Do You Need a Call Recorder or a Recording Engine? Related Articles What to Look for When Buying… A Call Recording Solution PCI Compliance Best Practices for Call Recording and Transcription How to justify the cost of a Call Recorder A-Z of call recording features © FOTOSPLASH - Adobe Stock - 367063271 Filed under - Industry Insights, CallMiner It’s like the chicken and the egg – which came first: the call recorder or the recording engine? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. They are not necessarily inextricably linked, as they serve two very different use cases. A call recorder is a piece of software (or hardware and software) that captures customer calls and stores them for later replay. Most recorders have a dynamic user interface to enable multi-criteria searching to quickly locate the calls you need most for compliance requirements, dispute resolution, quality assurance, and more. While you may not think so, a recording engine is quite different. Yes, a call recorder has a recording engine within it, but we aren’t looking at it that way right now. We are viewing a recording engine as a distinct piece of software that captures recorded calls and sends them directly to a transcription engine, which then sends the transcribed text on to a conversation analytics and intelligence engine – all of which can take place in fractions of milliseconds. These solutions power real-time analytics which can identify at-risk customers before they leave, uncover compliance infractions while the agent is still on the phone, enable automated QA and so on. One (a recorder) serves as a capture/playback device to store and replay the interactions themselves for various business purposes. The other (a recording engine) serves as a capture/streaming device, which feeds AI-powered speech analytics for keyword/phrase spotting. This enables automated QA and other real-time functions (such as identifying at-risk customers or agent compliance infractions) that can drive real intraday advantages and risk mitigation. An important component to consider is real-time vs. post-call in terms of how calls are handled and utilized. Real-time audio capture arms your business with advanced capabilities that provide significant and immediate business value (e.g. rescuing customers considering defection, interceding in a failing sales call to save the sale, and many more). Post-call audio capture also provides substantial value but in a less immediate manner (e.g. agent–supervisor call review, evidence for dispute resolution, and countless others). Questions to Ask The question now is, which one do you need/want for your organization? The long answer is that most large organizations have both to serve the two unique use cases, while some smaller organizations choose to forego the primary call recorder altogether, as they rely on the scaled-down recording functionality embedded within their telephony system. If they are satisfied with its capabilities, they may opt for a recording engine alone to power their speech analytics. The short answer is, you should have both. It is the best way to satisfy both use cases. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help determine which is the best route for your organization: 1. How do you plan/want to leverage your customer calls? Real-time, automated QA – recording engine Real-time customer rescue – recording engine Real-time compliance assurance – recording engine Real-time order verification – recording engine Post-call QA – recorder Post-call customer win-back – recorder Post-call compliance verification/proof – recorder Post-call dispute resolution – recorder Post-call order verification – recorder 2. How concerned are you about intraday performance improvements? Very concerned – recording engine Not overly concerned – recorder 3. Do you plan to store your recorded customer interactions? Yes – recorder No – recording engine Take a few minutes to think through these questions and determine where your organization stands (or wants to stand) in terms of recorder vs. recording engine use cases. Your compliance, performance and risk management efforts depend upon it. This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of CallMiner – View the Original Article For more information about CallMiner - visit the CallMiner Website About CallMiner CallMiner is the leading cloud-based customer interaction analytics solution for extracting business intelligence and improving agent performance across all contact channels. Read other posts by CallMiner Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper. Author: CallMiner Published On: 21st Mar 2022 - Last modified: 22nd Mar 2022 Read more about - Industry Insights, CallMiner Recommended Articles What to Look for When Buying… A Call Recording Solution PCI Compliance Best Practices for Call Recording and Transcription How to justify the cost of a Call Recorder A-Z of call recording features Related Reports White Paper: How to Operationalise AI Workflows in the Contact Centre White Paper: How to Drive Business Improvements with Customer Insights eBook: How Customers Can Lead Your Business Transformation in 2024 White Paper: Five Secrets of Top Performing Contact Centres Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Get the latest exciting call centre reports, specialist whitepapers and interesting case-studies. Choose the content that you want to receive. Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Invites to exclusive Webinars & Events Weekly Newsletter