A few weeks ago, my firm was invited by a large California-based tech organization to respond to a telesales RFP.
Given the terms & conditions that were included, the client's legal counsel was involved in the creation of the RFP.
Yet, this organization requested that each bidder record all calls.
The irony for this tech company in California calling Californians, is that their request could create a legal liability.
If your telesales team is making calls from the USA to California, it is illegal under California law to call record and call monitor without the consent of all parties on the call. See an excerpt below from the California Penal Code (Note: for appropriate interpretation of the law, please seek legal counsel as this does blog post does not constitute legal advice. Sorry my one college course in business law doesn't cut it.)
632. (a) Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication, whether the communication is carried on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
There are eleven other states that require this consent from all parties on a call: Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington. (For an overview by state and by country, see Wikipedia's coverage of telephone recording laws).
Beyond the legal implications, there are nagging questions about the business case for call recording and whether viable alternatives have been adequately considered.
I sense that many executives believe that all front office contact center functions should record calls. However the nature of the beast is very different for inside sales versus technical support and customer service.
Certainly those customers with a strong relationship could be judiciously targeted by inside sales. A customer would be more receptive when notified of a call recording.
Here are a few reasons why I believe that recording calls is a poor practice for inside sales when calling prospects (rather than customers).
Announcing the intent to record the call will address telephone recording laws but will leave prospects cold. When a customer calls tech support or customer service, most customers are willing to be recorded as common practice and as a reasonable exchange for having their issue addressed. Imagine outbound calls to prospects from inside sales that would be prefaced by: "This call may be recorded for the purpose of quality assurance and quota attainment" . Prospects will have no patience or inclination to cooperate with inside sales by agreeing to record the call, especially when their relationship is marginal at best.
Listening to call recordings is drudgery and unproductive. Any manager with a team quota and a sense of priority will minimize the time spent on listening to recordings.
Prospect satisfaction is not on the corporate radar screen. Technical support and customer service are critical to customer retention. Call recording is standard procedure for these two departments. But for inside sales, is prospect satisfaction a priority? Win/loss analysis is common but I have yet to find an organization that survey's its prospects early in the buying cycle to gauge the impact of inside sales.
Let's take a closer look at some alternatives to call recording:
Call Monitor, don't Call Record - for the states where this is permissible, monitor the calls of inside sales but do not record the conversation.
Role Play - if the goal is to train and coach inside sales, role playing is preferable to recording calls. It is very beneficial for inside sales reps to role play with internal staff who have customer insight. An even better approach is for inside sales reps to role play with cooperative customers. We have found this to be invaluable given the rich feedback provided instantaneously by the customer.
Exception-based Assessments - rather than measuring the activity (i.e. conversations), focus on measuring the results (qualified, sales-ready leads, pipeline impact, closed sales). Leakages from the pipeline should be tracked to determine trends. Interviews can be conducted with prospects who 'leaked from the funnel' to see if buyer needs were addressed and if the telesales rep was successful in meeting those needs.
For example, the field sales team at one our clients complained about the quality of the leads that we generated. According to sales, the prospects were not evaluating.
An audit of those leads by my firm indicated that not only were those prospects evaluating but the leads purchased a solution from a competitor to our client.
When presented with this information, the sales team sheepishly admitted that those leads were never contacted.
The moral of the story is that a call recording of our initial conversation would not have addressed the issue raised by our client's sales team. Only by conducting a post-mortem lead audit, could we uncover the truth.
Are the penalties and enforcement of call recording laws inconsequential to you?
Or have you implemented alternatives to call recording?
Photo Credit: Matti Mattila
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