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When it comes to the tech industry, the cloud is one of the top buzzwords and trends of the past few years. Companies that needed contact center infrastructure but did not want to make large capital expenditures gave the cloud a try as a short-term solution, and soon realized there were more benefits than challenges. As more companies realize these benefits, the rapid adoption of cloud-based contact centers is expected to continue.

LiveVox, a provider of cloud contact center solutions such as a hosted predictive dialer, IVR, call recording and business analytics suite, has announced major improvements to its Compliance Suite, a platform for companies to use to manage compliance even as client demand or regulations change, allowing users to streamline compliance across all their contact centers while simultaneously customizing specific campaigns.

The suite includes PCI-certified infrastructure, state-by-state configuration, account penetration settings, do not call option, time zone settings, role-based security controls, centralized cal recording and click-to-call manual dial. The company recently unveiled an over-dialing protection feature as part of the Compliance Suite, which allows contact centers to set safety defaults that centrally control how frequently an account is dialed or re-queued within a specified time frame across all campaigns, dialing mdoes and sites. This helps prevent consumers from being contacted more than user-defined number of a times.

The latest feature, Phone (News - Alert) Lock, completes the compliance seal by eliminating the three most common sources of call recording gaps: manual dials, inbound calls and transfers. Contact centers traditionally face data collection and account coordination gaps between sites, PBX's (News - Alert) and dialers. The latest offering from LiveVox addresses those gaps.

Unlike calls executed on a dialer, manual and inbound calls leveraging premises-based technology typically occur on disparate PBX equipment where call activity is isolated from other essential data elements such as account information that resides in the CRM.

Traditional PBX recording model restricts the ability to match manual call activity with account/agent information and consequently handicaps contact centers from leveraging key account-dependant compliance features, such as dynamically retrievable call recordings or dial restriction controls like account penetration and time zone settings.

"Given the fact that virtually every ARM (News - Alert) player will be touched by the CFPB, any firm whose call recording system cannot pass the equivalent of network penetration testing is leaving their operations fundamentally exposed to risk,” said Louis Summe (News - Alert), chief executive officer, LiveVox, in a statement. “Just like those who seek to find holes in a network, the CFPB will seek out the gaps in a company's call recording. It is critical to understand that these historic and often overlooked call recording weaknesses are a direct result of the often convoluted and disparate architectures found in large, multi-site contact center operations. No executive should assume 100 percent call recording exists until they have repeatedly and aggressively tested the system for gaps."

With Phone Lock, agents are required to match account information with all manual calls prior to the call launch and all inbound calls prior to assigning a call disposition, ensuring a comprehensive database of call activity that is indexed and retrievable on-demand. Further, unlike historic PBX recording models, Phone Lock ensures that the entire call path on LiveVox's PCI (Verizon)-certified cloud platform is recorded. This includes all transfers regardless of call source (inbound, outbound, manual or predictive), encompassing escalations to supervisors which are of particular relevance in quality assurance and compliance risk mitigation.

Phone Lock is made possible through LiveVox's Cloud Switching platform, which enables global virtual agent queues that unify all voice, data and agent information – thus, providing clients with 100 percent call recording that is dynamically retrievable- regardless of call origination, site location, or calling mode (manual, preview, predictive, inbound). The cloud simplifies the network to provide the ability to account for and manage all activity automatically across the entire enterprise. 

Since speech analytics are built on audio recordings, adopting speech analytics based on a centralized call recording is significantly simplified and more effective. LiveVox integrates all applications, including the PBX, manual and inbound dials, to benefit from the same compliance capabilities as those the dialer initiates.

John McNamara, chief marketing officer of LiveVox and active member of the ACA and DBA, points out, "Most ARM executives assume or are told they have 100 percent call recording. Manually dialed, inbound and escalated calls are notorious sources of call recording gaps, especially for those still relying on PBX recording systems. 'Pretty good' data capture for agent audio used to be sufficient. That is simply no longer the case. Closing these three call recording pitfalls provides for a significant peace of mind to our clients. Holes in the recording system, especially on escalated calls, will increasingly be viewed by clients and regulators with suspicion."

LiveVox is the only carrier-class cloud contact center provider to offer integrated ACD, predictive dialer, IVR, call recording, real-time reporting and business analytics onto a fully burstable PCI compliant platform. Cloud deployment ensures rapid implementation and deployment of contact tools, allowing you to drive campaign strategy. PCI compliant, fully redundant architecture protects your data and ensures uptime and reliability.

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