away from being tied down: to investment, to storage plans, to bulky equipment. Cloud call recording as a service allows organisations of any size to capture their conversations at an affordable cost. With no on-premise equipment required, Dubber’s call recording can not only be deployed rapidly, but can also be installed without the need for CapEx.

Always on

Always on records all calls, directly from the network. Perfect for regulatory compliance, or for large businesses that want to record calls for training purposes. Team hierarchies can be established, making calls accessible only to admins, supervisors, and the individual users who made the calls.

On demand

On-demand recording is a user-initiated service that only records selected calls. The user can decide to record a conversation before or during a call using a function on their desktop or handset. Recorded calls are stored in the same way as other team members and have a hierarchy of access permissions. Each individual user only has access to their own calls, while supervisor and admin permissions grant access to the calls of an entire team.

Playback

Specially designed for individuals, Playback gives users the gift of hindsight with the option to save a record of their calls for up to three days after the call has been made. They can then access them through their own private dashboard using a web, mobile, or deskphone app.

Zoe

Zoe transforms everyday phone calls into valuable data assets for both businesses and individuals. A comprehensive suite of speech intelligence modules, Zoe lets users unlock the insights held within the data of voice calls through its key features: Smart Search, Keywords (coming soon), and Sentiment (coming soon). Businesses can examine their customer communications to increase their understanding of their interactions and discover areas of potential improvement.

Launching at RoutIT Vision this month, HIP Recorder is the latest offering from Netherlands wholesale infrastructure and cloud services provider RoutIT – and it’s powered by Dubber. At an event that was buzzing with interest in the new developments in call recording for individuals and speech intelligence, HIP Recorder is an exciting new product.

This partnership with RoutIT will make Dubber’s cloud call recording as a service available to all RoutIT customers – the HIP Recorder is an affordable option that allows users to retrieve recordings of their calls for up to three days after the call has been made.

RoutIT was founded in 2000 and strives to develop and deliver the most innovative internet, cloud, connectivity and communication solutions. RoutIT works closely with its customers with a personalised approach to providing communication solutions. This new product matches the tailored ideology of RoutIT by providing a unique offering that allows individual users to gain access to the benefits of call recording.

HIP Recorder users can also benefit from the speech intelligence of Zoe – giving them the potential to transform everyday phone calls into valuable data assets. Zoe goes above and beyond traditional call recording to unlock the information held within voice calls – allowing users to search their call archive and automate processes triggered by keywords spoken on calls.

Dubber will be at RoutIT Vision on September 26th and 27th 2017 demonstrating the benefits of call recording for individuals and the endless potential of Zoe. Come and say hello if you are attending!

Unstructured data enables organisations to gain insight into their working practices. The term unstructured data describes information that does not have a set format, unlike its structured counterpart that is made of set data fields such as inventories and orders. Examples of unstructured data include images, and video and audio recordings.

Big Data and its analysis has proven just how vital information is to businesses. Insight into both consumers and the working practices of the organisations themselves can be a valuable asset. With global data estimated to reach over 160 zettabytes (that’s 160 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes) by 2025, learning how to harness this information can set businesses apart from their competitors. These huge amounts of data allow analysts to understand a company’s true potential and more accurately predict growth and risks.

Unstructured data is often linked to structured data to make it easier to process. For example, a headshot of a staff member would be associated with structured data relating to the length of their employment and salary. This allows data to be visualised in a way that can be utilised to gain insights that were previously unimaginable. Data analysis can predict sales results, allow for more accurately targeted marketing campaigns and open up business and product development opportunities.

80% of data is unstructured, and is growing at a far higher rate than that of structured data (see graph below). Unstructured data often requires special tools to sort, search, visualise, and analyse. Unstructured data frequently holds much more information than structured data, and the information is often much more valuable. Due to the difficulties that can arise when accessing unstructured data, an organisation’s systems may need a way to read the data before it can be processed, and extra storage may be required for this more complex data. Companies with on-premise storage may be restricted by the amount of data they can store, and will be forced to make difficult decisions about the information they choose to keep.

Source: IDC

The power of the cloud

Data analysis can be overwhelming and it can be difficult for organisations to understand how to make the most of their data – especially large amounts of unstructured data. With a data management strategy, businesses can ensure they keep up with their competitors and capitalise on the wealth of information held in their data stores.

The analysis of unstructured data can be extremely time-consuming, with specialist data scientists often employed to cleanse and prepare the data before analysis. Employing expensive data scientists is an unlikely step for all but the largest enterprises to take but, with developments in artificial intelligence (AI), unstructured data can now be automatically analysed. These technological advancements allow even small businesses to profit from their valuable stores of data.

Investing in expensive hardware for data storage and processing isn’t practical for the majority of businesses, however, utilising the infrastructure of the cloud can allow organisations to store and process their data without restrictions or the need for CapEx. With dramatically reduced costs, and the scalability to accommodate large amounts of data, companies have the opportunity to experiment with analysis to grow their knowledge and skills.

Introducing Zoe

Automated analysis is now possible with AI becoming an everyday reality. Software can process huge amounts of unstructured data including images, audio and video, and not only report findings but learn as it analyses. AI is an important component in Big Data analysis, with its capabilities expanding to now include emotion recognition.

These new capabilities are exemplified by Zoe, Dubber’s suite of intelligence modules. Specialising in the analysis of voice data, Zoe’s ability to process this kind of unstructured data opens up another channel in the Big Data conversation: Big Voice. Accessing the data in consumer calls allows organisations to truly listen to their customers.

Zoe’s technology is under constant development. Its Smart Search feature is available now, allowing users to search their recorded calls using a variety of criteria from the date and location of the call to specific words that were used during a conversation. Due to be released at the end of 2017 are two more modules: Keywords and Sentiment. Keywords tags specific words and phrases and can be configured to trigger actions when these are spoken through Dubber’s open API. Sentiment identifies the emotions of the participants of a call to create a detailed understanding of their mood throughout a conversation.

Zoe’s analysis of voice opens up the wealth of insight that can be gained from this unstructured data, and allows businesses of all sizes to take advantage of the cloud and experiment with data analysis. Powered by the cloud, the processing potential is limitless.

Remote working is slowly challenging the norm of 9-5. Flexibility in working practice is replacing allocated desks and designated start and finish times, while performance is measured by results and is moving away from the culture of presenteeism. According to a report by Gallup, 43% of employed Americans said they have worked remotely at some point over the last year, with 20% working from home full-time. The report suggests that advances in technology mean that workers no longer need to be confined to set office hours and locations in order to do their job effectively. With this new approach to work now expected by millennials (see chart below), businesses need to be prepared to adapt to a flexible workforce.

Source: Forbes

The benefits of employing remote workers…

As employers begin to embrace different ways of working, they are finding they can reduce their property costs with fewer workers on the premises. Their employees also benefit from advantages that go beyond the simple convenience of flexibility in their work. Employees who work remotely are less stressed and much happier as they can decide how they prefer to work and have greater control of their work/life balance. They can choose the working environment that best suits them, whether that be a café with a plug socket or the comfort of their bed. Release from the daily commute increases employee wellbeing, gives them more time in their day, saves them money, and also reduces their carbon footprint. A survey by Microsoft found the top ten benefits reported by remote workers were as follows:

Source: Sage

…and the challenges

Allowing employees to work remotely presents a challenge to managers and executives, who want to maintain a balance between staff wellbeing and productivity. Compliance is also a key consideration, especially within industries such as finance. Recording communications is essential to comply with regulations so organisations need to employ a solution that can capture conversations made outside the office. Implementing a unified communications (UC) solution, which amalgamates all communications into one interface, alongside call recording will ensure all conversations are captured – even when users are mobile. Remote contact centre workers that take customer payment card details over the phone need to ensure they are compliant with PCI DSS. This set of regulations states that no payment card details can be stored, so a call recording solution must feature measures to prevent this.

With remote working comes the risk of employees feeling disconnected from their work and the rest of their team. Key to remedying this potential sense of distance is encouraging continuous and proactive communication and enabling effective sharing of information between team members. This shouldn’t be confined to work-related subjects. Without the opportunity to run into a colleague in the corridor, or to chat while making tea, remote workers can miss out on the day-to-day conversations that make a team feel connected. However, with advances in social media and other communication technology, workers can still have these catch-ups over instant messages and see each other’s faces in video conferences.

Increased engagement between colleagues is an encouraging finding from Gallup’s report (see chart below), which found that employees who worked remotely three or four days a week were actually the most likely to report that they have a best friend at work.

Source: Gallup

How Dubber can help

UC solutions are facilitating a new more flexible way of working, and increasing productivity and collaboration among the businesses that use them. Dubber is designed to be integrated with UC platforms and provides an array of solutions for call recording and communication capture, for use anywhere and on any device. By capturing communications straight from the network, when a UC solution is implemented with mobility, all user communications can be recorded even while they are mobile.

Dubber’s deployment through Amazon Web Services not only ensures a flexible solution that can be scaled alongside UC solutions to suit businesses of all sizes, but that the calls are also encrypted for added security. Dubber has also partnered with Mondago to provide an automated pause and resume function that can be integrated with their call recording solution to ensure payment card information is not included in recorded calls.

The implementation of UC can bring a culture of productivity and collaboration. UC solutions facilitate modern ways of working and a more flexible way of life. Dubber’s partnerships with UC providers such as BroadSoft allow organisations to quickly and easily deploy call recording alongside a UC solution and ensure all of their employees stay compliant, anytime, anywhere.

The rise of Big Data has shown just how valuable information is to businesses today. Insight into consumers and their behaviour is showing companies how to improve their business practices in order to retain their existing customers and attract new ones. Voice data has previously been excluded from the Big Data conversation but technology is now able to interpret speech, enabling companies to mine their calls for valuable information. With customers continuing to pick up the phone for assistance, access to this data is an important breakthrough creating a new field of analytics: speech intelligence.

Speech intelligence was initially only affordable for larger enterprises that could invest the CapEx required to install proprietary solutions but the introduction of software as a service (SaaS) solutions, deployed through service providers, has democratised speech intelligence.

The advantages of speech intelligence

Speech intelligence software most commonly transcribes audio into text to enable searches, and can even go beyond the words themselves to identify the mood of the caller through tone of voice and speech patterns. The searches and automated processes that can be implemented through speech intelligence open up limitless potential for business development, particularly in customer service. By combining processing techniques used in Big Data with speech analytics, companies can uncover important insights into their customers.

Introducing Zoe

Zoe is a collection of speech intelligence modules that includes Smart Search, which will be followed by Keywords and Sentiment at the end of 2017. Zoe can analyse and evaluate recorded conversations to establish the emotion of the caller, and search calls for specific words, phrases, or characteristics. This functionality can be used to identify recurring issues and opportunities for business development, and can track trends in customer behaviour.

Zoe has democratised speech intelligence and made it accessible to small businesses, and even single users, with an affordable monthly subscription. Zoe is deployed through Dubber’s API, allowing it to be easily integrated with a variety of other applications. Through the API, users can create their own custom applications of the functionality to realise limitless use cases.

Smart Search

Smart Search allows users to search their recorded calls using a variety of metrics from date and location to specific words, phrases, or sentiment. Any calls can be searched, regardless of whether they were originally recorded with Dubber, so Smart Search can be implemented as a stand-alone service.

Keywords – due for release late 2017

Keywords enables users to track specific words and phrases across their captured communications and jump to the point in a call when the word or phrase was spoken. These words can be tagged to be automatically highlighted in future recordings and automate actions in other applications through Dubber’s open API – opening up limitless potential use cases.

Sentiment – due for release late 2017

Sentiment identifies the emotions of speakers through a recorded conversation by measuring speech characteristics such as tone of voice, speed of speech, pauses, interruptions, and certain phrases that express emotion. These indicators create a detailed understanding of a caller’s mood throughout the conversation and enable Sentiment to provide users with a report that assigns the call with a positive or negative score.

Integration

At the core of Dubber is an open API, which allows Zoe’s features to be managed through the Dubber portal, a custom portal, or directly through the API. Zoe’s deployment through Dubber’s open API allows it to integrate easily with other applications, such as CRM systems, enabling data to be automatically transferred to third party applications such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.

Zoe has democratised speech intelligence with its open API and availability as a subscription-based service. Where once only large enterprises would be able to invest in speech intelligence, businesses of any size can now benefit from the insight that Zoe can provide. Zoe’s deployment as native cloud SaaS makes it a flexible solution that can adapt to businesses of any size, without the need for any additional hardware or software installation. With calls stored in the cloud, they can be quickly and easily processed.

Previously excluded from the Big Data conversation, Zoe’s analysis of voice data opens up a world of insight that can be gained from the study of recorded calls. Now companies can truly listen to their customers.

VoIP calling has been steadily replacing traditional telephony due to its reliability and efficiency, achieved through its use of data connection instead of fixed lines. The chart below shows the reasons for moving to VoIP from landlines given by SMBs. The data connection that enables VoIP calls is quicker and cheaper as it takes advantage of the existing IP infrastructure of interconnected routers. Recording VoIP calls presents a challenge due to the difference in the way audio is transmitted in VoIP calls compared to traditional telephony. VoIP call recording requires data to be ‘sniffed’, which is a process of real-time monitoring of data flow through a computer network by a software program or a hardware device containing this sniffing software or firmware. Sniffers copy the data without altering it and can only intercept data from networks that their host computer is connected to.

Survey by Software Advice

Depending on your requirements for call recording, and how you intend to use the captured conversations, and your business telephony network (or lack thereof), the VoIP call recording solution that is right for you may vary.

What will you use your recorded calls for?

When deciding on the call recording solution that is best for you, it is important to consider how you will be using your recorded calls. If you are a journalist who records their phone interviews, you will need calls to be stored in a format that can be easily replayed, but you might not need to keep the calls for years after you have filed your copy. You might have a podcast and need to be able to access your calls as files that can be edited to form part of a finished episode. A solution such as Dubber’s Playback, designed for individuals, is an easy-to-use communication capture service that allows you to decide which of your calls are saved and allows you to download and share them as easy-to-edit audio files.

Financial institutions require their communication with customers to be recorded in order to stay compliant with the latest regulations. Call records are generally required to be stored for up to five years, so businesses will need to ensure the solution they choose has the flexibility and security needed to safely archive their conversations. A cloud-based solution, such as Dubber, has the scalability required to hold unlimited calls and is not restricted by the storage hardware limitations of legacy solutions. True cloud storage also has the added security of encryption and the redundancy that accompanies multiple storage locations, for added reassurance.

Businesses that require call recording for compliance will most often need call recording that is compatible with a unified communications (UC) solution. Modern working life spans multiple methods of communication and our mobile phones allow us to make traditional calls as well as VoIP calls, send text messages, and have conversations over instant messenger. To ensure that all of these communications are captured accurately, call recording must be able to integrate with UC solutions.

Larger businesses that have contact centres often use call recording in order to improve their customer service and business practices through analysing their captured conversations. A solution that offers speech intelligence, such as Dubber’s Zoe, will allows a business to search their calls and automate processes to make their business more efficient and gain a detailed insight into their customers. Recording with Dubber can also record conversations between extensions, ensuring recording continues if a call is transferred internally.

When considering VoIP recording options, it is important to plan for the future as well as the present. Choosing a flexible call recording solution that can adapt as your business grows and changes is vital. Expansion into different locations, sudden changes in call volume, and regulation reforms could affect your call recording needs so the solution you choose must offer you the reassurance that these eventualities can be accommodated.

With online interaction dominating the modern world, a phone call feels special. Phone calls are reserved for the important stuff – for the decision that needs to be made, for the question that we want answering urgently – we pick up the phone when we just need to get things done.

Listening in

We can see this idea reflected in how customers contact companies when they need assistance: research by eConsultancy found that a phone call was the most commonly chosen method of communication at 61%. When looking for online assistance, 71% of customers wanted help within 5 minutes or less (see chart below). The majority of customers looking to buy also choose to call a company rather than contacting them online. Both Google and xAd, two of the leading digital advertising networks, found that a click-to-call option on ads was highly successful – with 51-62% of users choosing this option.

Source: eConsultancy

On top of the immediacy offered by a phone call, there is science behind why verbal communication is so effective: hearing is the fastest sense, with sound taking only 10 milliseconds to reach the brain compared to 13-80 milliseconds for sight, according to researchers at MIT,

With customers 11 times more likely to complain over the phone than via the internet, according to research from Arizona State University, these phone calls are a valuable opportunity to turn a negative experience into an improved relationship. Customer interactions that take place over the phone create a much better opportunity for a meaningful connection. Your customer is right there, willing to speak to you, and you can answer any questions they might have immediately. Up-selling and cross-selling also comes much more naturally over the phone. Only a face-to-face conversation could possibly be better.

Reading between the lines

Written communication can be open to interpretation. It’s the very reason for the enduring magic of books, but it can result in misunderstandings in the corporate world of hurried emails. Without the indicators of tone and meaning, simple sentences can be misconstrued to drastic effect. When clarification is needed over the phone, you can get an answer immediately. Complex technical queries are always best discussed with a call as the instant feedback can alleviate confusion quickly, whereas a series of emails might only further complicate things.

With a phone call, you can hear the emotion of the speaker’s voice – their intonation and volume of speech can often say more than their words. Customer service agents can tell if a customer isn’t fully happy with the resolution of their complaint, while sales agents can get a better sense of how to entice a new client.

Measuring the success of phone calls

The importance of phone calls is clear, and because of this customer service agents who excel at building relationships with customers are more valuable than ever. However, contact centre workers can feel like they lack objectives and that their work can’t be measured. In order to provide customer service agents with reports on their success, a call intelligence solution such as Dubber’s Zoe can be utilised to conduct sentiment analysis of calls and measure the customer’s experience throughout the conversation. Not only does this give workers valuable feedback on their work and progress, their supervisors receive an insight into their interactions with customers and can use this information to improve their work practices and train new members of staff effectively.

The benefits of email and instant messaging are the paper trail that they leave behind. With a call recording solution, such as Dubber, that provides transcripts of your conversations, you can have all the benefits of phone calls with the reassurance that you can track and record your communications.

Hosted telephony has gained popularity and coverage recently, with its cloud base appealing to forward thinking enterprises and press alike. The chart below shows the growth of both managed and hosted systems, with on-premise PBX experiencing negative growth. However, research undertaken by communications analyst MZA has shown that most small businesses still use PBX rather than making the move to hosted telephony. There are four main factors to consider when choosing between the two solutions, which are outlined below.

Source: Synergy Research Group

Cost

Hosted telephony largely appeals to both small and large businesses due to the lack of CapEx required to implement the system. There is no hardware necessary, which reduces the storage space required as well as power costs associated with running servers. With on-premise PBX options there are also installation costs on top of hardware expenditure. Larger organisations will have greater CapEx, as costs only increase with the size of the hardware required.

However, monthly subscriptions for hosted telephony can work out more expensive over time, depending on the services and the size of the enterprise. Considerations need to be made regarding the features required by the business, as there may be extra costs that are not included in basic hosting packages. The chart below shows the top 7 reasons that SMBs look to change their system, with the results separated by their current solution, giving an idea of the considerations that should be made when deciding on a system.

Software Advice’s survey of SMBs and their phone systems

Time

As well as installation costs, the time required to implement an on-premise PBX solution is an inconvenience. Cloud solutions offer the advantage of rapid deployment, meaning installation costs are virtually eliminated by the DIY approach to implementation. When choosing a telephony option, installing a new infrastructure is a significant commitment. PBX solutions will need to be updated over time, and replacing hardware or enhancing features can take weeks to integrate. These changes can often lead to communications downtime that will need to be scheduled to reduce inconvenience as much as possible.

Hosted solutions can be implemented alongside existing communication systems. The most hardware that will be required is the phones themselves. Software updates are maintained by your cloud provider, meaning you stay constantly up to date.

Flexibility and scalability

The case for hosted telephony is certainly bolstered by the flexibility and scalability that it offers. Just as hosted telephony can grow alongside a business, it can also be scaled back. This can reduce monthly costs immediately, in contrast to large CapEx that will have already been paid in the case of PBX.

Security

With hosted telephony you have the added reassurance of reliable redundancy. Depending on the provider, you may not have immediate access to all of your data but you will have the guarantee that it will be stored securely with recovery solutions. The advantage of on-premise PBX systems is the immediate access they offer, but recovery measures are often so expensive that only larger enterprises are able to justify the cost of this level of security.

To decide which option is right for your business you need to consider not only pricing, but what your company needs from a telephony system. Looking to the future and anticipating how these needs might change as your company grows is just as important as the immediate considerations of cost and convenience.

With an evolving business culture that increasingly requires flexibility from workers, solutions have developed that enable businesses to stay on target even when employees are working remotely, from their own devices, and out of office hours. Unified communications (UC) solutions do just that: synchronising conversations across devices and allowing workers the flexibility they need to keep up. SMBs are now looking for UC solutions which were only available to large corporations a few years ago. We’ve surveyed 120 SMBs in the US and found some interesting results.

Investing in communication

Communication is an important part of any business, but with tighter travel budgets affecting SMBs more keenly (a recent study by Forbes found that 59% of SMBs surveyed were travelling for business less frequently than they had been at the beginning of 2008, with 37% saying that they were travelling much less frequently) developing adequate alternatives to face-to-face contact is crucial. Improving communications allow relationships to be maintained from a distance, removing the need to be constantly on the road but in a slow and precarious economy, contact with clients is vital to nurture relationships and retain business

The demand for a unified communications solution is increasing due to the productivity and cost reduction benefits associated. Our survey of 120 SMBs across the US showed that while only 11% said they had a UC solution in place, 73% of respondents said that they wanted a service that consolidated all of their communications into one platform, showing a huge opportunity for UC growth. Simplifying the ways employees talk to each other and external contacts brings with it increased efficiency and a feeling of interconnectivity that is vital in a small business.

With 84% of respondents stating that they use the telephone as a business tool either some or all of the day, it is clear that this is an important channel for their company communications. However, significant percentages of respondents also noted their use of instant messaging and conference calls: showing that while traditional voice calls remain important to businesses, communication is branching out to other channels. Especially when sharing data or imparting information that is better presented visually, technology-enabled meetings such as web-conferences are a growing channel for businesses to engage with their customers through. More than half of SMBs surveyed by Forbes said they had increased their use of web-conferencing, videoconferencing, and teleconferencing since 2008 – citing time and money saving benefits as the main reasons for their choice of communication channel and also flexibility of location and timing (see graph below).

Source: Forbes

Mobile workers

SMBs are likely to employ mobile workers who need more flexibility than a traditional desk phone can offer. They frequently work across multiple devices and out of the office and require a communications solution to match if they want their conversations to remain cohesive and organised. When asked what phone system they used for work, personal mobile was the most common choice for respondents of our survey – showing that SMBs require a UC solution with mobility to ensure their communications are synchronised.

Employees experience this level of constant connectivity in their personal lives and they have come to expect this from their work communications as well. The risk of continuing without a UC solution in place is that employees, frustrated by workplace communication channels that lack flexibility and performance, use their personal accounts for external communications. This can cause difficulties concerning security and compliance. We have written before about the rise of BYOD and the challenges it brings but in certain industries this approach just isn’t feasible. In its place, a UC platform that is both available and secure is essential. This type of solution, which included features such as call recording and mobility, was once only available to large enterprises but is now available for businesses of all sizes. Telcos now have a unique opportunity to collaborate with platforms such as Dubber to offer these services to their SMB customers who are ready to take advantage of this additional functionality.

The most popular choice of service that wasn’t currently available to the SMBs surveyed was call recording, with 37% selecting it as a feature they want from their service provider, showing a key area of growth that telcos can capitalise on. Call recording is becoming ever more important as regulation and compliance become key for increasing numbers of industries.

The obvious solution for the communication needs of SMBs is a UCaaS model, which can provide features previously only available to larger enterprises, but with much lower costs. Using cloud infrastructure is beneficial to many aspects of businesses, from CRM solutions to data storage, due to its scalability and security, and its future is in communications. Native cloud solutions offer much better security than systems hosted locally and can grow or shrink alongside a business. By consolidating all communication; from telephony to email, via instant messaging, into one integrated service, SMBs can connect their employees with a cohesive working practice.

If you’re one of the SMBs that would like call recording on top of your UC platform, then get in touch

While the days of holding the line while you wait for an available support agent  might seem far from over, call centres have evolved since their conception with the emergence of new technology. Now more commonly referred to as contact centres, as communications between consumers and customer service advisors are no longer confined to calls, here we examine how they have adapted to the modern age.

Please hold the line

Traditional call centres used an automatic call distributor (ACD) to distribute incoming calls to agents using a first in, first out (FIFO) system. Modern contact centre solutions now have virtual queuing systems that allow customers to receive callbacks instead of remaining on the line while they wait for an operator to become available. Either a virtual placeholder takes the customer’s position in the queue, or a scheduling system allows customers to choose a time and date in the future at which to be called back.

New technology allows for continuous improvement of customer service. Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that utilises speech recognition and keypad tones in order to direct a call to the most suitable advisor using information supplied by the customer. Where traditional ACDs could only play a greeting and queue calls using the FIFO system, IVRs can profile a customer and reduce call transfer and queue times. Callers speaking different languages can be routed to an appropriate agent based on their language preference. With more sophisticated IVR, different approaches can be tested and refined to adapt to the customer’s response. Conversational IVR can even greet customers by name for a personal touch.

Survey by DimensionData

Adapting to the modern consumer

Historically, customer support has been delivered through call centres but today modern contact centres use computer telephony integration (CTI) to communicate through a variety of channels including online chat, forum style support ticket platforms and social media. The chart above shows how customer service interactions have changed since 2006. This immediacy and flexible approach is something that has come to be expected by the modern consumer. Where once customer advisors were only required to have excellent verbal communication skills, now their writing and adaptability is being put to the test. The chart below shows preferences in channel by age group.

Source: Fonolo

For instance, Akixi, a leading provider of cloud based call management and analytics allows businesses to improve their sales performance and deliver excellent customer service. They have recently partnered with Dubber, creating the potential for limitless applications of call recording and intelligent call analytics in one fully comprehensive unified communications (UC) package. Like Dubber, their solutions offer unlimited scalability, no hardware limitations, and rapid deployment.

Speech analytics software, such as Dubber’s Zoe, allow companies to identify repeated problems by looking at commonly used phrases and analysing the sentiment of phone calls. Complaints can automatically be picked up and forwarded to development teams to improve future products and services, while customer advisors who consistently turn complaints into positive outcomes can be identified through sentiment analysis.

With communications solutions now being integrated with CRM systems, the data generated from contact centres can help to build an informed profile of each customer. Mondago, who provide computer telephony software, specialise in providing UC solutions that are designed to be integrated with CRM systems. As repeating information is frustrating for the customer, services such as Mondago’s Go Integrator feature screen population, which allows an advisor to see all their available information, create a much more efficient way of working.

An integration between Mondago and Dubber, enables their Go Integrator product to automatically pause and resume call recording with Dubber’s cloud based service. This is essential for remaining compliant with PCI regulations surrounding the protection of payment card information. Again improving productivity in contact centres and enhancing data security of consumers.

Not so distant future

The introduction of session initiation protocol (SIP), which allows for multimedia communications, means that calls do not have to be confined to only voice. In the future, IVR can be extended to IVVR (interactive voice and video response), giving the option of video calls with customer service advisors. This will allow systems to read customer emotions by analysing facial expressions, and can also use facial recognition to identify and greet callers.

In place of security questions and difficult to remember passwords, video calls can use biometric identifiers such as iris scans to prevent fraud. Where customer emotions were once identified by an advisor’s sympathetic ear, sentiment can now be detected by software that can enhance customer understanding. The value of being sensitive to the needs of the customer still remains, but the emergence of new technology allows the modern day contact advisor to do their job more efficiently. By integrating IVR with CRM systems as well as workforce management systems, customer service has the potential to be completely transformed into a proactive element of business development.