A problem many call centers have to wrestle with is holding onto call recordings. Contracts will often specify the retention of recordings for a set period, and legal or regulatory issues may mandate recordings be kept for even longer, or forever. Even with declining costs of storage media, it can be a struggle to maintain an infrastructure that can expand to store recordings as volumes grow, while allowing for easy retrieval as demanded. Your call center software will likely make accomodations for whichever method you choose, but it is still up to the call center to provide the storage infrastructure. The explosion of Cloud storage provides an answer for many call centers facing this dilemma. Many providers offer easy access with API and web controls to upload, download and manage files.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a prime example of a feature-rich Cloud storage solution. Whether you have a cloud-based contact center or an on-premise one, Amazon S3 is available for use as long as you have an Internet connection and an account. In the last couple of years, we have had several clients use S3 specifically for recordings. The Q-Suite “Listen to Recordings” feature has built-in support for accessing recordings via Amazon S3 as seamlessly as from locally-mounted filesystems. Per-tenant credentials allow the use of S3 storage even in a multi-tenant environment. Existing scripts can be used to move recordings to Amazon, and it’s simple to create one if additional processing is desired beforehand.
Amazon offers two other services that are occasionally needed, and when they are, they are often needed urgently. Amazon Glacier is the long-term infrequent-access storage counterpart to S3. The interface allows archiving files from S3 to Glacier for long-term storage at approximately a third of the cost. In the case where a file is needed, it can be moved back to S3 in the space of a few hours. This is usually enough time to provide access to a file that may be needed long after the recording happened. Amazon Import/Export allows for sending or receiving large numbers of recordings via a portable disk. Importing several terabytes of archived recordings can take some time, and in some cases it’s faster to send a copy directly, bypassing the Internet. Receiving a bulk export of recordings via a portable drive may also be a faster way to send a large number of recordings to a client, or receive them for local access as required. The low cost of media and shipping make this a viable option when circumstances require.
In the future, we expect that on-premise call centers will increasingly use Cloud services in combination with their existing infrastructure. The advantages of easy scaling and cost savings from only paying for what is used go a long way in countering the benefits of having on-premise solutions for all aspects of the call center. A mix and match approach gives the benefits of both worlds.