#4 Performance reviews

Related to last week's topic of employee training are employee performance reviews. Telephone recording is not the solution most managers think of when they are thinking about performance reviews, however it is a solution that every manager should now consider and I'll explain why:

If you manage staff that do a large portion of their work on the phone then telephone recording represents the most cost-effective, fair, and consistent way to improve your performance review process. Here's how telephone recording does this:

1. All calls made by your staff are recorded.
2. You set what parameters need to be met to achieve high performance.
3. You create a QC test in the telephone recording software that measures those parameters
   
4. A supervisor listens to a random sample of recorded calls for each employee
5. The supervisor grades each call in a few clicks based upon your QC test
6. The telephone recording software averages the grades for the period of time you set
7. You pull a report showing the employee's progress for that time period
8. The report lets you know how that employee compared to their past results and the department
9. You increase motivation by rewarding top performers and improvement
10. You increase performance by setting precise and measurable goals with each employee based upon exactly the parameters they need to improve.

A Versadial telephone recording system typically costs a few thousand dollars for an entire branch or department and will function with similar maintenance costs and needs as a Windows based PC. Training costs are negligible because you can have your entire staff trained to use the software in a half hour. For these reasons alone a telephone recorder merits serious consideration if you are interested in improving the motivation and performance of your staff.

#3 Employee training

Telephone recorders are usually thought of as training tools. Remember the last time you called some big company and got a message telling you that the call could be recorded or monitored for training purposes? Here's how that works; all calls are automatically recorded by the telephone recorder, a supervisor listens to a small sample of the total calls, the supervisor grades the calls for quality and customer satisfaction, and then examples of really good service calls are emailed to all service reps. So for training call recorders work as an easy way for a supervisor to allow others to LISTEN to an actual great call made by one of their coworkers. Learning by hearing how it is done in a real situation is the best kind of employee training. It also serves as a motivating congratulations to the employee who actually made the original call. Now they're walking around on cloud nine because they did a good job and everybody knows it. So employee training of this sort is also a motivator.

It's really easy for management to apply this kind of training. It is a huge time saver to be able to email an example recording to everyone in a click as opposed to having to set up a meeting, get all your representatives together, come up with and act out a role-playing scenario and then hope that everyone remember it. By contrast by emailing an example of a good call to everyone, they keep a copy they can review from time to time and they can listen to it when they have downtime. Learn more

In a sentence: If you have sales or service employees on the phone this is hands-down the most effective, motivating, and cost-cutting way to train those employees!

#2 The advantages of telephone recording for third-party verification

Third party verification is mandated by law in certain industries such as utilities, credit card companies, telecom providers and brokerages. It is also used by sales departments in many other industries as a way to prove a verbal contract and thus reduce liability. A call recorder performs the same task of verification as the 3rd party method by playing a message over the phone and then recording the response of the customer. The advantage comes in the cost-savings of using a machine to automate the process instead of transferring the call to a third person. Of course, many companies that wish to preserve the more personal nature of using a person to ask for the verification still use a call recorder to record the call because the call recordings provide additional proof and make it faster to find the evidence in the event of a dispute.