The business value of call recording is indisputable - reducing training cycle time and improved performance can be achieved in a relatively short time period. There are big differences among the solutions available on the market today - not the least of which is budgetary.

Few quick list of questions you need to ask yourself before you begin bringing in potential vendors:

1. What is our true business requirement? Quality of service, legal/liability, dispute resolution, verification, or a combination of the above

2. What is our growth requirements?

3. What model phone system do we have? This may limit your options.

4. What are your plans for migrating to VoIP? Make sure your call recording solution has a migration plan or is already VoIP compatible.

5. Will you want to capture screen activity? Most call recording solutions offer synchronized audio and screens, but be careful, some do not and instead offer screen snapshots separate from the audio.

Selective Recording :

1. Does the proposed system support selective recording? How is this achieved?
2. Describe the systems integration and functionality with Genesis CTI?
3. Does your application support after-call or wrap-up screen/data capture via ACD?
4. Does your system have the ability to capture voice and data for both inbound/outbound calls, based on user defined business rules?
5. Does your solution provide the ability to support a free-seating agent environment in which agents can be monitored regardless of where they are physically sitting?

Total Recording :

1. Does the proposed system support total recording, including e-mail recording? How is this achieved?
2. Describe the systems integration and functionality with Genesis CTI?
3. Does your system support both total recording and the quality application?
4. Dies your application support compliance recording?

Record on demand :

1. Does the proposed system support agent and supervisor record-on-demand?
2. Describe the systems integration and functionality with Genesis CTI?

Multiple Recording Applications :

1. Does your recording application support multiple recording solutions, i.e. total, ROD, and selective on the same platform?
2. Does your system support multiple recording solutions on voice and e-mail and is your quality application on the same platform?
3. What is the maximum amount of online storage available?

Recording e-Mail and Collaborative Chat Interactions:

1. What are your organization's integration capabilities with e-mail response management systems?

2. What are your organization's integration capabilities with leading collaborative chat applications?

3. Can we define rules to trigger the recording of specific e-mail and web chat interactions?  If yes, how does your application allow us to do this?

4. Does your application allow e-mail and web chat interactions to be recorded from beginning to end (i.e., until the e-mail is sent or the chat interaction is completed)?  If yes, does the application also capture agent wrap up time?

5. Does your application provide the ability to compare web interactions and e-mail data with other performance metrics generated from your application (such as ACD and adherence statistics)?

6. What benefits will our organization gain by collecting and analyzing e-mail and web chat data?