Legally recording business telephone calls can pose a challenge, especially for businesses operating across multiple states. A doctor recently filed a lawsuit against Houston Methodist Hospital, claiming that the hospital system discreetly recorded patients’ phone calls, resulting in a breach of patient confidentiality.
No business desires negative publicity or denial of this nature. The key to avoiding such situations usually lies in implementing a sound recording policy. This ensures strict policy enforcement and provides thorough training to employees.
In this article, we will be delving into some of the best practices you can implement when it comes to call recording to ensure security and compliance.
Best Practices for Implementing Call Recording in Business
#1: Be transparent
Caller consent to legally record a call is not mandatory in all countries or states, although it is strongly recommended. Building trust with customers is crucial in business, and undisclosed recordings can create unease.
Even when customers have no hidden agenda, they prefer transparency. To ensure compliance and ethicality, it is good you stay transparent right from the start. One way to do that is to use interactive voice response (IVR) systems or agent-led scripts that proactively inform callers at the beginning of a call.
Remember, displaying openness also demonstrates a commitment to honest communication, which could help enhance customer relationships.
#2: Choose the right recording instrument
You can integrate phone recording calls for business through a phone application. With the call recorder app on your iPhone, for instance, you can record incoming and outgoing calls of any duration. Moreover, recording calls occur in the highest available resolution, without extraneous noise or restrictions.
Although the app for recording phone calls is a non-standard method, it is superior to VoIP telephony in many ways. In particular, the iPhone phone recorder is hundreds of times cheaper to integrate and tens of times easier to configure.
Everyone chooses their own call recorder application, but one of the leaders is iCall. It has a good reputation, flexible tariff plans, and even a free trial version.
#3: Check compliance with regulatory standards
Recording telephone calls is subject to various federal and state laws, such as the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and similar regulations. Consent is required from one or both parties, depending on the specific law.
Additionally, international laws apply, such as those in the European Union, where participant consent is mandatory. Besides consent requirements, additional laws govern the use, disclosure, and security of call recordings. These laws differ based on participant location, specific business sectors, and industry standards.
Determining applicable laws for call recording can be complex when participants span multiple states or countries, or if participant locations are uncertain. Familiarizing yourself with relevant laws and standards is crucial to ensure compliance when configuring call recording technology for your specific use case.
#4: Create a business policy
Randomness can cause numerous issues. To establish a legitimate system for documenting business telephone conversations, begin with understanding the purpose behind these recordings and how they will be utilized. Once these queries are addressed, formulate and document a robust call recording policy for it.
#5: Train employees
Next, focus on employee training. Implementing effective training for employees during the policy rollout, along with regular training updates, will help your business ensure proper adherence to the policy and accurate customer response.
Consequently, it significantly reduces the likelihood of your company getting caught up in any social media PR disasters!
#6: Do everything for safe storage
Hackers are constantly finding new ways to bypass security systems, making data leaks more common. To maintain customer trust and avoid legal consequences, it is crucial to keep call recordings secure.
Start by securing the physical building where the data is stored. Implement a key or badge system to prevent unauthorized access to the physical systems. Additionally, choose a data storage system with comprehensive security standards, encryption, and regular password updates.
#7: Don’t ask for unnecessary information
Recording sensitive information such as medical records and credit card numbers is illegal and poses a risk to customer data security. When integrating a PCI payment system with your contact center platform, recordings automatically cease when agents input this data, resuming after submission.
Personal information should only be requested when necessary, and customers should be given the choice to provide it verbally or input it on their personal device keypad, if available.
#8: Teach employees the ethical intricacies of work
Make sure your agents are well-informed about call recording best practices and what they should be mindful of. This will empower them to handle incoming calls more effectively, adding an extra layer of protection against data breaches.
In addition to these, there are other ethical practices that agents should follow. Let’s take a quick look at some of them.
- Avoid keeping cell phones, pens, and paper near the area where customer data is stored or entered on computers.
- Refrain from gossiping about customers and avoid using real names or personal information when discussing events in shared spaces.
- Be transparent about the purpose of the recordings, who will have access to them, and the reasons why someone might contact them regarding recorded information.
#9: Create a separate data team
Part of ensuring data security involves restricting access to customers’ personal data. To interpret and extract meaningful patterns or trends from call recordings, a dedicated analyst or team of analysts can be tasked.
Compared to having management sort through the recordings, this approach is both more efficient and secure. Unnecessary data access by managers increases the risk of erroneous data transmission or reception. This is even more possible given their numerous other responsibilities that may distract or demand their attention during call recording review.
Final Note
Integrating data recording into your business pays dividends. You can protect yourself from many disputes, protect your interests, and get data to improve your business and customer service team.
However, you must first go through the stage of optimizing all internal processes for this technology. With our guidance, it won’t take longer than necessary.