Background
Recording calls across multiple channels is an integral part of modern business operations
Organisations today are faced with a growing number of local, international and industry compliance obligations, as well as personal data management stipulations. The majority of these require the recording of fixed and mobile voice calls, as well as digital communications across multiple channels, including SMS, chat, and increasingly popular applications such as MS Teams.
It means that recording calls across multiple channels has become an integral part of many organisations’ daily operations. For many it’s a significant challenge, made more difficult by the fact that there are an ever-increasing number of remote and home workers – all of whom still fall under the remit of compliance obligations, regardless of where they are, which device they are using and across multiple channels.
In the financial services industry, for example, multi-national organisations (and those dealing with international clients) must meet a raft of obligations around the recording of calls and data communications concerning, including MiFID II and the Dodd-Frank Act.
Contact and call centres, and all other personal ‘data processors’, meanwhile, must meet stringent personal data and privacy requirements, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
Call recording is not just for compliance
Increasingly, organisations are also using call recording for a much broader set of reasons, including quality assurance of customer service interactions, employee and agent training, business insight and analytics, to meet SLA requirements, for auditing compliance or dispute resolution, or to simply unlock hidden value and insights within their data.
More than ever, financial advisers, customer service and contact centre advisors, and those processing personal data, to name just a few, require a multi-channel fixed, mobile and digital communications recording strategy that enables them to operate efficiently and flexibly, while complying with all relevant legislation and regulations, wherever they are.
So, what’s the solution? A modern call recording service or solution must be multi-channel, secure, scalable, flexible and future-proof in order to meet changing demands. Ideally, it should comprise a single or unified platform that also offers easy and secure access to call recordings.
Maintaining multiple siloes is no longer an option; it’s costly, requires human resources, and is not fit for purpose when it comes to quick and easy access for compliance and audit purposes.
So, how can an organisation ensure a unified approach to fixed and mobile call recording, and to digital communications across multiple channels, such as MS Teams, on a single platform?
This briefing paper outlines some of the challenges of unified call and data recording, and then provides a simple, but comprehensive, fully managed, multi-channel service offering by Touch Call Recording Service that meets all of these challenges.
The challenge
To record all channels on all devices while ensuring full compliance with multiple regulations and requirements
Enterprises in the financial industry or those processing and storing personal data must ensure compliance with multiple requirements, such as GDPR and MiFID II (to name a few), as well as a raft of industry, national and international legislation and regulations.
At the same time, call recordings offer self-training for improved customer service, an audit trail for compliance or dispute resolution, and can unlock hidden value within an organisation’s data.
Importantly, as employees work increasingly from home or on a mobile basis – using a growing number of devices and communications channels – today’s call recording solutions must embrace a broad range of voice and data channels, including (but not limited to) fixed and mobile, SMS, and enterprise apps such as MS Teams, regardless of location and the device being used.
A multi-channel approach to call recording
A quick list of just some of the channels that may be used by employees and/or customers include:
- Fixed and mobile voice calls
- Email and SMS
- Enterprise apps such as MS Teams
- Chat
- PBX integrations, including Mitel MX-ONE, Cisco Call Manager, Avaya, Alcatel Lucent, Unify and more
- Industry-specific apps such as Bloomberg and Refinitiv Eikon Messenger
Mobile call recording has been at the forefront of many recent changes to compliance and legislative requirements, including MiFID I and II, GDPR and PDPA.
At the same time, mobile devices have become the de facto way for customers and employees to interact.
According to Allied Market Research, the enterprise mobility market will grow at a CAGR of 29.3% between now and 2027 to reach US$151.511.
According to the most recent Ericsson Mobility Report, global mobile phone subscriptions will grow from 8 billion in 2020 to 8.8 billion by 2026. Currently 4G accounts for around 58% (4.4 billion) of subscriptions. However, by 2026 5G subscriptions will account for around 40% of the market at 3.5 billion.
Notably, the ITU estimates that there are around 107.5 global mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people3. With the growth of BYOD, home and remote working, and the increasing use of a range of devices to perform work, a comprehensive mobile call recording strategy is essential for organisations of all sizes.
Of course, the landline has not gone away either – businesses are still reliant on on-premise or hosted PBX solutions and services. Markets and Research, for example, predicts that the market for hosted PBX solutions alone will almost double from US$5 billion in 2020 to US$9.6 billion by 2025.
The rise of MS Teams drives the need for a multichannel call recording strategy
Likewise, the growth of MS Teams has been almost astronomical in recent years. In April 2021, Microsoft claimed to have 145 million daily active MS Teams users, nearly doubling from the year before.
Initially driven by video conferencing, the adoption of MS Teams has quickly become a lifeline for organisations that enables communication between employees and customers working remotely or from multiple sites. MS Teams has now evolved to embrace ‘remote everything’, integrating meetings, chat, calls, collaboration, third-party apps, and business processes into a single platform.
And, because it’s included as part of the Office 365 subscription that many organisations already pay for, it means that users don’t just use MS Teams to attend a conference call and then log out. Rather, they are likely to remain using Teams (including Microsoft 365 apps such as OneDrive, SharePoint, OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint) for the entire day, even making audio and video calls from within the app.
Taken together, this all means that organisations need a compliance solution that encompasses the entire lifecycle of recorded communications, from the automated migration of legacy data into a single platform right through to encrypted storage, simple search and retrieval, security, dynamic scalability, business insight and analytic capabilities, and finally the accurate and reliable deletion of data at the end of a contract, stipulated time period or for ‘right to be forgotten’ requests. It seems like a tall order. Or is it?
The solution
Touch call recording for integrated coverage across multiple channels and devices
Touch was the first business in Europe to provide CallRecording-as-a-Service to the Nordic region and, later, globally. This long history has provided us with deep experience in helping organisations to meet compliance with local, national, international, and industry-specific legal and statutory requirements. We take pride in our knowledge and the expertise that our engineers have developed.
We are also expanding to encompass a global footprint, helping businesses to meet regional obligations, such as Dodd-Franks in the US and the PDPA in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Our services can also be configured to meet all industry-specific requirements.
A fully managed, complete call recording service
Any modern, multi-channel call recording solution should provide:
- Automated data translation and migration from legacy siloes
- Network-based delivery to eliminate the need for hardware deployments
- Compliance with obligations, today and in the future
- Secure, authorised access and retrieval
- Advanced storage security
- Geo-redundancy and Disaster recovery
- Elastic scalability
- Coverage for all fixed and mobile calls, and enterprise apps such as MS Teams
- Flexibility to change with future requirements
- Freedom from vendor lock-in
- Quality assurance and maximum service uptime
Touch Call Recording Service is a fully managed service that enables call recording across more than 40 different communications channels – including fixed line and mobile calls, MS Teams, IP telephony calls, video calls, chat, SMS/MMS, Skype for Business, social media, and enterprise applications such as Avaya, Cisco, Refinitiv, Bloomberg and more.
Furthermore, we can integrate almost any application or network on request. And, there is no need for large, costly and disruptive system replacements or upgrades. It also means that on-boarding is quick and hassle-free.
Integrated with mobile networks – and other comms platforms
We are adept at call recording services for mobile devices. Our recording function is located within the mobile operator’s network, ensuring consistent and reliable recording of mobile calls, so nothing is missed, and no user intervention is required. As a result, Touch Call Recording Service allows rapid on-boarding and removal of new users without the need for additional hardware or software.
Our service also offers nearly 30 proven PBX integrations, including Mitel MX-ONE, Cisco Call Manager, Avaya, Unify, Alcatel-Lucent, and more, to ensure full compatibility and seamless integration with any enterprise fixed voice system.
Importantly, it can also be adapted to any vendor- or enterprise-specific API, meaning that any enterprise telephony system can be integrated into a single, modern, call recording platform, regardless of preferred deployment type. Our service is compatible with all relevant interfaces, covering legacy ISDN, as well as VoIP and SIP.
Easy on-boarding for compliance recording of MS Teams
We also provide a seamless, automated managed solution for the increasingly popular MS Teams application. Our solution requires no new hardware and offers a single managed service that can record calls even as the conversation moves from MS Teams to other channels – from fixed lines, mobile and VoIP to MS Teams, IM or conference voice calls, and vice versa.
Put simply, it’s a complete solution for integrating Teams into compliance recording policies and programmes. All calls in MS Teams are recorded automatically (whether single or group calls), without the need for user intervention. Call recording is automatic.
On-boarding of users is quick and efficient – typically less than a day – whether you are an existing user of MS Teams or looking to adopt and integrate it into your compliance recording programme.
Touch Call Recording Service features an intuitive web-portal that allows only authorised personnel to access and retrieve recorded calls, ensuring that businesses will always have quick and easy access to their data and, importantly, that only secure users can access the data. Put simply, the service is tamper-proof.
The entire experience of using Touch Call Recording Service is seamless. Call and data recording just works, with no user intervention required, and guaranteed compliance with international, national and industry regulations.
Fixed line calls, mobile calls, MS Teams calls and conversations – plus more than 40 other channels – can all be recorded seamlessly, automatically within a unified platform.
Compliant and complete, Touch call recording
It should ensure compliance with multiple obligations, offer automatic data translation and migration from legacy platforms, and provide security, elastic scalability, flexibility, easy access and retrieval and, of course, integration across mobile, fixed communications, as well as with the growing number of channels and devices that employees use, wherever they are based.
It must also offer the flexibility to meet changing demands moving forward. The solution is Touch Call Recording Service.
Would you like to know more?
Find out more about Touch Call Recording Service and how this will benefit your business.
