How Private Is Your Employee’s Call?

Most people believe that they are entitled to complete privacy on the phone, as long of course as they go into a room alone and shut the door. At home, this makes sense. At work, however, calls are often recorded.

Many people are already used to this concept from calling as the customer. When you call into a company to speak to a sales associate or a customer service representative you often hear the phrase “calls may be recorded for quality assurance.” This message is always for the customer. The customer needs to be informed. An employee should expect it. It is best, however, to let your employees know that they may be recorded, just to be safe.

If you are an employer, then you are paying any staff using the telephone to represent your company. You are paying them for their professionalism and you are paying communication costs. Recording calls gives you the opportunity to monitor the quality of your customer service and improve training.

Unfortunately, you may run across employees who don’t care too much that they should be working or care if their attitude and tone make your company look bad. The knowledge that their phone calls can be heard, however, tends to curb potential problems.

In this day and age, almost everyone has a cell phone. This means that if an employee needs to make a personal or private phone call, they have the potential to use their cell phone. If your company does not allow cell phones, however, there may definitely be occasions when an employee needs to make a personal call using your business line. In this circumstance, it’s best for employees if they are aware of privacy issues, so they can choose to keep personal information off the line.

Most hosted phone systems will record calls automatically. This can be for both outgoing and incoming calls. This call recording is legal in the workplace as long as you are not singling out individual employees.

A huge advantage of recording phone calls in the workplace is that the employer gets a chance to find, identify, and correct issues with employee behavior. One of the most effective ways to know if your employee is doing their job on the phone is to hear them perform. One of the surest ways of knowing how a customer feels is to listen to them. Recording your company phone calls gives you and your training staff the information to make sure that your employees and your customers are getting the support they need.