Recording in a Voice over IP (VoIP) Environment
1 Jan, 2007
By: Franz HockVoice recording may be used by many different types of companies for a variety of functions. The key markets include financial institutions, such as banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies; public safety organizations, such as fire, rescue and emergency services, including police and criminal investigations; and government groups, such as the coast guard and other security organizations. In fact, any industry or company with a contact center needs voice recording to provide optimal customer support through inbound or outbound marketing, support hotlines and other logistical operations.
Reasons for Voice Recording
The markets mentioned above require voice recording for different functions. For example, financial firms are required by law to record all calls from traders and retain them in archives up to 10 years. In addition, they record certain calls from subsidiaries for retrieval upon demand. In these cases, the agents must initiate the recording either by pressing a key on their IP phones or a button on their desktops. Therefore, in the financial market, companies may need bulk recording for traders, record-on-demand for subsidiaries and long-time archiving for both.
Since September 11th, 2001, the market for threat-call recording has also grown dramatically. Unfortunately, companies may receive menacing calls at any branch location and require this protection for them all. In these circumstances, only a few calls must be preserved, namely the threatening ones. The attendant must designate the call by pressing a key on the IP phone or a button on the operator workstation. The complete call will then be stored on the hard disk of the recording system and the company will notify the police department. Often, the recorded call must be extracted as a .wav file for transmission by e-mail to the appropriate authorities.
The contact center market needs voice recording for two distinct reasons. First, recording may be used for protection from liability by confirming phone orders or business transactions. This purpose requires comprehensive recording because otherwise the specific call you need may not be preserved. These systems, however, must also protect the agent’s privacy, and may do so in two ways. The solution may use bulk recording and then allow the contact center agent to delete private communications by pressing a button on the IP phone or desktop. Alternatively, it may record on demand for activation whenever a transaction occurs.
Second, voice recording in contact centers may be used to improve customer service, otherwise known as quality monitoring. Originally, low-tech quality monitoring consisted of “silent monitoring.” In this method, the supervisors listened to telephone conversations between agents and customers in a manner similar to a silent third party in a conference call. The agent could continue talking to the customer without any interruption, but the supervisor could listen to the call only in real-time.
Today, versatile quality monitoring software lets supervisors listen to calls whenever they want. In addition, the supervisors may create rules telling the system when calls should be recorded. For example, a new capability called “keyword spotting” records a call whenever a pre-defined word is spoken.
To meet all these requirements, voice recording solutions must be flexible and scalable for changing circumstances and company growth.
Voice Recording in an IP Environment
Voice recording solutions may be used for traditional TDM-based switches, hybrid combinations of TDM and VoIP on one PBX, or pure Voice over IP. This article focuses on VoIP recording, the fastest-growing market.
Today, organizations of every size and type are exploring and adopting VoIP technology. This comes as no surprise, given the benefits from convergence of voice and data infrastructures:
- Increased operational flexibility for help desks and remote access.
- Reduced deployment and management costs from a combined, enterprise-wide infrastructure.
- Increased productivity gains from converged applications.
Today, three methods of voice recording in an IP environment predominate:
- Active VoIP recording
- Passive VoIP recording
- IP vendor-specific VoIP recording.
Active VoIP Recording
For active VoIP recording, the recording software works as part of the call flow. The telephone system interacts with the recorder either manually or automatically to let it join the conversation, similar to the third party in a conference call. The recording starts as soon as the solution is activated. Data-sensitive installations such as financial institutions or the military use this method when the alternative passive solution, “sniffing,” is prohibited.
Active VoIP recording works independent of the LAN infrastructure. The recording software may be located as a central component anywhere in the network (see Figure 1). The solution may be used in a distributed LAN infrastructure often found in multiple branch offices. The active recording solution may be placed in the central headquarters to monitor calls from satellite locations. The active system reduces administrative costs and may be modified at any time for new telephones or locations without changing the recorder configuration.
Passive VoIP Recording
Passive recording solutions analyze RTP (Real-time Transfer Protocol) traffic to detect and save audio packets. They combine these audio packets to record calls to and from IP phones and preserve related call index data such as IP-address or phone number for later search-and-retrieval.
The software may be connected to either the LAN switch of an IP phone (Station Side Passive Recording) or to the gateway (Gateway Side Passive Recording) depending on customer requirements.
When both internal and external calls must be recorded, the data must be taken at each switch. Financial institutions and public safety organizations may use this method for selective recording of main access lines. This setup, “Station Side Passive Recording,” only records the selected extension and may be compared to tapping the phone line of an analog or digital phone. However, when the LAN environment is changed, the recording environment must be changed as well.
For bulk recording of external calls from a large number of telephones, “Gateway Side Passive Recording” is preferred. This solution is best for large-scale installations in call centers, financial institutions and public safety organizations because it is independent of the number of connected telephones. Only the maximum channel limit of the gateway affects its performance. For example, if the customer uses a gateway with two E1 (PRI) interfaces of 60 channels, then a recorder for 60 VoIP channels can support several hundred phones installed behind the gateway.
In addition, the LAN environment may consist of several LAN segments and may be changed at any time without modifying the recorder configuration.
IP Vendor-Specific VoIP Recording
In addition to the recording methods mentioned above, some IP PBX vendors provide an interface for connection to VoIP recording solutions. These interfaces use a proprietary format unique for each vendor. The interfaces support recording of encrypted calls and record a higher number of calls per server.
Conclusion
Each VoIP recording method provides distinct benefits and disadvantages; therefore, a top VoIP recording supplier should support them all. Sometimes, to meet customer requirements, different recording methods should be used on the same system. The combination of active and passive VoIP recording is particularly beneficial for financial institutions. For example, the trader calls from headquarters may be saved with passive recording solutions to save bandwidth while calls from subsidiaries may be recorded with active solutions to avoid the cost of multiple recording systems.
Most analysts expect VoIP recording to continue expanding, and TDM recording to eventually die out. Forward-looking firms should take a careful look at today’s VoIP solutions and their complementary recording systems.
