The sales director of an environmental services company with three sites estimates that he receives around two hundred phone calls a day. Notes on those conversations are written in the evening, when the sales team reconstructs each customer’s requests from memory. Sometimes the back office types them up the next day, copying them from a sheet of paper. Part of the information is lost along the way. For a business that works like this, call transcription solves a precise problem: the phone call stops depending on the memory of whoever took it.
In unified communication projects Aesir Srl receives this request almost every time, and conversation analytics only come later. The first question customers ask concerns whether calls can be recorded; confidentiality of the data and control over who can listen follow immediately after.
What does call transcription produce?
Every phone call or video call generates the full text, a summary with key points and next steps, the customer’s sentiment and an estimate of satisfaction.
On the Wildix platform the text appears in the conversation as soon as the call ends. Video meetings also trigger an email with the summary, the list of participants and the transcript attached. The summary follows a fixed structure: notes on the customer, key points, project timing, any budget mentioned, next steps and a draft follow-up email, which the salesperson edits before sending.
The summary lands in the customer record, identified by the phone number, with the follow-up tasks already assigned. Salesforce and HubSpot have a ready-made integration. Other CRMs are connected through the vendor’s integration catalogue or a dedicated connector, whose effort is estimated during the analysis phase. In the first few weeks it makes sense for salespeople to reread the summary and confirm the next steps. This is the quickest way to check how the transcription handles industry jargon and customer names.
Audio remains optional. A company can decide to keep only the summary and the transcript, and the platform translates texts into five languages, which helps anyone dealing with foreign customers. The logic of a note captured immediately, instead of being copied out at the end of the day, is the same one described for the CRM for sales agents.
Two hundred calls a day and a CRM awaited for seven years
The environmental services company described at the start has about twenty users, some fifty SIM cards and an ageing traditional phone system. The supplier of its management software had promised a CRM seven years earlier and never delivered it. According to the technical director, nine customers out of ten prefer the phone to any other channel.
The first idea on the table was an answering service based on artificial intelligence. The technical director feared, however, that more than half of the customers would hang up on a synthetic voice, and the discussion had stalled on that point. During the demonstration attention shifted elsewhere. At the end of a test call the summary appeared in the customer record, with the tasks to be done. The sales director recognised in it the work his salespeople were doing by hand every evening.
Having started as a phone system with an automated assistant, the project reached the field trial as a cloud phone system connected to a CRM, with transcription of the calls handled by staff. The automated answering service remained an option, to be switched on later outside office hours or when the lines are busy. Before signing, the company asked for a trial limited to a group of users, so as to check the quality of the summaries on real calls.
Insight. In this case the critical step came after the phone call, when notes had to become a task in the CRM, and the useful technology was the one that works on exactly that step. The automated answering service is still on the roadmap, and the company will assess it starting from the calls already transcribed.
Who can listen to recorded calls?
Only those with permission: a supervisor can consult the conversations of the whole company or of their own group, each user their own, external guests none.
With call transcription switched on, permissions are assigned by role. A team leader can follow live calls in real time and, when necessary, join the conversation. Dedicated access lists determine which conversations and which connected systems the artificial intelligence assistant can consult. The owner can entrust call analysis to a member of the administrative staff, with defined permissions, and a recording reaches an outsider only if someone shares it.
Recording can also be limited. A manufacturing company with around forty extensions asked to record only some numbers. In a small firm of five people the answer was a firm no, on confidentiality grounds. The calls that matter arrive on mobile phones, so the project focused on placing the business extension on the phone through an eSIM.
Shared recordings also support training. The platform allows sample calls to be collected into lists for new salespeople to listen to, under the same permission system.
Where does call transcription data reside?
For European companies, data stays in data centres within the Union, separated from the applications and encrypted; the vendor states that it is not used to train artificial intelligence.
The platform runs on cloud instances in the chosen region, with Milan, Frankfurt and Paris among the options. Audio, video and chat travel encrypted. With call transcription the training question comes up above all with law firms and healthcare providers, which handle information covered by professional secrecy.
A recorded call involves two groups of people: the customers who call and the employees who answer. The former are entitled to a clear privacy notice, stating purpose and retention periods, under Article 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation. For the latter, the rules on remote monitoring of workers apply. Both aspects are defined with the data protection officer before the feature is switched on, and they take longer than the technical configuration.
Sentiment tells a manager which calls to replay
No sales manager replays two hundred calls a day. Sentiment shows which ones to open. Calls with a negative tone can be filtered and the assistant asked for the reason, in plain language. An alert flags when a customer’s tone cools compared with the previous month. Estimated satisfaction is derived from the whole conversation, without asking the customer for a score.
Indicators are configured by call type, with separate templates for sales and support, or derived from a handful of test calls. Dashboards also count keywords and mentions of competitors.
An estate agency with six or seven people, agents and office staff included, was missing four or five calls a day. Details of prospective buyers ended up on sheets of paper that nobody copied into the management software. When call transcription was proposed, with a summary of every call, management agreed straight away, while asking to wait on sentiment analysis. The priority was to answer everyone and file every contact; indicators would come in a second phase.
Larger companies benefit from following the same sequence. A summary in the CRM has an effect from day one, whereas a satisfaction indicator becomes meaningful only once there is a comparison with previous months.
Call transcription: the choices to settle before go-live
| Item | Where it is stored | Who consults it |
|---|---|---|
| Call audio | Platform archive, only if the company chooses to keep it | Users with listening permission |
| Full transcript | Conversation and analytics area | The user and their supervisor |
| Summary and next steps | Customer record in the CRM | Sales team and back office |
| Sentiment and estimated satisfaction | Analytics dashboard | Sales manager |
| Custom indicators | Dashboard by call type | Senior management |
Before switching on call transcription, it is worth putting in writing:
- which numbers and which users to record, and which to leave out;
- whether to keep the audio or only the transcript and summary;
- the wording of the notice for callers and the purpose of the recording;
- the rules for employees on remote monitoring, checked before go-live;
- who holds listening and analytics permissions, group by group;
- how long recordings and transcripts remain available;
- which CRM fields should receive the summary, and who checks the next steps;
- which indicators are measured for sales calls and which for support calls.
Phone system, CRM and management software with a single partner
Aesir brings the communication platform into companies together with the CRM and the management software. Aesir is an NTS Informatica Gold Partner for Business Experience, and with other management systems the available connectors are used or new ones are built. The platforms we select process data in EU data centres certified to the ISO/IEC 27001 family, with requirements in line with NIS2, the same standards applied to our own infrastructure. Phone system, network and security stay within the same contract, because Aesir also operates as an MSP and MSSP. Companies still deciding whether to integrate telephony into Teams or replace the phone system will find the criteria in the article on the business phone system and Microsoft Teams.
Questions from sales managers
Is transcription possible without keeping the audio?
Yes. Call transcription also works when the company keeps only the text and the summary and gives up the sound recording. It is the most common choice where confidentiality matters more than listening back later.
Does call transcription also cover video calls?
Yes. When the meeting ends, the recording and the text appear in the conversation chat, and internal participants receive an email with the summary, the attendance list and the transcript attached.
Are calls with foreign customers translated?
The platform translates transcripts into Italian, English, French, Spanish and German. The summary therefore reaches the person handling the case in their own language, whatever the customer’s language.
Do conversations train external artificial intelligence models?
According to the vendor, no: European customers’ data stays in data centres within the Union and is not used for training. Formal verification relies on the data processing agreements, to be reviewed with the data protection officer.
Let’s talk
Call transcription delivers its first result when it has a precise destination: the customer record, with next steps assigned. Sentiment and indicators come later, built on a history that has meanwhile accumulated on its own. If you would like to explore the subject or assess the situation in your own company, you can fill in the form at the bottom of this page or write to support@aesir-tech.it: we will arrange a free consultation and start from your numbers.