Picture this: you’re out in the boonies, helping a customer fix their broken heating unit. The job takes three hours longer than it should, and service is sketchy. On your way back, your phone displays three missed calls from customers. One has left a garbled message you can’t decipher, and the other two didn’t even bother. Three jobs down the drain.
As a small local business, a missed call should never mean a missed sale–especially when you’re out on the job. That’s why it’s vitally important to choose an accurate, intelligent call recording software for your business.
Read on to learn all the in’s and out’s of call recording software and how to choose the right fit for your unique customer base and business processes.
Call Recording is the Lifeblood of Local Business
If our opening scenario didn’t emphasize it enough, good call recording is extremely important for local businesses of any size, providing numerous necessary benefits that enhance your operations and service. Call recording = growth.
It offers a means to effectively monitor and understand your customer interactions, enabling you to identify opportunities for growth in communication and service delivery. It also serves as a valuable resource for optimization purposes, allowing employees to review past calls and learn from successful interactions or recognize address areas needing development.
Three Benefits of Call Recording Softwares
Still not convinced? Let’s break it down. Call recording software provides three major benefits to local businesses including enhanced customer service, improved compliance and legal protection, and high level training opportunities.
Enhanced Customer Service
When it comes to improving your customer service, call recording is one of the most valuable tools in your tool belt–and highly underrated. By capturing and analyzing customer interactions, you gain valuable insights into customer preferences.
By analyzing recorded calls, you can identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement in your communication with customers. This enables you to address customer concerns more effectively and personalize interactions.
Compliance and Legal Protection
Many sectors, such as finance and healthcare, have strict regulations regarding the handling of customer information and communication. Call recording software helps you adhere to these regulations by securely storing and managing sensitive information exchanged during calls, mitigating the risk of non-compliance and potential legal repercussions.
Additionally, call recordings serve as reliable records of agreements, transactions, and disputes, offering you protection and aiding in dispute resolution.
Performance Monitoring and Training
Call recording software also facilitates performance monitoring and employee training. You can review recorded calls to evaluate the performance of individual team members, identify training needs, and provide constructive feedback. This helps in enhancing employee skills, optimizing workflows and ultimately improving overall performance and productivity.
Key Features to Look for in a Call Recording Platform
Once you understand the value of call recording, you understand how important it is to choose a reliable platform that will help you get the most out of it. A few key features to look for include high recording quality, good storage and retrieval options, and seamless integration with other systems. Good call recording platforms should make your life easier, not harder, by working well with other systems you already have in place.
Recording Quality
This is a non-negotiable. High-quality recording ensures clarity and accuracy of your captured conversations. It’s crucial for you to have clear recordings to understand customer inquiries, complaints, or transactions accurately. Clear recordings also aid in training employees effectively by providing detailed examples of interactions.
Storage and Retrieval Options
Flexible storage options allow you to securely store recordings based on your retention policies and compliance requirements. Additionally, efficient retrieval options enable easy access to specific recordings when needed for quality assurance, dispute resolution, or regulatory compliance purposes. This feature ensures you can quickly locate and review recordings whenever necessary, saving valuable time and effort.
Integration with Other Systems
Integration capabilities enable seamless collaboration with your other business systems such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ticketing systems, or analytics platforms. Integration allows you to correlate call data with customer information, track customer interactions across multiple channels, and derive valuable insights for improving customer service and operational efficiency. It streamlines workflows, reduces manual effort, and facilitates a more holistic understanding of customer interactions.
Top 10 Call Recording Software Solutions
In the market for a call recording solution? We’re here to help. Choosing call recording software can feel overwhelming, but here is a list of ten call recording software solutions we love and their key features.
Remember: when looking for a software solution, it’s rare that you’ll find a perfect one with no flaws. However, if you prioritize reliability, modern communication capability (such as text), and scalability, you’re likely to locate a system that you’ll be very happy with.
Podium Phones
Specifically built for local businesses, Podium Phones offers all the features and capabilities you need for modern call recording and reporting functionality with the unique addition of text. Podium Phones tracks missed calls and voicemails, prompting customers to send you a text and allowing you to view call details and send a response immediately from the same inbox. The great news? Messaging is unlimited.
Customers have noted that Podium’s premium pricing and assisted integration installation (some integrations must be requested and installed professionally by Podium team members) present a challenge. However, Podium is known for its lightning response times, great customer service, amazing free trial, outstanding reliability, scalability, AI conversation and routing features, and consistent world class quality, making it a no-brainer for a business of any size. (Plus, it integrates with just about everything–a huge plus.)
Five9
Easy to install and highly flexible, Five9 is a proven, reliable call recording software with few technical issues. Its call recording and reporting features are excellent for audits and performance analysis, and its simple interface is highly praised.
However, some users have noted connectivity issues as well as problematically limited analytics, such as an inability to offer graphical data representation options. If you opt for this system, it might be helpful to have other integrations and functionalities on hand that will help you visually represent data in a way that’s helpful for your team.
CallRail
A highly versatile recording platform, CallRail has a variety of valuable use cases for your local business. With excellent inbound call tracking, analysis of keywords in conversation, and automatic data syncing, CallRail delivers high-quality, highly valuable tracking and analysis in real time. In terms of reporting, it is one of the fastest, most accurate call recording systems on the market.
However, customers note that CallRail is lacking in the customer support and integration departments, as it’s difficult to align with existing systems. If you opt for this system, make sure to frontload your support questions and requirements so that you can get the package up and running quickly.
Riverside
If you’re in the market for high-quality audio and video recording that boasts live stream and editing capabilities, Riverside might be just what you’re looking for. Regardless of the quality of your internet connection, Riverside provides high-quality local recording. It also includes text-based audio/video editing, allowing you to read and edit call recordings with ease.
Take note that if you want unlimited separate track recording, you’ll need to opt for a higher tier plan. Riverside’s basic plan is very limited and may not provide the call recording quality or capability that you need.
Aircall
Serving over 7,000 companies globally, Aircall offers a cloud-based phone system designed to seamlessly integrate with leading CRMs and Helpdesk tools and support teams with three or more users. Administrators have the flexibility to adjust team sizes at will, add phone numbers from over 100 countries, and benefit from real-time analytics.
While Aircall is easy to use and integrates well, users say its text messaging capabilities and desktop app leave much to be desired. Opting for a system that allows for smooth, unlimited messaging is critical in a modern marketplace.
Intulse
Marketed as an affordable solution, Intulse is a cloud-based call recording system catering particularly to businesses in the insurance, finance, legal, and software industries. It offers meeting capabilities, CRM integrations, professional voice recording, VoIP, and a multichannel app.
Customers have noted that Intulse lacks in the integration department as well as customer support. If you choose Intulse, make sure to get most of the help you need upfront at purchase/installation, and be prepared for a steep learning curve.
Nextiva
Nextiva doesn’t limit you to audio; it records video as well and can support large video conferences (up to 250 people for 45 min) for when it’s your turn to host a webinar or conference with clients or subsidiaries. Its visual capabilities are especially good, with high definition recording and meeting capabilities.
Nextiva has a free trial, comes fully stocked with modern features, and meets recording compliance regulations in most industries. However, it doesn’t offer local recording (and only offers one-on-one call recording with its more expensive package) making it highly useful for enterprise companies.
RingCentral
High call volume? No problem. RingCentral’s high-performing call management features include a number of AI call management features, on-demand recording, > 200 integrations, and excellent scalability. It’s built to grow with your business and flex as your demands change, even seasonally.
A good thing to note is that RingCentral doesn’t include call recording in its base plan, and the base plan cannot exceed 20 users. Local recording is also unavailable, which can hamper your processes.
Ooma
If you’re a small to medium-sized business looking for a simple call recording with minimalist features, Ooma might be right for you. With automatic call recording, video conferencing, and conversation intelligence features, Ooma offers easy integration with your existing systems.
Ooma’s automatic call recording can be turned off on any lines you select. However, Ooma’s security features are lacking and their system is not HIPAA compliant. So if you’re in the finance or medical industry, this might not be the system for you.
8×8
Looking for flexibility and the ability to personalize to your heart’s desire? A highly customizable call recording system, 8×8 allows you to set up a recording flow that meets the unique needs of you and your team. You can also make changes as your business transforms as 8×8 is quick to respond and reconfigure to meet the demands of your organization during different seasons.
As 8×8’s base plan can only support five users, this system is especially useful for small teams looking for a system that they can shape and mold to their liking.
Podium Phone CTA
It’s time to break up with your outdated phone system. With Podium Phones, you can connect with leads faster than ever before using a VOIP system specifically built for small business. Never let a call slip through the cracks again by routing all inbound calls to the same inbox where you get your social media messages, Webchat messages, and texts.
Podium Phones also allows you to view each customer’s full conversation history with you, helping you provide a consistently personalized experience no matter who’s calling. Welcome to the future.
“Since adding Phones, the whole staff is on the same page. We can look back through texts, calls, and notes that other staff members left. Having it all in one place is huge for us.” – Kinlee Nalley, Sales & Marketing Specialist, Romance Diamond Company
“By adding Phones, everything is in one spot. I don’t have to start email, then go check voicemails, then texts–it’s all right there. It presents huge time savings, especially for our management team.” – Spencer White, Systems Administrator, Second Nature Lawn Care
Watch a demo here.
