Speech analytics for the Financial   Industry

 

 

  OK, Dodd-Frank told the CFTC that you need speech analytics and you need to record everyone (sales, back office, the floor, cell phones, HR).  They want to be able to audit you to know if you are influencing sales or even influencing the market.  And you know this is going to be very expensive.  Here is an idea.  Don’t expand your Nicelog recorder to everyone in your company; the channel license cost would kill you, let alone the cost of Nicelog speech analytics software, additional Nicelog system licenses, Nicelog installation and Nicelog annual maintenance.  You should continue to use the Nicelog recorder recording your floor traders.  Traders use the recorder every day, it works fine and they don’t want any changes.  Let’s put in a large recording system that covers all the necessary phones, including all the calls that go to the Nicelog.  Add speech analytics to all recordings.  This new recorder is not used on a daily basis for order confirmation but it is there when needed and is a back-up to the Nicelog.  This new recording system with speech analytics will be much less expensive than a Nicelog along with their speech analytics application.  The speech analytics is absolutely state of the art (Avaya is behind this product).   It is amazingly easy to use, in fact, there are so many applications in your industry that are of great importance, now or in the future, you can actually use speech analytics for real in-house value.  You can analyze the company activities by HR, sales, marketing, accounting looking for phrases in conversations with customers, prospects, and regulators that can help or hinder your operations.  You can anticipate a compliance review.  You can learn why some sales people are better than the others.  You can use it for employee evaluation based on certain phrases that are found to be important.  This can work all the time in the background analyzing every call and provide reports on a schedule.   Bottom line, you are compliant at a much lower cost than you ever imagined with a very powerful system that can, indeed, add value to your operations.  I suggest it should pay for itself and not really cost you a fortune.

The cost of speech analytics depends on the number of phones to record and they type of phones (analog, digital or VoIP).  Speech analytics can actually be added to your existing recorder, too.  Contact VLR Communications  to discuss your speech analytics needs.

Call Recording in the Cloud

Can we actually have cloud Recording?

First let’s look at cloud based services in general.  Vendors offer their solutions by hosting their application on their own servers which are then available and accessible by the customer at any time. The popularity of cloud-based applications has been growing exponentially in recent years because companies are quickly realizing the benefits of SaaS deployments.
 

So what is it about cloud-based applications that make it attractive to customers? With a typical pay-as-you-go subscription model and web-based accessibility, the risk when purchasing and implementing cloud-based applications is greatly reduced. Plus, hosted applications lessen the burden on IT infrastructure and personnel resources because the maintenance of the applications are managed by the vendor. Just install the applications and go.  But the benefits go much deeper than that. For instance, most hosted applications offer:
 

·         Low start-up costs – no capital expense and no software purchase

·         Fast and easy implementations

·         No upgrade costs to keep the software up to date - updates are made automatically by the vendor

·         Predictable software costs

·         Fast ROI

·         Flexibility to increase or decrease the number of users whenever you need to

·         Security - A vendor’s business is predicated on providing a secure, reliable data environment.

·         No hidden costs such as additional hardware purchases, annual maintenance fees, or internal support personnel

·         Seamless product updates and enhancements

In order to offer cloud based recording, the system must record the phone conversations at the customer’s location and store the recordings.  Then at a convenient time the call recordings are sent to a cloud based recording server.  The remote recording server has features for access, sorting, and playback; playback via the cloud.  When sending the recording files, which can be quite large, the local recording interface must wait until the network is available, at maybe 2 AM.  Thus the recordings may not be available immediately after the call is completed and cannot be live monitored.  However, this may be achievable in the future with a VoIP phone system.

Here are several factors that may prevent the evolution to cloud recording.

·         The hardware on site is required to interface to VoIP, legacy digital and analog phone systems and to temporarily  store the calls

 

·         Robust network availability

·         Delay in sending the files to the cloud server results in calls that may not be live monitored or be unavailable until the next day

·         Maintenance and support required for on-site hardware

·         The cost for the local hardware in addition to the cost for the remote services

The benefits of cloud based recording

·         Low cost to start recording

·         Easily cancelable

What is being done today to advance towards cloud recording?  For one, Oaisys is offering cloud recording with many of the benefits along with the weaknesses.  The system is installed, only for VoIP recording and is accessible only after the calls are transmitted to the cloud based server which is scheduled for early in the morning.  Oaisys offers a monthly cost and an annual contract option.

You can design your own local server with Intelligent Recording’s USB interface.  This might be practical for several locations reporting to a home based recording server, via the cloud.  However, this scenario does require a PC at each location; a PC that stores the calls and can be accessed from the web.

Passing your inbound calls through a service is currently available.  Here, your telephone number rings at the remote site.  The remote site forwards the call to you and records the call.  This service may be expensive; however it is flexible with low startup cost but at a higher overall cost.  This scenario doesn’t work to record outbound calls.

VoIP calls could conceivably be recorded and sent to the cloud based recording server without a local archive server.  However, it would require a robust network and available high speed web access.  There are no software or services for remote VoIP recording at this time.
 

There are cases where there are separate locations that are recording calls that need to be monitored and stored at a central location.  This requires robust recording servers at each location and access to the web.  In this case, Revcord, for example, provides software so the calls can be searched and played at that central location via the cloud. 

In summary, cloud based recording doesn’t seem to be practical at this time due to the need to store the calls at the local site.  While a robust network and fat web access are necessary for recording VoIP calls and for faster access to the calls over the cloud, the traffic congestion over the network may make this unpractical.  Alternative systems such as inbound call recording will not fulfill your overall needs of inbound and outbound call recording.  Since even a recording server is needed at the local site to temporally store cloud based recordings the local recording server continues to be the most practical solution at this time. 

Can I record HD Voice?

HD Voice is high-definition audio over VoIP phone service.  All digital recorders record standard VoIP and HD Voice.  The benefit of HD Voice is noticeably better-quality sound which improves recordings.  While on the phone, agents don’t have to ask callers to repeat their words.  HD Voice also significantly improves word search and speech recognition accuracy along with improved phone system’s interactive voice response (IVR) performance and improved conference call productivity.  Normally, calls are transmitted on a frequency of 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz.  HD voice expands the frequency range to between 50 Hz on the low end and 7 KHz and up on the high end. Revcord supports G.722 adaptive multi-rate wide band for certain Cisco/Ploycom phones.