In most businesses across a variety of sectors with contact centers, trade-related communication needs to be recorded reliably. This is mandatory, and a fundamental requirement for all critical communication streams. This includes chat, voice, SMS, video, screen, and content sharing, via mobile or the endpoints used by your back office staff.
With the advent of remote working due to COVID-19, many organizations have had to establish and/or review their compliance solutions as a matter of urgency.
What is call recording regulatory compliance?
A call recording compliance solution ensures that the recording of phone calls is legally compliant with various state and international laws and regulations. Phone recording can be a powerful business and data collection tool for both reps and sales managers, but it’s vital to be aware of the legality of recording phone calls across various areas. This is because call recording laws vary from state to state and country to country.
Compliance recording is necessary to meet strict record-keeping, monitoring and reporting rules under evolving financial regulations. It's an important consideration as part of day-to-day business operations, and compliance recording is subject to a number of rules and regulations that differ between jurisdictions.
Good compliance policies can help organizations avoid fines and meet demanding global compliance and privacy requirements. But with regulations constantly changing, the amount of data to track is increasing exponentially, and many compliance recording policies that companies follow are outdated. So how do you know which rules you fall under, which compliance recording solution to deploy, and how can you be confident you comply?
There are a number of things you can do to ensure your organization has the right tools and processes in place. This checklist will help highlight some of the critical areas in call recording compliance.
Download a PDF copy of the Call Recording Compliance Checklist
Start with research
Take time to thoroughly research relevant laws and regulations in both your country and countries your organization operates in.
- What are the laws and regulations in your home country around call recording?
- Look at other countries your organization operates in. Are there regulations governing call recordings that occur in those geographies, for example, MiFID II in the EU, HIPAA in Canada, FCA in the UK, the FTC and FCC in the USA.
- Do the laws govern recording of calls, storage of calls or both?
- Are there any requirements to provide details around the quality of calls and how they are stored?
Planning
Plan out the different touch points and needs along the customer journey.
- Is the need for call recording departmental or organization-wide? Does each department have the same requirements or do they differ?
- Create customer journey maps for each department in which calls are required to be recorded. Are there specific touch points in which the calls must be recorded?
- What stakeholders need to be involved in the process?
- Are there existing company policies that will need to be updated (both internal and external)?
- What is the timeline for completing relevant changes?
Assess your Current Infrastructure
Network capacity and connection speeds could impact the quality of call recordings. Assess your current and future infrastructure needs.
- Does your current call recording storage have enough capacity or will you need additional?
- Can your current call recording supplier meet any new increased demands?
- Are there any infrastructure or technology changes that need to be implemented?
- How will you monitor whether calls have been correctly recorded and stored?
- How will you monitor whether recorded mobile, VoIP or fixed line calls are audible?
- Conduct tests to ensure your network, storage capacity, call recording and monitoring tools are fit for purpose.
Roles, Resources & Responsibilities
Define the roles responsible for call recording compliance and how they fit into your organization
- Who will be responsible for ensuring call recording compliance at your organization? Will this role be internal or external?
- Who will be responsible for reviewing and maintaining call recordings? What monitoring solution tools and systems will they need access to?
- How will these new roles impact other areas of the business now and in the future? Will they be responsible across the entire organization or will each department need their own?
- Articulate clear reporting lines.
- Re-evaluate team structures to ensure your call recording compliance solution is adhered to.
Monitor your Recordings
Provide ongoing support, refine tools and processes, and gauge progress.
- Have you outlined how your call recording compliance solution will be monitored and maintained?
- Do you have the correct technology to record and check all required calls, and that they're audible and intelligible?
- Have you outlined a compliance breach procedure?
- Do you have the ability to deploy early warning systems to notify responsible personnel of issues?
- Are alert mechanisms setup to identify breaches? Who will be notified in the event of a compliance breach?
- Have you put together an action plan that outlines how a breach will be rectified?
IR's Collaborate suite of solutions are valuable insurance that calls are actually being recorded and that they're clear and audible. Risk mitigation is a serious matter for any organization and ensuring call recording compliance is a must for those in regulated industries. Can you guarantee that all your call recordings are retrievable and audible?
Download a PDF copy of the Call Recording Compliance Checklist
