We’re all familiar with the standard customer service message, ‘this call is being monitored for quality and training purposes’ while on hold. What you might not know is that it hasn’t been possible to record those conversations if the calls are mobile to mobile until recently. Many kinds of businesses record calls with customers. For some, it’s about improving customer service, but for others, it’s a matter of regulatory compliance.
The coronavirus crisis has affected all sectors, and finance is no exception. For some industry staff, home working has brought welcome flexibility. Yet for employers, compliance has been a major challenge. As companies embrace the new normal, they need to get the right long-term solutions in place.
Mobile call recording is a great example of technology that was developed for one purpose, becoming useful in many more areas
Employees expect to be able to use their mobile device to collaborate and communicate regardless of time or location. For many sectors – like financial services – there’s often a need or even a legal requirement to keep a record of all communications.
The compliance challenge
The EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) came into effect in January 2019. It imposed more stringent requirements on financial service providers such as banks, insurance companies and brokers, to record every call, or text, that could result in a commercial transaction. The directive covers all communication, not just fixed-line calls.
Take a trader having a conversation with clients while working from home. Taking the call on their mobile, the trader hasn’t instigated the communication. Yet under MiFID II, the trader’s firm must keep a copy of that recording, and of every communication with every client, for seven years.
The app gap
Until now, financial companies in the Irish market had struggled to find a technical solution. In the scenario above, the trader may not be able to ask the client to call back on a specific landline as they may not have one available at home. Although there are some apps with call recording features, they would require the company to set a policy that all communications must take place through the app. However, there are obvious gaps from a regulatory compliance perspective if an employee at a financial services company forgets to use the app when making or taking a client calls. For this reason, any solution needs to be ironclad.
Mobile call recording services specifically support the regulatory needs of companies in the financial sector, and they’re also useful for other compliance-driven industries like legal and healthcare. All recordings are stored for seven years as standard, in line with MiFID II, but for disputed issues where there may be a risk of litigation, individual communications can be tagged and kept longer.
It’s also clear that potential use cases for mobile call recording are much broader still, and there are some compelling reasons for businesses to adopt it. For example, they might want to improve the customer experience, streamline internal HR processes, or have a backup record of a call in the event of a dispute.
Sometimes, a business need will require a longer retention period than seven years. For example, a healthcare provider may want to keep long-term records on file, as this makes sense in the context of building full patient health history over time.
Supporting supplier-customer relationships
Mobile call recording can support any relationship between a supplier and customer. It can create transparency in cases where one party orders materials by phone. Another benefit is that it’s possible to separate voice tracks to identify what’s being said, in cases where both sides are talking over one another.
Having a clear, undisputed record of all communications removes any misunderstanding. It can quickly clarify details on quantity or price, and is especially useful in industries where time is a critical factor, like perishable foods. People tend to be more circumspect when sending emails because by definition it’s a written record. Mobile call recording offers similar levels of accountability, and this can drive improved staff behaviour.
As companies embrace the new normal, they need to get the right long-term solutions in place. Managers that have records of previous calls can also provide better quality of support and training to their staff by coaching them to handle various scenarios that might have emerged from a call.
Ease of use
Mobile call recording allows managers or team members to retrieve single calls or messages easily by time and date through a web portal. It supports compliance because recordings happen at network level for all inbound and outbound calls. Three is the first provider in the Irish market to provide this service.
All in all, mobile call recording is a great example of technology that was developed for one purpose, becoming useful in many more areas. Whether your needs are driven by compliance, or you see the opportunity to improve customer service, the ability to capture voice and text communications via mobile has a wide range of use cases for business.