Voice logging
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into Telephone tapping. (Discuss) Proposed since February 2007. |
Voice logging or telephone recording, is the practice of regularly recording audio, usually in a business situation. Most commonly telephone lines or business radio channels are recorded. This allows businesses to keep records, improve customer service, increase security, and decrease errors. Although Voice logging is synonymous with telephone recording, or phone recording, it includes also recording the radio and VoIP conversations. In a call center environment it is often called "agent monitoring" or "call logging" The word "logging" comes from the log of calls or audio files that is generated as each recording is made.
History
The original voice logging system was a large analog tape recorder, developed by Magnasync in 1950. In 1953 Magnasync Corporation sold 300 voice loggers to the U.S. Air Force. Magnasync is still manufacturing voice logging systems today, more than 50 years later. (See Magnasync) In the 1980's the first digital voice logging systems were developed and shrank to the size of a large PC. The original computerized systems were designed and manufactured by Eventide, Eyretel and Dictaphone. In 1996 Mercom introduced Audiolog the first Windows-based voice logging system.
Types of Voice Loggers
Today there are three types of business phone recorders in use:
- The analog tape system: Some businesses still use older model reel-to-reel tape to record multiple phone lines, or hook up individual cassette or micro-cassette tape recorders up to each individual phone. Analog tape is usually more expensive to maintain and much less convenient to search than digital systems.
- Digital systems: Call Recording CenterThese are the most commonly used today. Either they consist of A proprietary box of hardware (See NICE) (see Weston Digital Technologies) that hooks into the phone system or specialized hardware that plugs into a PC in a PCI slot (see Versadial) or by a USB cable (See Digital logger). Some systems allow users to remotely review telephone recordings with desktop screen capture and quality reporting. (see CallCopy)
- Software only systems: These systems use existing hardware on a PC, such as a sound card, to do the work of recording and typically only require a user to install the software on their PC, and use some type of simple adapter (See Dynametric) to connect the PC to a phone. However this type of software can usually only record a single line at a time, and is much more limited in features.
Station Side
A station-side recording configuration requires the ability of the recorder to interface to the existing digital phones (VoIP recording). It is critical the your recording vendor know the model number of your individual phone sets. Call data that can be collected is again specific to your particular switch type and phone set in use. Typically any call data presented to your phone display can be captured and indexed to the call. In most cases this includes dialed number, caller ID, extension, etc). The recording system will provide the date/time/extension and in most cases the agent.
This recording type enables all calls to be recorded that are handled by the extensions connected to the recording system. This includes inbound, outbound and station-to-station calls. Only calls handled by the phones connected to the recording system are recorded. As soon as a call is transferred out of the connected station/agent pool the call is no longer recorded. So you are able to record the internal calls, within the recorded pool, but unable to follow a customer’s call transferred out of the recorded pool.
Trunk Side
This type of recording is available on any type of switch. Compatibility with a recording system is not an issue. The phone lines (T-1’s) deliver some call data. In almost every case the switch can provide additional call data (date/time/extension/agent ID/ dialed number/ANI/DNIS/etc).
This recording type enables all calls to be recorded without investing in a record channel for each phone. For example if you have 2 T-1’s delivering up to 48 calls at once and 78 phones, you only need 48 record channels.
Another benefit to this type of recording is the ability to record your entire customers call. You will be able to record all segments of the call. Even if this call is put on hold, transferred to three different agents and then sent to a manager the entire call is captured.
The down side to this configuration is no internal calls are recorded. Since the recording system is connected in front of the switch, it doesn’t see any of the extension to extension calls.
Random Recording
Random recording can be a very versatile way to record calls. Is this configuration the most cost-effective way to record agents? Well...yes and no. If you don’t mind not having any call data with the call, a block of calls grouped within a single file (no call separation) and little control over what gets recorded, you can get a fairly inexpensive system. However, to gain the real advantages of this type of recording you must have switch provided Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). This switch provided package is usually a little expensive (Symposium, Avaya CT, MiTAI, Call Path, etc.)
There are many great advantages to this configuration. All of the call data is provided to the recording system from the CTI package. This data is typically so expansive there is data that you provided you don’t need. This data can also be used to trigger recording on a specific type of data or call.
Another great advantage of this system is the ability the record a large population of agents with a relatively small investment of hardware. For example if you have 300 agents to monitor, you can create a schedule to record 4 calls per agent, per month using only 16 record channels. This is where the great economy of this configuration is realized. If you have agents at another site that are serviced by this switch, they can also be included in your recording schedule. A good rule of thumb, if you can service observe the agent they can be recording with this system.
This recording type enables any type of calls to be recorded. Inbound, outbound and/or internal as longer as all of your recording resources (the 16 channels in the above example) aren’t being used. And, as stated above, you define what agents and/or type of calls get recorded. All this with a relatively small investment, as opposed to recording all calls.
Advanced systems
Today's systems feature various sophisticated capabilities depending on the field of application. Some systems allow users to listen to live conversations or to access records from any remote location over the Internet or a local network. Besides ease of use and access to voice messages systems usually offer a wide range of signal detection capabilities such as extraction of dialled keys (DTMF), Caller ID, various radio codes (Ex: CCIR Tone5) and even Fax demodulation. (See BTT Fax Interception).you can find voice logger that can do whatever we discuss (http://www.tsolutions.co.th)