Conversational analytics is the name of the game today in the call recording world. According to leading conversational analytics provider, CallMiner, "Conversational analytics delivers clear insight into the mindset of the customer by monitoring and analyzing their behavior and emotion during every interaction. By categorizing, tagging, and scoring 100% of customer interactions, customer conversation analytics reveals the opinions, desires, and needs driving customer choices and gives companies a deeper understanding of what is required to create exceptional customer experiences."
More and more businesses, large and small, are deploying call center analytics these days, and you want to be sure your current or future call recorder primes you for (rather than prevents you from) effectively implementing conversational analytics.
Here are four key features your call recorder must have to easily transition you to conversational/speech analytics:
1. Dual channel, high fidelity stereo audio capture is imperative as it enables the recorder to isolate each party on the call onto a distinct line so overtalk is not an issue. Sound quality is also high fidelity, leading to much more accurate transcription and analytics results.
2. Simultaneous audio recordings for both post-call analytics and real-time streaming. You may opt for post-call analytics today and then want real-time analytics tomorrow. Your call recorder must accommodate recording delivery for both use cases. Most recorders do not.
3. Audio file segmentation to easily identify calls that involve transfers from one agent to another. Many cloud business VoIP recorders offer transferred calls as one long single audio file, which can disrupt call segment distinction for quality assurance and compliance purposes. Other advanced call recording features enable the linking of the disparate segments to a single full interaction through a unique "interaction ID" to keep the complete call together.
4. REST API for open, easy audio data sharing with transcription and analytics engines. This enables real-time analytics. Many recorders require lengthy and complicated integration with outside engines to receive the recording, transcribe it, and then process analytics findings.
Are you ready for analytics? Does your call recorder have these critical functions to prime your business to deploy analytics successfully and efficiently? If not, now is the time to consider changing recording vendors.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/does-your-call-recorder-prime-or-prevent-analytics
Publish Date: March 23, 2023 |
Agent compliance infractions can lead to unwanted penalties for your organization. Consider this:
Each of these regulations requires certain call recording requirements.
Dodd-Frank Act (U.S. financial services regulation)
-->Oreka TR provides detailed audit trails, time stamping, multi-criteria searching, and secure storage of your calls to help you comply.
PCI-DSS (payment card industry regulation)
--> Oreka TR can pause both screen and audio via API or web user interface while credit card numbers are being received over the phone.
MiFID II (European Union financial services regulation)
-->Oreka TR can record 100% of calls or configure the system to selectively record only certain calls; enable users to easily search for, retrieve and playback specific calls based on multi-criteria searching, and store all communications for a minimum of five years, or for any duration you choose.
HIPAA (U.S. health insurance regulation)
-->Oreka TR will pause both screen and audio recording via API or web user interface while credit card numbers are being received over the phone. This way, no numbers are stored anywhere on the recording system.
CMS Final Rule 2023 (U.S. Medicare & Medicaid services regulation)
Let OrecX help your organization adequately comply with relevant regulations and help you mitigate avoidable penalties.
Try OrecX today for free for 30 days!
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/call-recording-compliance-with-dodd-frank-pci-mifid-ii-hipaa-and-cms
Publish Date: January 27, 2023 |
Picking the right call recording vendor can greatly impact your customer service levels, agent performance scores and even your compliance penalties. Not all recording solutions are created equal, so you need key questions to ask prospective vendors when you are looking for a new system or considering upgrading your existing one to ensure you are procuring the best solutions for your needs.
Here are the top 10 questions to ask each potential recording vendor:
1. Do you offer call recording, screen recording, quality monitoring and mobile recording software? You want a modular-based solution that offers all four to support your organization's needs today and tomorrow. Some solutions come all-in-one and charge you for those features you don't need. Modularity is important to ensure you only pay for what you will use.
2. Does your recorder capture calls in single channel (mono) or dual channel (stereo)? Mono records both the agent and the customer on the same channel and overtalk can disrupt you from clearly hearing what each individual says. You want stereo recording which captures both parties on separate distinct channels which can be isolated upon playback.
3. Can the recording system scale up to hundreds or thousands of users? You don't know how many channels of recording you will need in six months, one year or even five years. You need a recorder that can scale with you as you grow. Look for a solution that can support as few or as many as you may need someday, ideally from five to hundreds of thousands.
4. Does the system offer speech analytics and transcription, and/or does it provide an easy pathway to procuring those added solutions? Not all recording solutions offer the capabilities and interfaces to enable a smooth migration to analytics and customer experience management solutions. You may need these added features as your organization evolves. The ideal recording system will provide a smooth pathway for you to enable this functionality when and if you need it.
5. What is the process and cost for accessing/exporting my recording metadata to third party systems like CRM, conversational analytics, and customer experience management? Some vendors actually charge you to export your own data to these systems. The right vendor for you provides a REST API for easy export to these solutions without any charge. After all, it's your data. You shouldn't have to pay extra to access it.
6. Do you support cloud, premise and hybrid storage of my recordings? Your organization may have different locations (featuring different telephony environments) today or in the future. You need a recording solution that provides the flexibility to capture calls in each location and store those recordings how and where you need them stored.
7. Are there any restrictions on interoperability with my existing communications environment (PBX, ACD, etc.)? Many recording solutions are proprietary black box systems that do not play well with others. Your recording system must easily integrate with your current and future environment without significant customization or help from a costly professional services organization.
8. Can you please provide a demonstration of the solutions administrative capabilities? Some systems require weeks or months of training to learn how to manage. Your recorder should be easy to learn and operate so you may begin capturing and replaying calls, evaluating your agents, and creating performance reports right away.
If you are unsure if your current or potential recording solution meets the bill, contact OrecX. Our open-source based recording solution is the most open, easy to administer and scalable recorder on the market, and we are now owned by CallMiner, the number one conversational analytics provider on the planet. Our solutions provide a direct pathway to transcription and analytics-as-a-service.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/8-questions-to-ask-a-prospective-recording-vendor
Publish Date: December 9, 2022 |
It's like the chicken and the egg - which came first: the call recorder or the recording engine? Honestly, it doesn't matter because they are not necessarily inextricably linked, as they serve to very different use cases.
A call recorder is a piece of software (or hardware and software) that captures customer calls and stores them for later replay. Most recorders have a dynamic user interface to enable multi-criteria searching to quickly locate the calls you need most for compliance, dispute resolution, quality assurance, etc.
A recording engine is quite different, although you may not initially think so. Yes, a call recorder has a recording engine within it, but we aren't looking at it that way right now. For this post, we are viewing a recording engine as a distinct piece of software that captures recorded calls and sends them directly to a transcription engine, which then sends the transcribed text on to a speech analytics engine - all of which can take place in fractions of milliseconds. These solutions power real-time analytics which can identify at-risk customers before they leave, uncover compliance infractions while the agent is still on the phone, enable automated QA and so on.
You see, one (a recorder) serves as a capture/playback device to store and replay the interactions themselves for various business purposes. The other (a recording engine) serves as a capture/streaming device, which feeds speech analytics for keyword/phrase spotting. This enables automated QA and other real-time functions (such as identifying at-risk customers or agent compliance infractions) that can drive real intraday advantages and risk mitigation.
An important component to consider here is real-time vs. post-call in terms of how calls are handled and utilized. Real-time audio capture arms your business with some advanced capabilities that provide significant and immediate business value (e.g. rescuing customers considering defection, interceding a failing sales call to save the sale, and many more). Post-call audio capture also provides substantial value but in a less immediate manner (e.g. agent-supervisor call review, evidence for dispute resolution, and countless others).
Questions to Ask
The question now is, which one do you need/want for your organization? The long answer is...Most large organizations have both to serve the two unique use cases. Some smaller organizations, on the other hand, choose to forego the primary call recorder altogether as they rely on the scaled-down recording functionality embedded within their telephony system. If they are satisfied with its capabilities, they may opt for a recording engine alone to power their speech analytics.
The short answer is...You should have both. That is the best way to satisfy both use cases.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you determine which is the best route for your organization:
1. How do you plan/want to leverage your customer calls?
2. How concerned are you about intraday performance improvements?
3. Do you plan to store your recorded customer interactions?
Take a few minutes to think through these questions and determine where your organization stands (or wants to stand) in terms of recorder vs. recording engine use cases. Your compliance, performance and risk management efforts may depend upon it.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/call-recorder-or-recording-engine-which-do-you-need
Publish Date: March 14, 2022 |
Steve Kaiser, former CEO of OrecX and now GM, OrecX Business Unit of CallMiner, recently participated in a CallMiner webinar. What follows are 5 audio snippets from that webinar in which he details the reasons for the CallMiner acquisition and discusses various aspects around modern and open audio capture.
Clip 1: Why OrecX joined CallMiner
Clip 2: Connecting and Enriching Audio Data
Clip 3: Securing your Audio Recordings
Clip 4: Maintaining Control of/Access to your Audio Data
Clip 5: 3 Most Important Points Regarding Audio Capture
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/call-recording-insights-from-steve-kaiser
Publish Date: January 3, 2022 |
OrecX call recording software can easily record VoIP traffic once it's seen on the server interface. Small office users (under 100 seats) can use Port Mirroring Switch (SPAN, port spanning or port monitoring) to get the right traffic to the OrecX server simply and easily. This is best used in distributed office environments with many locations using port mirroring (and leveraging OrkUI) to manage and administrate from a single location.
Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) leverage OrecX via a port mirroring deployment model when the capture method is predetermined by their telephony architecture. SMBs utilizing Comcast Business VoiceEdge (BVE), in particular, often choose OrecX for port mirroring recording.
Port Mirroring, also known as SPAN (Switched Port Analyzer), is a method of monitoring network traffic. With port mirroring enabled, the switch sends a copy of all network packets seen on one port (or an entire VLAN) to another port, where the packet can be analyzed.
Port Mirroring, which is supported in nearly all enterprise class switches (managed switches), allows other computers to see network traffic, which is not visible to them in general cases. Managed switches have a configuration interface (web-based or command-line console), which administrators may use to specify the source port(s) to be mirrored and the destination port, where a copy of all packets will be forwarded.
The pictures below illustrate how a port mirroring switch configuration works.
Four computers (A, B, C and D) are shown in Figure 1. They are connected to a general switch without port mirroring support. In Figure 2, they are connected to a managed switch with port mirroring support, while network traffic is sent between computers A and B (one portion of data is sent from A to B and another portion is sent in the reverse direction from B to A).
In Figure 1, you will see how a general unmanaged switch works. It forwards packets directly between ports, where computers A and B are connected. Other computers (C and D) do not see these packets.
In Figure 2, you see the same scenario but on the switch with port mirroring functionality. The network traffic is sent again between computers A and B. However, there is a computer D, which is listening (monitoring) to that traffic. Every packet, which is sent or received by computer A is duplicated (mirrored) to computer D port.
When configuring port mirroring on the switch, the "source monitoring port" is a port, where computer A is connected to, and the "destination analysis port" is a port, where computer D is connected to. 
How Port Mirroring function can be used for recording VoIP calls
OrecX leverages the port mirroring capability of a network switch to accomplish "unobtrusive" recording of VoIP calls. The switch forwards a copy of every network packet sent or received by IP phones to the OrecX server. The picture below illustrates how the network should be configured to allow for the recording of calls.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/recording-voip-traffic-via-port-mirroring-switch
Publish Date: October 27, 2021 |
You have two primary options for recording your customer conversations today - premise and cloud. Premise recording stores your recordings in-house on physical servers at your locations. Cloud recording stores your calls on the web on secure servers hosted by cloud providers.
There are advantages to both, but we are going to focus on the many benefits of cloud recording.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/10-advantages-of-cloud-recording
Publish Date: September 28, 2021 |
Vicidial open source contact center customers can begin recording their customer calls with a robust third party recording solution like OrecX. The OrecX audio and screen recording software integrates easily with VICIdial, and each recording is tagged with the correct meta data even if agents are on a single uninterrupted SIP session on the extension side. 
VICIdial is a set of programs that are designed to interact with the Asterisk Open-Source PBX Phone system to act as a complete inbound/outbound call center suite.
Oreka VICIdial Call Recording supports both inbound and outbound campaigns, is capable of tagging recordings with agent IDs, and it allows clients to search, find and categorize recordings based on time or date of call, incoming phone number, outgoing phone number or other customer requirements. OrecX runs on either Linux or Windows operating systems and integrates with any phone system.
"We recommend OrecX, which is a passive VoIP recording product. We have several clients that use it, and it allows for many other options like agent screen recording too," said Matt Florell, President VICIdial Group. "The basic recording core of OrecX is free."
Oreka GPL is a free, VoIP-ready, open source call recording software, which can capture and retrieve calls via a browser-based interface. Downloaded for free, the Oreka GPL open source voice call recording software is the only free open source recording software on the planet that can be downloaded in just 30 minutes and requires no maintenance.
The inherent advantages of open source platforms are well chronicled, and include:
Strategic:
Technical:
Economic:
Collaborative:
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/vicidial-call-recording
Publish Date: August 24, 2021 |
Most Comcast Business VoiceEdge customers will find themselves scrambling for a voice recording solution. The platform has no built-in recorder except for a USB drive recorder with very limited functionality. This leaves these Comcast VoiceEdge customers vulnerable as they have no way to capture customer interactions to resolve disputes, monitor agent performance, identify customer service workflow disruptions or uncover compliance issues. 
OrecX offers a call recording solution for Comcast Voice Edge customers that features:
Comcast Business VoiceEdge is a hosted voice and unified communications solution. Fully managed over Comcast’s network, Comcast VoiceEdge eliminates the need for expensive on-site PBX equipment or key systems, provides a manageable monthly cost and delivers high service quality to improve communications and productivity.
OrecX has tested its Oreka TR recording solution with Comcast Business VoiceEdge in the Comcast lab and in a production environment with the Comcast advanced tech group. We now offer fully compliant and lab-tested Comcast VoiceEdge call recording. All recordings are accessible via web browser.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/call-recording-for-comcast-business-voiceedge
Publish Date: August 17, 2021 |
Like just about everything in life, sometimes it makes sense to make a change - sometimes for sheer betterment and sometimes simply to try something new. It doesn't mean you made a mistake. It could just mean that something better comes along. This is certainly the case with call recording software. No two are created equal, and some have capabilities others simply can't match.
Your current business call recording solution may be doing a nice job at capturing your customer calls, but there could be limitations that keep you from getting the very most out of your customer interactions - like discovering customer insight, sales and marketing trends, compliance issues, dispute resolution evidence, workflow disruptions, agent performance issues, etc.
To be sure you're current total call recording solution is up to the task, ask yourself if your software can do the following:
If your audio capture system cannot do one or several of these things, it may be time to take a look at OrecX.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/can-your-call-recorder-do-this
Publish Date: July 29, 2021 |
The goal of any voice capture platform is to record the customer and agent's voices in a high quality format and store that audio for later recall (for order verification, proving compliance, settling disputes, etc.) and to feed one's third party apps (speech analytics, voice biometrics and so on) to derive advanced customer intelligence. As such, capturing audio without any restrictions on storage, playback and portability is imperative to not hinder its ultimate utility. 
Many recording solutions put constraints on audio recordings and their associated meta data, thereby obstructing is usage and value. OrecX is very different. Founded on the principles of openness, Oreka AC (Audio Capture) is the most open, transparent and collaborative recording platform - freeing enterprises and contact centers from any and all restraints. OrecX gives users unbridled access at any and all times, without any additional access-related costs. This is a unique value proposition in the recording industry and one that many vendors do not follow. Some of the biggest players in the audio capture space actually charge thousands of dollars to access one's own recording data and it can take weeks to finally receive it. By then it's largely rear-view-mirror information that is too late to prove effective.
OrecX puts users in full control of everything related to capturing, replaying and porting voice recordings.
This open approach and our REST API offer a myriad of benefits to organizations, including:
There is truly no time like the present to assess your current voice capture environment and determine whether OrecX is right for your business.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/open-audio-capture-blog-post
Publish Date: June 10, 2021 |
Many of today’s larger companies grow through acquisition and merger. Consolidation of these disparate businesses then typically necessitates integration of many different technical environments, spanning the various locations, facilities and platforms. 
To record, store and replay customer interactions across multiple, varying facilities and architectures, organizations need an open audio capture solution that supports a diverse set of technical requirements.
Such a technology agnostic audio capture platform would need to be open, flexible and versatile enough to capture customer calls centrally across an organization and its different locations and technical environments.
Technical considerations for this type of audio capture solution provider include:
Only an audio capture platform that provides this level of openness can adequately support a multi-site customer service organization. Otherwise, businesses face significant heavy lifting, complex integrations, costly deployment, and lengthy rollout timelines to get up and running and recording customer interactions.
Publish Date: April 7, 2021 |
The primary goal of voice recording in today's contact centers - for many - is to capture customer interactions and then feed them to a transcription and analysis engine to uncover key words and phrases that indicate underperforming agents, distressed customers, compliance infractions, etc. In order to be able to perform these functions, contact centers must be able to freely and readily access their voice data without impedance from the voice recording vendor.
Many recording vendors restrict access to voice and associated meta data or charge for it. Others output the data in a proprietary format that makes it difficult to share it with 3rd party apps for transcription, analysis, biometrics, and so on.
In short, you want to be in control of the recording application itself and have access to your recordings and what you can do with them once you gain access. And perhaps equally as important, you don't want to have to pay additional money to access your recordings. They're yours after all, and you should have unbridled access to them, whenever you want them. Better yet, you want them in real time so there is no delay in audio processing. Analyzing a call two days later and determining a customer may be in distress, is too late. You want that data immediately so you can thwart customer defections before they occur. The same goes for underperforming agents. You want to be able to pinpoint those shortcomings and provide adequate training right away.
The most versatile audio capture solution providers today offer a REST API to provide complete control over all aspects of the application within the existing platform framework or with third party applications. Does your vendor offer this?
In order to determine how much control you have over your voice recording application and the level of access you have to your voice data, try asking yourself these questions:
Don't stand by and let your audio recording vendor's inflexibility hamper your analytics efforts. Solutions do exist that provide the open capabilities you need to best compete today.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/audio-recording-is-all-about-control-are-you-in-control
Publish Date: March 29, 2021 |
It's the new year, and it's time to ramp up your collection of customer insight from your recorded conversations in order to garner competitive intelligence, identify at-risk customers, uncover workflow issues, discover underperforming agents and detect possible compliance infractions.
All of this is possible with high quality audio recording. As the saying goes, garbage in garbage out. In order to yield the intelligence you need from your call recordings, you require high fidelity, dual channel audio capture and recording. This is the only way to ensure your speech analytics solution is adequately interpreting and transcribing both your agents and your customers. 
To ensure you have the right audio capture solution in place to power your speech analytics, here are five questions you need to ask yourself:
As the new year gets under way, now is the time to ensure you are adequately capturing your audio interactions and not missing critical customer insight.
To learn more about the capabilities or inabilities of your current audio capture environment, click below for a free consultation.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/speech-analytics-garbage-in-garbage-out
Publish Date: January 5, 2021 |
Despite their limitations and continued decline, closed call center software solutions still exist, even though they can be difficult to modify, support and integrate into an existing telephony environment. Open systems, on the other hand, offer tremendous benefits to call centers, and therefore these solutions are becoming more ubiquitous. 
These benefits range from ease of integration and the ability to repurpose hardware to leveraging existing IT skills and staff to administer and support the platform.
Specific advantage highlights include:
Training is another key area in which open standards software has advantages. System administrators can easily monitor processes and network activity, and networking and telephony managers can trace data and easily understand how information is flowing. In most cases, only an Admin Manual is needed to perform these functions.
These are just some of the many reasons why modern, open standards call center software continues to build a stronger and stronger business case for wide-scale deployment.
Source: https://blog.orecx.com/blog/the-many-advantages-of-modern-and-open-call-center-platforms
Publish Date: November 18, 2020 |
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