CTI Group
CTI Group Software Applications

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Top 5 Benefits of Using Call Recording Software

If your business isn’t using call recording software, you’re not only missing out on several key benefits, but you’re also opening up the door to wasteful spending and poor customer service. Simply put, you can’t truly know how your incoming and outgoing calls are being handled unless you have clear audio recordings of them.

Here are 5 benefits you can enjoy if you implement call recording software in your business.

1. Evaluate an employee’s performance—For those employees who deal with customers over the phone, it’s important to know they’re handling these interactions professionally and in a way that leaves the customer satisfied. Call recording software allows you to access audio recordings of every phone conversation so you can accurately grade the employee’s performance. Based on these recordings, you can provide constructive criticism showing the employee where he or she needs to improve as well as highlight the things he or she did well. In the unfortunate event that a particular employee is constantly providing poor customer service, this can help you nip these problems in the bud to protect your brand.

2. Use recordings to train staff—Recordings of both excellent phone interactions and poor ones can be used to train your staff to properly handle calls. This allows you to show your employees exactly what you expect of them, and it sets a standard across the board. The better trained an employee is the better he or she will perform.

3. Accurately transcribe customer orders—Call recording software helps eliminate mistakes and miscommunications. If you don’t have an audio recording, an employee can either forget exactly what the customer ordered or have misunderstood and entered the wrong information. Recordings allow your employees to double check the order to ensure your customers receive what they ordered, leaving them satisfied.

4. Have physical records of complaints and disputes—Unfortunately complaints and disputes are an inevitable part of running a business. Customers will occasionally call in to make a complaint about your products, services, an employee, or something else. Or a dispute might arise during a conversation between your employee and a customer. Having an audio recording of every conversation will allow you to identify complaints and eliminate the he-said-she-said from any disputes.

5. Eliminate phone misusage—Your employees are there to work. This means you probably don’t want them making personal calls all day long or using expensive long distance services. Call recording software allows you to instantly identify and eliminate phone misusage. Having physical records means the employee cannot dispute your claims of misuse. Once employees understand they’re being monitored, they’ll focus on the job at hand and improve your company’s overall productivity.

The simple truth is your business can’t afford not to have call recording software. It’s the only way you can be certain you’re giving your customers the level of service they deserve and that your employees are performing up to your expectations. Don’t jeopardize your business’ fate. Get reliable, call recording software for better customer service today!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Who Determines Call Recording Legal Jurisdictions?

IP call recording regulations are complicated—and the penalties for infringement strict—it’s vitally important for organizations considering call recording to arm themselves with the knowledge and resources to legally protect their interests.

Because there are three separate entities (i.e., the federal government, state governments, and the FCC) that determine call recording regulations, it’s important to understand the jurisdictions of each.
• The Federal Government.
The Federal Government does not define a large amount of specific legislation for call recording. It does, however, require one-party consent.
• State Governments.
State governments generally have more well-defined call recording laws and penalties. With the exception of calls involving felonies or threats, only 13 states require all-party consent.
• The FCC.
The FCC requires that all parties in a recorded interstate call be notified either verbally or through an intermittent beep of the recording. Lawsuits involving interstate telephone calls have been judged in both the originating state and in the receiving state, so it’s recommended that the stricter state guidelines are followed when recording interstate calls.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

eBilling Adoption: Pros and Cons for the Service Provider

The costs of providing online and telephone customer support are increasing, while the cost pressures on Service Providers mean that the number of staff working in this area are decreasing. Anything that helps end users ‘help themselves’ can deliver direct savings to the Service Provider. The case for eBilling has, however, suffered from over exposure, being promoted as something of a ‘cure all.’

For all the hype, eBilling does have undeniable strengths, particularly within one of the most competitive market sectors- telecoms. With the promise of a fast ROI, the decision should be an easy one. Particularly, if as an example, you consider the experience of one large multi-national service provider that exceeded 40% eBilling adoptions in less than 36 months – more than 20% paper turned off and 70% of consumers paying electronically.

A sweep of the internet around the subject of eBilling and Service Providers comes up with a real mixed bag, ranging from thinly disguised promotional material to reports of poor take-up. The most disturbing message is that of poor take-up. If it’s so good, why wait? We started by asking our customers what they believed were the concerns – valid or otherwise – that were inhibiting some Service Providers from adopting an eBilling strategy. Ranked in order of importance, they are as follows:

1. Increased transparency of charges will lose the Service Provider revenue. By delivering an eBilling and analytics solution, the Service Provider makes it easier for its customers to understand their spend, and potentially highlight areas where cost savings can be identified. These savings translate into a loss of revenue for the Service Provider. This has been a big issue for Service Providers and often cited as a reason not to deploy an eBilling and analytics service. In fact, it does not stand up to scrutiny. Most large organizations already invest time analyzing their spend, whether paper or electronic bills. By offering a solution that makes it easier and cheaper for customers to perform analysis, the Service Provider in fact gains credibility and loyalty.

2. No immediate cost savings. eBilling is perceived as additional overhead, with no immediate return. In fact, most Service Providers do make significant cost cuts, with some even selling the service as added value (see appendix case study). Others that have undertaken successful implementations have reported remarkable indirect returns. The secret is to make a full evaluation of peripheral and incremental savings – see our example guide to assessing ROI at the end of this report.

3. The cost and hassle of integration. Many Service Providers, particularly following convergence, are suffering from a plethora of legacy systems that frustrate the production of a consolidated bill. Integration can be a huge hurdle. It can also become an excuse for doing nothing – the “let’s wait until we have a common system before addressing eBilling” syndrome. In practice, companies have found that eBilling can become the quickest mechanism for integration, giving customers a single view across multiple invoicing systems.

4. The poor performance of DIY solutions. In-house developed eBilling systems have a mixed history. This is not a reflection on the concept of eBilling – more a comment on the practical issues involved with in-house development. Most internal IT departments are suffering overload from maintaining legacy systems. Having to cover the whole spectrum of IT development and maintenance, they often do not have the opportunity of meeting the whole range of issues and potential solutions associated with eBilling. Longer term, they suffer from people that have moved on to delivering the next project, resulting in skills becoming dispersed or even lost. Ongoing development and maintenance of the eBilling applications inevitably suffer.

5. The ‘too busy’ syndrome. With new services to provide and possibly, legacy systems to replace, IT departments can be excused for sidelining projects they believe do not create extra chargeable revenue. Projects end up at the bottom of the pile. What they often don’t recognize is the strong business case that can deliver quick bottom line savings and fast incremental revenue from eBilling. And it can be achieved without any impact to the corporate IT strategy. For many companies, the solution is outsourcing – whether employing a fully hosted solution or an outsourced managed solution on-site.

6. Poor adoption rates. This is the most frustrating rationale for doing nothing. A self-fulfilling prophesy based on long outdated information and a lack of knowledge of adoption rates. Our research has found that Service Providers adopting an eBilling strategy ranked ‘customer adoption rates’ as the most important issue they needed to address.

The truth is that eBilling and associated analysis is delivering significant benefits for Service Providers of all sizes, across both their consumer and business sectors. However, the two environments are very different. The consumer marketplace faces particular challenges, not least of which is the reluctance of some customers to adopt an online lifestyle. It has been the reluctance of the consumer sector that has clouded the industry’s perception of eBilling.
The business sector represents the more straightforward case – where it is faster to convert and easier to articulate customer benefits. For most Service Providers, the corporate space represents a significant part of their revenue, or it is an area of potential growth in a highly competitive market.

Monday, September 21, 2009

How to choose a good telecommunications channel partner

Many companies in the telecommunications industry claim to have a channel partners program, but there are great differentiators in the programs available from company to company. The question you have to ask yourself is “Does this program provide the complete support and product diversity that I would want from a partner?” And often times the answer to this question is no.

So, what should you look for in a channel partner? There are several components that any good channel partner will bring to the table. First and foremost, a good channel partner must come equipped with a diverse product portfolio. Working with one supplier is always easier than working with many different suppliers. When you get used to working with a good supplier, it makes running your business much easier. One telecommunications company offers both call accounting and call recording in the VoIP and traditional markets. This product portfolio is quite diverse for a telecommunications channel partner because regardless of who you get on the phone or what kind of system they are working on, you know that your partner provides the solutions that that customer needs. A diverse portfolio of products that integrate well together and in your niche market is key.

Second, they must provide some sort of “launch” program that will introduce your team to the product portfolio now available. This launch program will be complete with onsite and online training programs, ready-made, white-labeled literature, and sales support information. During the onsite and online training programs, sales associates are trained on how the product works, the vertical markets that might the best suited for these products, and provided with use cases as to how these products are currently being used by existing customers.

The ready-made, white-labeled literature provides the sales team with flyers, collateral, powerpoints, etc. that make the sales process much easier and make adding these products to their product portfolio instantaneous. Other marketing support programs would also be made available to engage current and new markets in trying these new products. A channel partner should provide you with the resources you need to get these products launched in the marketplace successfully.

Finally, during this launch program, the channel partner should provide you with detailed sales support information. Most channel partners will go as far as to provide all of the quoting, contract, and billing support that you need, again, making the transition to these new products easy and seamless.

But, the support should not stop there. You have trained your sales team on the product and target markets, you have targeted those markets with white-labeled campaigns and literature, and you have complete pre-sales support, but what now? What happens once you get an interested customer? A good channel partner will continue to provide customer training and support once you have sold the product. Offering online and onsite training courses for your new customer and help desk support for any future questions that arise.

By choosing your telecommunications service providers carefully, you will be pleasantly surprised by how many sales opportunities and support you will get from the relationship. Don’t settle for a second rate channel partner experience – it will pay off in the end.

Friday, September 18, 2009

How does SmartRecord IP v2.0 archive integrate with SalesForce.com?

SmartRecord IP v2.0 comes equipped with a feature that provides a direct link to SalesForce enabling the archiving of IP call recording call details and/or audio files. The use of the feature is optional on the SmartRecord IP v2.0 platform.

This feature is easy to use. Once the call detail or audio file has been created, simply archive the file to the CRM contact or account record, the same way that you would archive an email file. This allows sales and customer service to gather all communications with their customer contacts in one easy to access place.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

IP Telemanagement Systems: Monitoring the Quality of Your IP Telephony While Managing Its Usage Within Your Organization

IP solutions can give businesses significant advantages over traditional voice technologies, but maintaining the performance and availability of IP applications can be daunting for voice managers because of their complexity and the critical role they play.
Monitoring IP networks is particularly vital as even the slightest changes in performance can have a dramatic impact on the quality of service end users experience. When caused by network problems, lost or dropped packets can result in highly noticeable performance issues or jitter with IP and will affect all other network applications to a degree.
It is important to monitor IP telephony networks as it is impossible to determine in advance when problems will occur. Many businesses are starting to turn to IP telemanagement systems to help manage the quality of their service as well as employee use of telecom equipment. IP telemanagement systems are designed for organizations demanding a better performance from their IP network. It is differentiated by its ability to reliably monitor large volumes of IP traffic across many sites helping managers to effectively understand the traffic characteristics of their networks so that high quality service levels are ensured.
IP telemanagement enables customers to successfully manage their IP telephony solutions, assuring the infrastructure is available and monitoring the end user experience and call quality. IP telemanagement measures and reports on metrics and service levels while mitigating security risks.
IP telemanagement systems are designed to allow customers to review the call quality on IPT systems. Such a system would report QoS data (such as jitter, latency and packet loss) experienced by users. With this information customers can begin troubleshooting and isolating problems while holding their service providers responsible for the quality of their IP service. This helps encourage service providers to deliver consistently superior and high quality IP telephony service.
Reports, used in conjunction with a comprehensive filtering interface, enable reporting on virtually any data element and allow customers to monitor service levels, call quality, overall performance, usage trends and capacity planning.
An IP telemanagement system enables users to design any number of customized reports, all of which can be output to Excel, Word, Crystal Reports, Adobe PDF or HTML. These reports provide the business user with the information specific to their business needs. The best IP telemanagement systems give the administrator the ability to control the information that they receive. Each business has different needs and requirements.
Additionally, by providing auto-scheduling, which produces reports automatically at predefined intervals, to a chosen output or e-mail distribution list, these IP telemanagement systems are able to provide administrators with the reports they need immediately. This minimizes a user’s intervention and guarantees that vital business information is delivered accurately and on time. Since the reports are auto-scheduled, the user does not have to enter the system for any reason and can just wait for the reports to be delivered directly to them.
Incorporating an IP telemanagement system into telecom management enables businesses to monitor the quality of their IP service, while also monitoring their employee activity and removing the opportunity for overspend and telecom fraud.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: How eBilling Can Help Your Company Join the Green Movement

Reduce, reuse, recycle. This is the slogan for “going green” and the lesson we are all supposed to take from the green movement. But, what does it mean?

Most green experts agree that these three actions should be integrated into your day-to-day business and personal life in this specific order. In other words, we must first try to reduce the amount of materials that we use to begin with. It is actually fairly easy to do. Instead of printing every document on paper, think first if it is necessary or if you can work with it electronically. Is it really necessary to buy a new printer or can your current printer be repaired? Choosing to reduce the materials we consume is not only green, but also friendly on the finances.

Next we come to reuse. Instead of throwing away a document that was printed incorrectly, reuse the back of each sheet of paper as scratch paper. Instead of buying a bottle of soda each day, buy one large bottle and drink out of a reusable cup or glass. These are small changes that we can each make every day that can really make a huge impact on the planet in the long run.

If we are unable to avoid using reusing materials that we already use, we can turn to recycling. Most offices have an abundance of paper, cans, bottles, etc. that can be recycled fairly easily and because of the quantity of recyclables, an initiative like this can really make a significant impact on the amount of garbage going to landfills from your place of business.

The biggest problem is that most people only consider the latter option…recycling. Most companies and individuals do not first consider where they can cut back on consumption. It really is in the best interest of the company to train people to think about their consumables – it is financially beneficial. But, by first identifying the areas in which you can cut back on consumption all together, you are reducing carbon emissions to transport consumables as well the energy required to recycle that product. While recycling keeps that product from ending up in a landfill, that does not mean it is the BEST green alternative.

One place in particular where a company can reduce the amount of materials used is to move to electronic billing rather than paper billing. The process to recycle and recreate paper does create waste and use energy, so it is in everyone’s best interest to simply reduce the amount of paper that we use. Most companies receive hundreds of pages of paper from their telecom service provider documenting their usage. Not only can electronic billing help you to improve your carbon footprint, but it can also allow you to find more efficient ways of analyzing and allocating bills. Many of the best eBilling software solutions also come equipped with analysis and customized reporting functionality that helps accounting and department heads to quickly and efficiently allocate expenses rather than tediously flipping through hundreds of pages of paper bills. This is just one example of how your company can incorporate a green initiative into your day-to-day business activities by REDUCING your consumption of materials.

Reduce first, then reuse, then recycle.

Friday, September 11, 2009

When industry regulations necessitate recorded phone calls, we’ve got you covered. Remaining legally compliant is vital to your business success, and our call recording feature substantially lowers your risk. In addition, our easy-to-use solution improves your customer experience so you can build proactive, powerful consumer relationships. Our cost-effective, user-friendly call
recording solution ensures that you have the flexibility, scalability, and compliance coverage you need – with no capital investment in hardware or software.

Your business requires superior VoIP call recording services, and we provide a flexible solution to meet your unique needs. Whether you’re a retailer depending on phone order confirmations or an insurance provider that relies on claims recordings, we support you with an industry-leading solution – one that’s changing the face of call recording and VoIP services by employing customer-focused innovation.

We understand how important data security is to your business. A superior data encryption process ensures your calls are well protected. In addition, recorded calls required for legal, regulatory, or compliance purposes can be safely transferred from our web-based system to your proprietary system individually or in batches.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Catching and combating telephony misuse and fraud

Businesses of all sizes are always looking for simple but effective ways to cut costs and where possible, streamline and improve the services they offer - even more so in the current economic situation. In many cases, the tough economic climate has; unfortunately, forced workers to take advantage of work telephony systems and use either a work mobile handset or a desktop telephone for personal use and, in more severe cases, to call premium rates.

This is forcing businesses to review the way in which staff actually use their telephone systems. Ultimately, this is a positive step and can result in a business streamlining its procedures to gain instant cost savings while improving customer service. Over the past 12 months, inquiries from companies that have fallen victim to telephony fraud, hacking and misuse have increased. Workers have been known to use the desktop phone for personal purposes or to call premium rate 900 numbers, with their unknowing employer footing the bill.

This extends to outsourced staff, including cleaning teams that often operate outside of standard office hours and more often than not are left to their own devices. We saw in once instance, premium rate number companies paying cleaners to dial a number and leave it hanging while they were in the office, only hanging up at the end of the evening when they left the building. Without close attention, this kind of activity can slip through the net with the company left to deal with the consequences and costs.

Invariably, threats can also come from international criminals as well as internal sources. Organized gangs have comprehensive software that enables a company's obsolete numbers to be hacked into and then used to dial out to premium and foreign extensions. This ‘toll fraud' is executed in a way that means calls can be left open, leaving an extremely large telephone bill, if not caught and combated. Telephone fraud is not a new issue, but it remains a topical one and one not to be taken lightly. In these stringent economic times, we would recommend that businesses, regardless of size, address policies and procedures in the workplace to ensure that staff know and understand what acceptable telephony use is and what is not. In hand with this, businesses should contact their telephony provider to gauge how they can work together to better manage and evaluate their telephony use.

This should not be a lengthy or complicated process, nor should the analysis procedure be laborious. In most cases, telephony providers will recommend that companies look to adopt a telemanagement and call recording solution. In doing so, businesses can obtain a comprehensive breakdown of the complete communications system and also have the ability to cap calls depending on length, rate and total cost. The presence of such a solution often puts the onus on the employee to improve the way they conduct themselves on the corporate telephone before senior management even address the reports such an application generates. Additionally having the ability to pull off ad-hoc detailed reports and highlight anomalous call activity ensures that directors can slice bills and prevent similar occurrences of telephone misuse from happening in the future.The call recording element of such a tool is key to the bigger picture as it provides directors with the evidence they need to drill down to the real issue, post-event. Not only can it be used as a means to document incidences when mitigating fraud, but it can also act as a way to train staff and strengthen the level of service offered to customers. By monitoring call activity, businesses can gain substantial savings while also improving processes, safe in the knowledge that their system is not being abused by those inside or outside the organization.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

eBilling: The truth about Corporate Responsibility and ‘physical’ cost reductions – addressing the green agenda

In the CTI Group survey of UK Service Providers (May 2009), the ‘benefits to the environment’ of turning off paper bills were rated second only to cutting costs - and more important than helping to win new clients.
Environmental issues are grabbing headlines and are exercising the minds of consumers. A whopping 79% of UK respondents in Landor’s 2008 ImagePower Green Brands Survey say they will maintain or increase their level of spending on green products or services in the coming year.
It comes as no surprise that Service Providers are waking up to the Green Agenda, the most recent example being Nokia’s unveiling of the world’s first recyclable phone.
So, how strong an argument is Service Provider eBilling in the debate? And what business benefits translate to the Service Provider and their corporate users?
It has nothing to do with saving rain forests (most – though not all – paper comes from sustainable forests), but it is to do with pollution. Paper manufacturing is a remarkably filthy, polluting process, even when recycling is added to the equation.
· The paper industry is a major source of toxic chemical pollution, especially toxic solvents and chlorine compounds used to bleach and delignify pulp.
· Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4% of the world's energy use – a significant contributor to air pollution.
· The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
· There are associated hidden damages due to fuel extraction at source - oil drilling, coal mining, transmission lines, etc.
· Discarded paper is a major component of many landfill sites, accounting for about 35% by weight of municipal solid waste (before recycling).
· Most of the above arguments are just as true for recycled paper as for new.
Probably more than most ‘green’ initiatives, the reduction of paper usage and the associated logistics of physical delivery are easily associated with protection of the environment (in our next ‘truth’ we look at the volumes of paper associated with telecom billing).
We believe that such strong arguments, properly articulated by telecom suppliers, could become a potent marketing factor in three areas:
Improving adoption rates for eBilling with both consumers and corporate users (boosting ROI further/faster).
Providing a powerful Corporate Responsibility message to investors and customers (boosting public relations initiatives).
Adding similar value for business users, helping them to meet their Corporate Social Responsibility objectives.
It is easy to make the case for eBilling in the corporate environment, with the cost reductions achieved by delivering documents online rather than the traditional print and post method.
SMEs frequently receive over 100 pages for itemized telecom bills and statements, with large businesses often receiving thousands of pages. Once the cost of postage is added, ‘hard’ cost savings can quickly justify the move to eBilling. The industry quoted figures for reduction in ‘operating costs’ of mailing and manual processing between 65% and 85% - with some eBilling suppliers going so far as to suggest 90%.
So, what is the problem?
We have already touched on this. Potentially, the problem relates to the rate of customer uptake. Figures bandied around the industry suggest an average of just 15%. Is this true and how long does it take to achieve this figure?
In fact, uptake figures are muddied by the consumer sector. In the business sector, rates vary enormously by company – a reflection of how seriously Service Providers have applied themselves to promoting the service to business users.
At one end of the spectrum, some service providers have simply switched customers completely. Others take a phased approach.
From our experience, with strong marketing initiatives in place, even with a phased introduction companies are able to achieve 60% adoption over a 2-3 year period.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Resellers Find that Offering Proteus Gives Them a Leg Up in the Market

Proteus Enterprise is a telemanagement solution that allows companies to monitor their telecommunications expenditures and usages. This solution can provide a tremendous cost saving opportunity to any company regardless of its size or telecommunications needs.

In a recent study, we found that roughly 50% of all resellers that provide Proteus as part of their product offering are able to obtain new customers in new vertical markets because of the addition of Proteus to their portfolio. The other 50% of resellers offering Proteus found that, by offering this call accounting solution, they were able to keep up with their competition in a very competitive economic climate.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Laying Applications to VoIP Platform Offers Increased Revenue Potential Per Seat

By layering applications onto an existing VoIP platform, service providers are able to upgrade their customers’ service, thereby increasing revenue and decreasing costs. In a recent study, we found that over 90% of service provider customers are able to recognize an increase in revenue from their existing customer base simply by adding much needed business applications to their platform.

IP call recording, call accounting, and ACD reporting are among the applications that provided the best return. By adding any or all of these applications to their platform, our customers were able to see an increase in revenue per seat, thus increasing overall revenue potential.
Billing & OSS World 2009 ebilling CTI Group Customer Spotlight - Call Recording Call Recording at Metaswitch 2009