VoIP Recording Saves Lives

The centrality of effective VoIP recording solutions is widely acknowledged, especially for emergency and other critical situations. However, the adoption of VoIP communications can pose many problems during the transition period, and the best recording systems must migrate smoothly from TDM to IP to prevent the loss of essential interactions.

 

Recording calls facilitates quality monitoring, compliance with government regulations and verification of business transactions. Contact centers for financial institutions, insurance companies, air-traffic control, and public safety organizations require many, if not all, of these functions.

 

However emergency communications for dispatch centers, often called Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), represent a special case. They need a bona-fide record of every interaction, with the public as well as among emergency response units. Reliable and redundant recordings ensure legal compliance, but even more important, they save lives.

 

Voice recording serves critical needs for first responders, command-and-control centers and law-enforcement agencies (LEAs), and recording solutions for these groups must be flexible and incorporate hybrid environments with PSTN and Voice over IP calls, radio and trunked radio communications. Complex systems are more vulnerable to failure so an ideal system should offer all these capabilities in one unit using the same server.

 

Contact centers receiving urgent communications must preserve them all, if only for analysis to generate more efficient responses in the future. This “bulk recording” must provide fail-safe operation through both structural and hardware back-up. Many recording solutions accomplish this through both redundant architecture and hot- or cold-standby.

 

When an emergency occurs, agents must react instinctively without thinking about the equipment they are using. Recording systems should operate with fast and intuitive interfaces and provide instant replay to help the agent confirm the location of the emergency, even when the caller is still on phone. Often callers become hysterical and incoherent so this function is essential. Other features also help the agent “become one with the equipment,” such as touch-screen support and seamless integration with command-and-control centers.

 

For compliance and legal evidence in case of retroactive disputes, recording solutions must provide tamper-proof data. Top vendors employ encryption algorithms such as AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) to protect incident response records. Comprehensive traceability provides a complete picture by tagging calls with index data such as the incoming phone number and the specific agent handling the call, as well as the time and duration of the interaction. Even the number of rings before pickup should be preserved to provide an incontrovertible statistic on efficiency and adequate staffing levels for the contact center.

 

Emergency communications and transition in a contact center’s infrastructure can be a deadly combination. Professional and flexible VoIP recording solutions play a critical role in ensuring smooth, uninterrupted service during that time without losing any critical features such as reliability, redundancy and a tamper-proof record. Centers with temporary hybrid environments should deliberate carefully to ensure their equipment continues to match their capability.