First Credit Services Enhances Call Archiving with RingCentral’s APIs

First Credit Services is a collection agency that primarily works with health clubs to encourage members to renew their memberships. The company also makes calls to collect on other debts, such as medical bills. With about 300 employees, the majority of the workforce is based in Mumbai, India, with about 30 employees in New Jersey. The company was looking for a more reliable cloud-based business phone service and chose to adopt RingCentral. The initial deployment was to the New Jersey office in August 2015, and after successful implementation, it was adopted for the entire business.

First Credit Services (FCS), a collection agency primarily serving health clubs, was facing a significant challenge with its call archiving system. The company, with about 300 employees across offices in New Jersey and Mumbai, India, makes collection calls and provides outsourced business services to its clients. The nature of their work necessitates the archiving of call recordings for a couple of years as proof of conversations, particularly in the event of a consumer complaint or lawsuit. However, the volume of calls and the regulatory duration of archiving required a customized solution. FCS was also concerned about the reliability of its previous phone service, which led them to consider switching to RingCentral. While the transition to RingCentral was smooth, FCS was exceeding the limit of call archiving every few days. The company needed a solution that would allow them to retain call recordings for about two years, and potentially longer in case of litigation.

FCS adopted RingCentral for its reliable cloud-based business phone service and extended its standard features through the open APIs of the RingCentral Developer Platform. Using the RingCentral platform APIs, FCS developed its own solution for downloading call recordings throughout the day and archiving them on Amazon Web Services cloud storage. The FCS IT team used RingCentral’s software development kit for PHP to create a script that runs every few hours to index the latest recordings and download the files, amounting to about 3.5 to 4 GB of data every day. The software development project took about three and a half months, starting in the summer of 2016. The team had to overcome challenges with the download process stalling due to glitches, which was resolved by writing error handling code to allow the process to stop and start over when something went wrong. The solution became much more stable once this issue was addressed. The team is also considering other possibilities for integration with the RingCentral platform, such as click-to-call dialing from screens in the custom application used by contact center representatives.

• The integration of RingCentral’s APIs into FCS's operations has resulted in significant operational benefits. The company now has a more reliable cloud phone system, which has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their collection calls and other outsourced business services. The custom solution for downloading and archiving call recordings has ensured that FCS can retain important call recordings for the required duration, providing a safety net in case of consumer complaints or lawsuits. This has given the company the peace of mind of knowing that they are not losing any important call recordings. The successful implementation of this solution has also opened up possibilities for further integration with the RingCentral platform, potentially enhancing the company's operations even further.

• Archives over 50,000 calls a day
• Downloads about 3.5 to 4 GB of data every day
• Developed a solution in about three and a half months