Stereo call recording (aka dual channel call recording) vs. mono call recording helps increase the accuracy of phonetic call indexing, which is popular in many of today’s speech analytics solutions. In fact, stereo call recording improves reporting accuracy, keyword and phrase spotting, by providing the ability to analyze what customers are saying and how agents are responding. The phonetic quality and accuracy that comes with stereo call recording can make the difference between accurate and false analytics results.
How Does Stereo Call Recording Work?
With stereo call recording, the two call parties (typically a customer and an agent) are recorded using separate channels. Upon playback, you will then hear one voice coming out of one speaker and the other voice coming out of the other. Similar to stereo music, dual channel playback dramatically enhances the sound and quality. The result is a higher fidelity call recording, which leads to enhanced speech analytics.
Imagine a call in which the agent and the customer are speaking over one another, perhaps during a dispute. Upon playback, you need to be able to separate the two voices to understand who said what. This could be particularly important if a discrepancy arises or if a potential HIPAA or PCI compliance infraction may have occurred. You need to be able to prove who said what, and when. With stereo recording, this is easy; with mono recording it can be quite challenging, especially if the two voices are speaking simultaneously.
Get Ahead of the Competition with Stereo Call Recording
The point here is that context is critical when to analyzing customer interactions. Imagine, for example, if during an interaction the agent mentioned the name of a competitor for some reason – perhaps to discuss competitive features. It would take on a whole new level of significance if a customer were to mention a competitor’s name instead, or first. If a customer mentioned a competitor, the customer could be trying to say that he/she had a better experience with that competitor and are considering going back. This could indicate the need for a customer rescue call to try to retain the customer.
Ultimately, you need to be able to determine who mentioned the competitor’s name and when in order to yield the customer intelligence required to make important, sometimes real-time, customer service decisions. Stereo recording offers this much-needed functionality, while single-channel or mono call recording does not. It is important to understand that not all call recording systems offer dual-channel, stereo call recording. As a speech analytics customer, you need to be sure you have stereo recording or the integrity of your analytics results could come into question.
Another important aspect to consider with your call recording solution is whether you are able to capture every call or just a sampling. Today’s selective call recording systems (aka quality monitoring software) only captures a small sampling of calls per agent, primarily for the purpose of assessing quality of service. Total call recording on the other hand captures every single call. For the purposes of speech analytics, total call recording can prove more valuable as you can automatically mine every customer interaction for the intelligence you seek.
This week’s blog post was written by Kevin Levi, VP of Marketing at OrecX. To learn more about OrecX and the partnership with CallFinder, read the press release.
