IP Call Recorder 1.5—Bigger, Badder, and a Lot More Selective

Newfound Communications today released Version 1.5 of IP Call Recorder.

Newfound is an interactive voice response (IVR) and VoiceXML developer. Three years ago, it released its first Call Recorder product, which allowed call recording to be controlled via a web-based VoiceXML platform. Kris Hopkins, chief executive officer and president of Newfound, describes the recorder solution as his company’s “real success to date.” Today’s release builds on that original product, bringing two new features to bear.

The first is a “Pause & Resume” feature, which allows an IVR to pause a recording deterministically or programmatically and then resume recording. This allows the application to stop recording while a caller does things like punch in credit card information so that the information is not included in analytic work or search capabilities, and helps meet compliance standards. The IVR can be programmed to pause and resume around any specified parameters, allowing sensitive information like credit card numbers to be excised. Likewise, the feature helps reduce the space required to store a recording by just recording less. The settings can all be adjusted to record or not record calls within certain parameters altogether.

This means that analysis can be done faster with a lower tax on system resources. Hopkins claims that new customers can cut as much as 50 percent of file size using IP Call Recorder cand decide more deterministically which calls they record in the first place. If, for instance, an account is flagged as a problem account or a star account, calls from that number can be recorded more thoroughly, while others which are less important might be ignored. This is what Newfound calls “Record & Save.”

This is not an on-demand solution where the system just begins recording at the moment that a trigger is hit, like say a threat on a CEO’s life. The entire call is recorded, providing the entire context leading up to the threat.

“What’s beautiful about the Newfound Call Recorder is that the recorder can control the context of that recording, so you get the best recordings,” says Hopkins. “You’re not filtering through a gazillion recordings that don’t mean anything. You’re only getting the ones that you think are the most important, that you want to hone in on and determine are going to make an impact on your business.”

Any information gleaned in the course of a call can be appended to the recording as well. This includes data like number of automatic recognition failures, account numbers, how many fields were completed in an automated fashion, hold time, etc.—all of which can be used to figure out where calls are going right or wrong within an IVR.

Newfound targets carriers, outsource call centers, and large enterprises with this solution. Call Recorder is scalable and can be used anywhere that a system uses VoiceXML. It can service large domains with thousands of ports down to small ones that have less than 20 ports. The company, according to Hopkins, is weathering the recession quite well. The company has even picked up new hires.

“Sales have definitely picked up for us. The number of prospects and the number of deals that have been closing have increased dramatically,” says Hopkins.

He attributes the pick up to two factors: (1) customers requesting that the recording be placed within the network to meet compliance issues and increased scrutiny from federal authorities; and (2) the need for workforce optimization within enterprises—which often necessitates recording.

“It’s a good investment right now and [for] a lot of people, while they may be cutting budgets in some areas, recording still seems to be good,” Hopkins adds.