There is nothing unethical about recording your inbound and outbound calls for internal business purposes. Along with many other benefits of call recording, the practice can provide invaluable protection to your business. In this post, we explain how call recording software should be utilised to provide vital business protection.

Call recording software is helpful, and in some business areas it is mandatory, to safeguard your business and to effectively manage client/company relationships. The cost of implementing call recording software is soon outweighed by its benefits during conflict resolution. Rather than arguing about who said or promised what, the recording can be located from the records, played and used as definitive proof for a prompt resolution. The alternative takes longer and causes more ill-feeling, often resulting from drawn-out disputes which can lose you customers and contribute to reputational damage.

Line managers can use recorded calls to monitor individual’s performance and to identify weak areas, which can only help a business run more smoothly. The act of call recording reinforces a message to the client that they are dealing with a reputable proactive company that has nothing to hide because they willingly keep records.

If your business will be taking card details and payments, there are regulations that must be adhered to from the Payment Card Industry to be accredited as Data Security Standard compliant. In relation to call recording software, this means that no sensitive authentication data can be recorded or stored, no record should exist from immediately after the completion of a transaction.

While PCI DSS adherence is not a legal requirement the authority has found that its heavy penalties when breaches in security have been discovered have been a huge motivator for companies to work within their guidelines. It has been found that non-compliance to PCI DSS cost a company 2.65% more than compliance plus legal fees, lost business, non-legal costs and reduced productivity obviously impact on business. On average, just one breach event costs £4.5million and the average fine for a compromised record is £133.

There are alternatives for fulfilling PCI DSS requirements:

• Have software that filters out any card information so that it is never recorded.

• Use a call recording system that has the facility to pause recordings during the card payment segment and then resume thereafter.

• Stop recording altogether. This is illogical and impractical because all benefits of call recording are sacrificed.

• Divert payments to an automated system like an IVR (Interactive Voice Responsive) solution However this involves a great deal of resources in I.T., telephony, time and employee hours which can render this option undesirable and costly unless, of course, an IVR is also used for other purposes within your contact centre.

It should be noted that utilising encryption alone is not considered as compliant. This is because encryption would require decryption to be listened to and this is contrary to PCI DSS rules.

Human management of call recording could cause several breaches in the regulations and security because a person may forget to pause and restart recording or use the facility to their advantage but not necessarily to the company’s and most vitally the non-storage of sensitive authentication data should be achieved without human intervention. It is recommended that you invest in a high-quality call management solution, such as NEC MyCalls Call Recorder, that can be configured to automatically filter any sensitive information in line with compliance regulations.

Call recording software protects you well if you follow the rules. If you would like to find out more about call recording for businesses in Wolverhampton, Worcester and the entire West Midlands region, contact Midland Networks today.