What is Call Recording Software?
Call recording software is a computer program that allows businesses to audiotape incoming and outgoing telephone calls for use in training, marketing, and other analyses.
Is it legal to record phone calls?
Call recording is legal in the United States but notification and consent laws differ by state. Every state in the U.S. except Vermont has laws governing the recording of telephone calls. On the federal level, S18 U.S.C. 2511 (2)(d) established what is known as the “one-party consent” law, where at least one party involved in a call must be made aware the conversation is being recorded.
Therefore, it’s important to check what your state allows and comply with those mandates. Each state calls for varying degrees of consent in phone call recording. Certain states obligate recorders to just inform the parties involved that the call is being recorded. Some states require that all parties (in the case of a conference call) consent to the call being recorded, while others have stricter, more explicit written or verbal consent laws.
Regardless of a state’s specific telephone recording laws, it is generally illegal in any state or federal jurisdiction to record a phone conversation that you are not a primary participant of, have not received consent to record from at least one of the participants, and are attempting to record a conversation that you would not normally be able to overhear.
In order to protect yourself from legal repercussions down the road, businesses that record inbound and outbound calls should always take the extra step of notifying customers that they may be recorded.
How do businesses use call recordings?
Call recordings benefit sales and marketing departments in many ways. It’s not just a way to remember what was said during a specific conversation. Call recording software helps businesses develop their sales team, qualify leads faster and more accurately, and hone their marketing campaigns.
Training employees
New employees from all departments can benefit from call recording. Recordings can serve as demos for processes and products that employees need to learn for the new jobs. For sales and service employees, listening to the recorded calls of more seasoned reps can give them a foundation for their own success. For those in training, replaying recorded calls allows users to pinpoint the team’s strengths and areas of improvement. Used effectively, call recording can be a powerful training and learning tool for businesses and their employees.
Quality control
If you’re managing a customer service department, call recording can be a critical part of your internal quality assurance program, ensuring that your agents are providing a top-tier experience for your customers. By playing back your sales or service calls, you can pinpoint any blind spots or gaps in your approach, and ensure that your team is always following best practices. You can also determine which points of interest to pass on to people in different departments to improve the customer experience in other areas, too.
Analysis
Call recordings give your team the data to make critical decisions. Use recordings to see what campaigns are driving the most and best traffic. A/B test different approaches to different issues, and determine the results with call recording. Having access to real conversations will also provide insights and commentary from your customers that can’t be deduced from web analytics alone.
Content creation
The things your customers say in call recordings can be used to create content for your site and drive more traffic. Answer commonly asked questions on your support line, use outstanding feedback as specific marketing copy, and address any issues that your customers bring up in calls. If a certain type of content is driving more calls, you can invest in more of that type to drive even more traffic. Recorded calls can also help you determine user intent, which is hard to come by thought web data alone.
Lead qualification
Your call recordings can also be automatically transcribed, eliminating the time-consuming process of doing it by hand. And with call recording enabled you can use an automated call scoring program to instantly identify good leads that are ready for a follow up or conversion, based on data like call length, keywords mentioned and even the time of day.
Reporting
Call recording gives businesses another level or reporting to use to make better decisions. Find out which campaigns drive the most qualified leads and what those potential customers are saying when they call in. Are they just interested in information? Are they ready to take action? Report on what works best and improve sales and marketing with that data.
Call recording can help businesses improve the user experience, give sales and marketing teams a bigger advantage, train new employees, and so much more.
Learn more about how call recording and recording can improve your business–request your no obligation demo of CallRail, or go ahead and start your 14 Day Free Trial, no credit card needed.