Contact Centre Call Recording – Premise vs Hosted Solutions
Call recording is a call management feature that allows both inbound and outbound telephone calls to be recorded, and stored on a server for retrieval at a later date. Call recording is of critical importance to all call centres as it represents the only real way of confirming what was said or agreed, and by whom during a telephone call. Furthermore, it is an essential for every contact centre to record calls as it is the only real way of monitoring and correcting the performance of call centre agents. In some business sectors, it is a legal or industry requirement that all calls are recorded. For the reasons outlined above, it is difficult to imagine a situation where a call centre wouldn’t record their calls – the only real question is whether to use a premise or hosted solution.
The hosted solution
The hosted / cloud based solution is becoming much more of an attractive proposition for contact centres, particularly small and medium sized organisations, as the third party that is selling the call recorder will do almost all of the hard work involved in provisioning the service.
Taking a hosted solution means that there will be no up front costs required to purchase new infrastructure, there are no licensing costs, and there is also no requirement to hire new dedicated support staff to maintain and manage the call recorder. The typical ongoing costs associated with hosted call recording are monthly charges that are applied on a per agent bases, or alternatively pence per minute charges.
The only real negative elements of having a hosted service is that larger contact centres may find it cheaper to purchase, install and maintain a call recorder than pay monthly charges for a third party to supply the service. In addition to this, the call recordings are frequently stored an the equipment of the supplier, meaning that this data is frequently outside of your control.
The premise solution
The real benefit of having a call recorder on site at a call centre, is that once the call recorder has been purchased and installed, the only associated cost of operating it are likely to be licensing fees and maintenance. This means that whilst there may be a high up front cost for the infrastructure required to provision call recording in the contact centre, it will pay for itself over time when you compare this solution to paying monthly fees per agent for a hosted solution. Another benefit of the premise solution is that you can rest assured that all of the call recordings are stored securely on your own internal network rather than that of a third party supplier.
Overall, the hosted call recorders represent a fantastic solution for small and medium call centres due to the low, per agent monthly fees, coupled with the lack of resources required to maintain the service. Conversely, the premise solution represents an attractive proposition for larger call centre that can justify paying the initial outlay for the longer term cost saving versus the hosted solution.