Although interaction recording software can be quite reasonable when you consider subscription pricing and a low total cost of ownership (TCO), there is an enormous cost for choosing NOT to record customer interactions. This price comes in the form of lost revenue as well as costs associated with dispute resolution, compliance infractions, customer loyalty and agent retention.
A business or contact center that does not currently capture, store and (at least occasionally) review its customer interactions is at risk for costly problems. Here’s what can happen.
Dispute resolution – Customer disputes can negatively impact your organization in a variety of ways. First, it can cost upwards of five times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. When you consider your average customer acquisition cost, losing customers can be quite expensive. What’s more, you also must consider the potential lost revenue when customers defect over a contentious dispute. The average success rate for selling to an existing customer is 40-50% greater than selling to a new customer. Even more costly can be the expense of settling the dispute itself. Many times, businesses have to absorb product and service costs to resolve a customer complaint and keep the customer happy and loyal.
Interaction recording software can help mitigate these issues. Your recordings enable you to:
- Evaluate interactions to identify potential problems and help resolve disputes;
- Identify skill gaps that need to be addressed to thwart future disputes; and
- Access real, verifiable evidence you can share with a customer which details precisely what was (and was not) said.
Compliance Infractions – PCI, HIPAA, GDPR and other regulations carry steep price tags when your company is in violation. In the case of Europe’s GDPR, for example, a single infraction can cost your organization 20M euros or 4% of worldwide annual revenue. Think about that for a moment. Such penalties can literally cripple a business. British Airways, for example, was recently slapped with a $237M penalty for a breach of customer data.
Futura Internationale of France was cited for several data privacy breaches. Some of their call center agents used offensive language, some health data was not protected from unauthorized users and data subjects were not informed of the recording of calls.
Without recordings, you virtually have no defense against compliance infractions as you cannot prove your side of the issue. As well, without recordings, you are essentially blind to potential violations by your agents. You can’t fix what you don’t know about.
Capturing all your customer interactions with the versatility to choose which calls are recorded and stored (and for how long) and playback permission restrictions allows your call center to protect customer data. Furthermore, team leaders and QA analysts can uncover potential infractions and those agents committing them so new training and workflow corrections can be instituted to avoid future problems.
Agent Retention
It costs upwards of $7,000 to recruit and train a new agent. In some call centers, agent attrition can reach double digits, and in the case of BPOs, it can go as high as 40%. When you elect not to record all your agents’ interactions, you run the risk of not identifying dissatisfied or disgruntled agents before it’s too late. Some agents may feel undertrained while others may feel unrecognized. Monitoring their calls can help you reveal these issues so you can offer more training and incentivize them before they impact your customer relationships and/or leave your organization.
Customer Service
Without recording interactions, whether they be VoIP, landline, mobile or even chat (such as Microsoft Teams), it’s hard to know if your business is incurring a reputation for poor customer service. When inadequate and ill-trained agents are left unchecked, they can wreak havoc on customer loyalty and satisfaction rates.
Issues like these, whether in isolation or when combined, can carry significant monetary, reputational and opportunity-lost consequences – ones your business can’t afford. Interaction recording software, including quality management, can help you avoid these and other avoidable, costly mistakes.
