Call recording and Ofcom regulations

[Merrie]

Hopefully this is in the right place.

We are currently refreshing our voice technology and implementing a company wide IP solution. Its a bit of a departure, because up until now each division within the company had their own telephony setup.

This problem has come up:

The call centre is recorded with appropriate messages in place informing anyone calling.

The business also want to record back office phones because they may also have contact with customers. Historically they have given out their DDI numbers so that customers can contact them directly. These lines currently do not have a message informing callers that calls are recorded.

Our compliancy officer has told us that we need to set up a solution to play a message to each caller. This would mean everyone having a VDN and a vector set up to play the message and then direct the call to their handset. Given the scale of the implementation, this could turn into a complete nightmare to maintain.

That is the situation. What I wondered was if anyone else has encountered this situation and if you were able to work around it.

Its opened up a can of worms in our office, I can tell you!

Cheers,

Merrie

 

[SYQUEST]

The simple solution is "don't record the calls!"

That's my 3 cents...


....JIM....

 

[Merrie]

there is a requirement in the company that calls to customers are recorded.

the simple option is not an option.

 

[SYQUEST]

What do you do if a customer does not want to be recorded?

The FCC reg says if the party requests not to be recorded, you have to disconnect it.

....JIM....

 

[Merrie]

call them back from a line that is not recorded.

 

[biglebowski]

syquest ofcom is in the uk you are in the us two different kettles of fish.

This is a bit of a grey area in the uk. I work for the largest VR company and look after call centres of 7000+ agents, these cust also record a lot of back office phones but do not use announcements or rec beeps in the back ground.

To be honest most large call centres take the attitude that if there is an announcement on the main contact centre then this covers all phones. I will try and get some info from our compliance lawyer as none of sales or pre-sales guys know (there's a surprise)

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[biglebowski]

Just hit submit and then get an email from legal....


In the UK you have a requirement by law to notify any party calling that their conversation may be recorded. This notification can be via any method though verbal, written, web based or as part of a contractual agreement.

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[Merrie]

Thanks for that.

My personal thought is that our Compliancy guy is taking the FSA/Ofcom regs to a too granular level. That may be because I'm the one who will have to put all the additional programming in place!

Be interested to know how other companies work this out.

 

[donb01]

Have you looked into using some kind of ACD announcement device to intercept the calls and then send them on to their destination?

I don't have a lot of information along those lines, but depending on what kind of trunking you are doing and stuff you may be able to do an intercept, or program your PBX to divert the call on the way to its destination?

 

[ronromano]

Why don't you have your users inform the callers that they are being recorded?

 

[Merrie]

that was my suggestion. The compliancy guy is worried that they may forget, so he wants a technical intervention before the call is directed to the user.

 

[bsmo]

Hello,

Since you are talking about VDNs and vector I quess you are using an Avaya CM. If you are refreshing your voice system I also suppose you're at least on CM 3.1 ?
In that case you could use vector variables to achieve this and just create diffferent vdn's all pointing to the same vector.