It has been a common misconception that call recording is a luxury, only needed by large contact centres, whereas small to medium sized businesses won't benefit from it. As W Insurance's story testifies, any organisation of whichever size conducting business over the phone would surely benefit from a 40% sales increase from nearly day one.

Founded 20 years ago in the South East of England, W Insurance is an independent intermediary exclusively selling motorcycle insurance. Since 1984, the company has grown to over 30 people, of which 25 work in the telesales office taking 1,000 inbound calls every day. W is one of 30 players in a highly specialised market and as Keith Samuels, Director at W, stated, "Motorcycle insurance is a very competitive sector, with cut throat margins. Customers do shop around for quotes and you only have one opportunity to demonstrate that your product and service is better than the competition. Improving the all round quality of our team has proven to be fundamental to us for securing and growing our business."

Finding the right fit

The road to quality improvement led W down the call recording route. "We started looking at communications recording solutions eighteen months ago," explained Samuels "mainly for GISC (General Insurance Standard Council) compliance and verification purposes in case of disputes." W thoroughly investigated the market place for possible suppliers, with some clear requirements in mind. The issue that they were facing, common to SME businesses, was that at the budgeted expenditure, no solution was able to satisfy all their requirements without being heavily customised, and customisations meant incurring additional costs and major headaches. W decided to give it a go with the Activa recording platform before putting the project on hold." Recalled Samuels, "We installed it as an out-of-the box four week trial, given the previous disappointing experiences. At the end of week two of the trial we purchased it straight away. It worked first time and it did - and still does - what it says on the box."

Return on Investment in a couple of months

W also went ahead with the recording system because it proved its worth in an incredibly short space of time. As part of their product offering, W offers a legal expenses bolt on policy, and lately sales for this particular product had started to dip. By listening to the recorded calls, management realised at once that the telesales personnel were not pushing the policy in the right way. As a result, targeted training was devised and delivered to the sales team and sales rose immediately. "We achieved 40% increase in sales since the recorder was installed." Commented Samuels "The system paid for itself in a matter of months and gives us total control over our sales process."

W also experienced considerable cost savings in the area of dispute resolution, one of the key reasons for adopting call recording in the first place. Thanks to the ease of use of the system, disputes can now be resolved in 5 minutes. That is the time it takes to retrieve the call and e-mail it or play it back to the other party, without the need for lengthy and expensive legal investigations. Additionally, some disputes are defused even before they arise, as one of the telesales operators recalled, "Sometimes, customers ring up with a potential complaint, and as soon as I advise them that the call that they refer to was recorded they quickly backtrack and apologise!"

The human factor

Management at W took great care in introducing call recording within the company since it could have been easy for the telesales force to perceive it as "Big Brother". Recorded calls are used only to provide constructive feedback to the employees and as a result the system has been very well received. In fact, personnel are now feeling even more protected from potential issues knowing that whatever has been said over the telephone can be proved at the touch of a button. "We used to have quite a high staff turnover and surprisingly we have found that the new working environment is helping to achieve stability." Explained Samuels " People are now taking more responsibility and both internal and external disputes are easily solved in an unbiased way".

The training area is where the recording solution has proved to be most valuable. Good selling techniques can now be easily identified, best practices spread across the team and people rightly rewarded for it, contributing to an increase in employee motivation and satisfaction. Prior to recording calls, if a specific sales campaign was not working, it was very difficult to pinpoint exactly the reasons behind it. With the Activa system, training is now provided on an on-going basis to all personnel and individually tailored sessions can also be devised for improving, for instance, sales closing techniques. As a result, productivity levels have soared, due to better skilled and more motivated telesales staff.

"In this industry you need to be whiter than white and it is essential to know exactly what it was said on the phone. Moreover, with the FSA (Financial Services Authority) taking over as the regulatory body for the insurance industry, we feel that call recording is indispensable to the smooth running of our business." Concluded Samuels. "The recording system allowed us to see what we were doing wrong and took speculation totally out of the equation. It is the first solution that I have bought that actually does what the salesman told me it would do!"  (Maria Boxley: Activa Solutions)