Call Recording systems 4

[ezncool]

My company has tasked me to research a call recording system that I can recommend for us to use in our call centers. Other than knowing what a call recording system is, I dont know the specifics of their inner workings. I've been doing some reading on etalk and witness. Can anybody let me know what their using on their call center and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Any feedback would be appreciated.


ezncool
I have no technical solution to your management problem

 

[98Converter]

We'er going through an RFP process right now with 3 vendors.

1.) Nice
2.) Envision
3.) Witness

1 thing - make sure they're in the DevConnect program with Avaya. There's quite a few other things to consider as well.

Regards,
Chris



We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. ARISTOTLE 384-322 B.C.

 

[NewbieCarol]

Ezncool: we too are evaluating some call recording packages. We have one now but it's very basic. The two companies that we have looked at are Voiceprint and NICE. They are both compatible with Avaya systems and have been tested on them. From my understanding, WITNESS has not.

EZ, as far as advantages and disadvantages, it all depends on what your company is looking for. Most call recording packages offer much of the same features. For example, you can record on demand or record all the time. Going further, you can record by agent login (regardless of what phone an agent logs into, it will be recorded) or by station number. You can create reports or used canned reports. You can retrieve recorded calls by date, time, agent login, station number, an estimated time and date, etc. Most come with an agent evaluation form to help you evaluate your csr's phone skills. These evaluations in most cases can be customized or right out of the box. The evaluation forms and recorded calls can be emailed to others. Most packages will do word spotting. Meaning, you can pull up a list of recorded calls based on whether or not a particular word was used in the conversation. Some can do screen captures. A trigger can be set so that when a particular phone/agent gets an acd call, the activity on their screen is also captured and stored. This can help determine if your csr's are playing card games while they are suppose to be servicing a customer or having a problem with your database application or any number of issues. Sometimes a phone call will be in a center of a legal issue. The Voiceprint package will allow you to set up a temporary PIN number that allows an outside caller, say a judge from a courtroom, to call directly into your system and listen to a recorded call. Both NICE and Voiceprint come in a modular fashion. For instance, you can purchase just the recording feature now and add the screen captures or evaluation form piece latter. Some companies require you to use their servers to store the recorded calls and others will let you purchase your own. Most let you set the parameters as far as how long you want to keep this data and then it can be archived.

I hope this helps.

From what I've seen so far, one of the biggest differences in cost is how the recording system actually connects and extracts data from your phone system. Our current system connects right to the jumpers for a specific set of telephones. Hardwired if you will. Some companies will offer you a choice depending on what you want to achieve, a CTI link, station side (hardwired), trunkside, etc. They will need to explain all of this to you.

 

[pbxman]

We were a NICE customer, but switched to Voiceprint and have not looked back. in my experience administering both systems, Voiceprint is far more flexible and functional. They dont charge you $3,000 for an 18GB IDE HD upgrade if you need more space - NICE will. On top of that, NICE uses it's own proprietary filesystem, so even if you bought one yourself it wont work.
We wanted to keep 1 years worth of calls online/available 24/7 and we went out and bought 2 400GB HD's and upgraded our own Voiceprint system in RAID 1..Nice would NEVER allow that and still support it.

My point is - if the featureset you're looking for is met with both companies - consider the long-term maintenance and upgrade costs. Also, Voiceprint came in under $10,000 less than NICE for a superior system.
NICE will nickel & dime you for anything and everything. Not to mention, Voiceprint is the better product by far in my experience, and we run a highly detailed and complex call center.

Definitely check out Voiceprint.

pbxman
Systems Administrator

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful.

 

[SF0751]

Witness is compatable with Avaya & has been a partner for a while now. Here is a recent press release on the Avaya/Witness partnership.

We looked at both Nice and Witness and ended up going with Witness. Among other reasons, Witness operates on a single server (the Nice system required 5, I believe), and we can capture screen activity on Citrix thin clients, as well as the voice portion of the call.



Susan
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

 

[ezncool]

Thank you for everybody's input. I really appreciate it.


ezncool
I have no technical solution to your management problem

 

[markfinni]

If your on a Avaya platform software release 1.3 or greater have a look at the new CM-API recorders from Witness, fully integrated with the switch, very flexible and much more cost effective than traditonal recorders.

NICE also do one but it requires a CTI connection.