The way businesses communicate and collaborate has changed drastically in recent years.
As companies continue to embrace concepts like remote and hybrid working, the need to centralise work within a digital space remains a priority for many.
Disparate, disconnected tools for communication are rapidly being replaced by all-in-one environments capable of aligning multiple productivity and collaboration solutions. Platforms like Microsoft Teams are reimagining the modern workplace, helping to bring together teams like never before.
However, even in these comprehensive, omnichannel environments, business leaders are still searching for additional solutions to address specific challenges. Fortunately, this presents a fantastic opportunity for today’s resellers to step in and offer added value in areas such as compliance, recording, and data management.
With support from the right platform and partners, resellers can differentiate themselves, improve loyalty, and unlock new revenue streams.
The question is, how do resellers choose the right compliance and archiving platform?
Step 1: Assess the End Users
The first step in choosing an effective compliance recording platform is examining your end users’ needs.
Resellers should clearly understand the pain points, frictions, and challenges their customers face, so they can seek solutions capable of delivering powerful results. While many customers may require similar features and capabilities from their call recording, compliance, and monitoring solutions, certain industries will have specific needs.
For instance, whilst some companies looking to add call recording to Microsoft Teams will want a compliance-ready solution to tick a box, others may wish for features that support service improvement. It may also be necessary to look for solutions that offer specialist features for specific industry needs, such as Legal Hold, which ensures tagged recordings needed for legal evidence are exempt from standard deletion rules.
Step 2: Consider Necessary Integrations and Deployments
While assessing their end-users, resellers should also consider how they will deliver call recording and compliance archiving capabilities to each customer. Resellers should consider whether they want to offer a solution based entirely in the cloud or suitable for on-premises deployments. Those choosing the cloud route will need to take specific precautions.
For instance, it’s worth checking whether recordings are stored within the supplier’s cloud environment or outsourced to third-party vendors. Many customers have specific needs regarding how data is stored, making the location of each recording a critical consideration for resellers attempting to reach a broad audience.
Depending on the pre-existing technology environment, it may be necessary to consider API access, which enables integration between various tools and workflows for compliance. Resellers focused on a specific platform, such as Microsoft Teams, should also prioritise working with a vendor with the right certifications. An officially certified Microsoft partner will guarantee a high level of integration, performance, and security. However, even some certified Teams recording platforms won’t capture every channel or phone line, so if compliance is a priority for your customers, choose a call recorder that integrates with the Microsoft Graph API rather than using direct routing.
Finally, it’s worth considering the ease of deployment. Even with cloud solutions, getting some call recording solutions up and running can take considerable time. Count the hoops, and make sure your customers don’t have to jump through too many of them.
Step 3: Focus on End-to-End Compliance
The best call recording and compliance platforms should empower end-users from all industries to adhere to the requirements of local and industry regulations. Leading platform providers make it quick and simple for resellers to deploy effective tools for their customers, whether they need to record calls across Teams and legacy PBX systems or require something specific to their industry sector.
Assessing the compliance standing of the platform will be essential for resellers. It’s worth knowing the requirements of specific regulatory guidelines, such as PCI DSS, MiFID II and GDPR, so you can find a partner that delivers on all fronts.
Some platform providers even offer specialist solutions for certain types of businesses, such as a healthcare solution especially suited to the needs of HIPAA-regulated services. For resellers planning on providing a comprehensive service to clients in specific industries, it’s worth double-checking what kind of compliance support a vendor can offer.
Step 4: Examine Platform and Vendor Reputations
Assessing the reputation of each vendor or platform is crucial for any reseller planning on offering compliance and call recording capabilities. The ideal vendor should have years of experience in the call recording and reporting space and an excellent approach to customer service and support.
Excellent providers commit to helping their partners thrive and grow. They ensure they quickly respond to queries and questions with phenomenal technical and sales support. However, only some providers will automatically provide support. Some require their resellers to deal with customer concerns and queries directly. This could mean resellers need to invest in additional training and resources to provide the right care to their clients.
In some cases, resellers may choose to handle their clients’ first line of support, but they may want to pass more complex technical issues to their provider. In this case, resellers need to ensure their chosen provider can deliver this level of assistance alongside other resources such as training, demonstrations, webinars, and marketing content.
The more support a platform provider can offer, the more a reseller can deliver a low-hassle, low-maintenance, and reliable solution. Today’s clients want their cloud solutions to be as streamlined and easy to access as possible, with minimal in-house technical support requirements.
Step 5: Look for Points of Differentiation
Finally, when choosing a platform solution provider to partner with for compliance and recording, resellers should constantly search for points of differentiation. Innovative platforms can take recording and submission archiving strategies to the next level by providing users with additional access to valuable analytics tools.
They include AI speech analytics technology, which helps track conversation sentiment or monitor communication patterns. These solutions can even feature specialist tools for improving service and sales strategies, such as real-time monitoring and whisper functionality.
Looking for value-added extras in call recording and compliance archiving solutions gives resellers a unique ability to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make themselves even more valuable to their customers.
