Fast forward to success: The practical uses of call recording for businesses

The challenges that small to medium enterprises face are similar, if not bigger than that of large businesses. This is why it’s baffling that most people think that start-ups don’t need the same level of business communications solutions that large enterprises utilize. Using technology for commercial advantage doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Let’s start by taking a closer look at one of the tools that most start-ups overlook—call recording. Here are some of the practical uses of a hosted phone recording service for small businesses.

Enforce Quality Control

Multi-tasking is a double edged sword. On one hand, you get more tasks done. On the other hand, the quality of your work diminishes without your full concentration. The same principle applies to customer interactions. Most sales and support people are trained to engage in active listening—taking down notes or pulling up records while talking to a customer. Although this saves time, this could lead to errors in data entry. Hosted call recording reduces the margin for error by allowing businesses to go back on conversations and capture missed details that make a big impact on service delivery.

Improve Sales Training

A business call recording system is a valuable tool for sales coaching. New hires can learn by listening to their peer’s recordings and better understand what strategies work well for effective business communication. Existing employees can further improve their performance by constantly monitoring the high and low points in their conversations. Since recordings are extremely accurate, this data comes in handy during performance reviews.

Knowing how most calls go and their average duration can be used to streamline sales processes. For businesses that handle a high volume of calls, reviewing recordings help in determining what things they can do to make calls more concise, yet still achieve the same level of customer satisfaction.

Conduct Thorough Market Analysis

Recordings also come in handy in carrying out a thorough market analysis. Reviewing conversations allow you to determine whether you are attracting your intended target market. It can also specify which of your marketing efforts are paying off. Collecting customer experiences with your product/service helps in responding to user needs and convert future encounters into sales.

Ensure Corporate Liability

Customer interests are protected by a number of industry, corporate, and government regulations. Phone recordings help in maintaining and proving that you abide by these guidelines. Knowing that a call is recorded also motivates employees to do their best in conducting business with customers. At the same time, callers develop a sense of security that they will get excellent service, knowing that their interactions over the phone are documented word for word. These also help defuse situations when there is conflict with the customer regarding transactions, especially for verbal contracts.

Having few well-utilized tools beats having a complicated system that you barely know how to use. Call recording is definitely one of the few tools that are both useful and economical. To learn more about this and other virtual office services, visit us at www.alltel.com.au or call us at 1300 ALLTEL.