Interaction Recording Retention Policies Best Practices

When setting up Quality policies that impact recorded interactions retention in Genesys Cloud, it is important to follow best practices to ensure compliance with regulations, maintain customer trust, and meet business needs.

This article provides best practices for establishing interaction recording retention policies in Genesys Cloud. The key recommendations include:

Define interaction retention needs.
Set retention periods.
Set up quality policies.
Create evaluation and survey policies.
Set up the maximum data retention period.

By following these best practices, organizations can ensure compliance with regulations, maintain customer trust, and meet business needs when implementing interaction recording retention policies in Genesys Cloud.

Define your interaction retention needs

Understanding the business, legal or compliance needs behind your interaction retention policies are key. Make sure that you have a clearly defined set of business use cases in writing before you start creating quality retention policies in Genesys Cloud. When drafting your use cases, consider the following recommendations:

Define purpose and scope.
- Clearly define the purpose of interaction recording and the scope of interactions to be recorded, such as quality assurance, training, dispute resolution, or regulatory compliance.
- Specify whether all interactions or only specific types of interactions must be recorded.
Understand legal and regulatory requirements.
- Research and understand the legal and regulatory requirements related to interaction recording and retention in your industry, country, or region.
- Be aware of data protection laws, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or other relevant regulations.
- Understand which countries (for a global company), subsidiaries, and lines of business are impacted by regulatory requirements that need specific interaction retention policies.
Define retention periods.
- Establish clear retention periods for distinct types of interactions based on regulatory requirements and business needs.
- Consider factors such as the nature of the interaction, industry standards, and any potential legal requirements.
- Consider keeping the interaction recordings only as long as required by either a business need or regulatory requirement. Keeping interaction recordings longer than necessary can lead to disk space overflow charges and in some countries, it is against regulatory guidelines.
Review and update retention policies regularly.
- Review and update your interaction retention policies regularly to adapt to changes in regulations or business requirements.

Set up quality policies

Once you have defined business use cases that describe your interaction retention needs, you must translate them into working quality policies in Genesys Cloud.

Quality policies enable you to create rules to trigger interaction recordings retention, screen recording, quality management evaluations, and web surveys. For more information about how quality policies work, see Quality policies overview.

When creating recording retention quality policies, consider the following best practices:

The matching criteria selections allow you to specify the type of interactions your policy will target.Click to expand

Policies should only have the matching criteria selections needed to support a specific business use case.Click to expand

Policies should have a manageable number of matching criteria selections.Click to expand

Keep it focused.Click to expand

Avoid overlapping policies.Click to expand

The ideal scenario would be for interactions to match a single retention quality policy, but matching policies with different retention periods can happen.

Consider the following case: A user named Sam belongs to Queue A and another user Frank belongs to Queue B.
Policy 1 targets calls and you select Sam and Frank under Specific users in the matching criteria section and set a Delete recordings after value of 365 days.
Policy 2 targets calls and you select Queue A under Specific queues in the matching criteria section and set a Delete recordings after value of 730 days.
In this scenario, both policies match Sam’s interactions. Genesys Cloud applies the longer retention period (730 days) from Policy 2.

Regularly review your policies to ensure they align with your current business cases and keep policy overlap to a minimum.

Avoid conflicting recording retention policies.Click to expand

In scenarios where an interaction matches both with a policy that retains the recording and one where the Do not save recordings option is set, Genesys Cloud will prioritize the policy with a set recording retention and will keep the recording in storage for the number of days set in that policy. If this behavior does not suit your organization, you can use Delete even if another policy retains option that appears when you select Do not save recordings. This will override the default behavior and deletes recordings that match that policy, even if there is an overlap with another policy.

Ensure that the longer retention period is set in case of overlaps.Click to expand

Retain interaction recordings indefinitely.Click to expand

If you want to retain all or a subset of your interactions indefinitely, you can do this by selecting the Retain recordings option under Actions to Perform, and not setting a retention setting by NOT selecting the Delete recordings after checkbox. Ensure that there is no overlap with other interaction retention policies where the Delete recordings after option is checked, and a value is set, as this other policy will take precedence and will define the purge date for the interaction.

Retention period best practice when creating Evaluation or Survey policies.Click to expand

If you want to create recurring evaluations or generate surveys, then create separate and specific policies for these use cases. Remember you must set the Retain recordings option so you can view the Evaluations and Surveys selection options. If recordings are already targeted by another retention policy, DO NOT select the Delete recordings after option in your new evaluation/survey policy. This prevents policy retention overlap.

Set the maximum interaction data retention time.Click to expand

You can set a maximum data retention time for your entire organization. This applies to all interaction data regardless of recording retention settings set in your quality policies. If the QM policy’s retention period exceeds your maximum data retention time, you receive a conflict notification, and you cannot set the longer period. This safeguard prevents accidental to ensure consistency between your data retention rules. For more information, see set the maximum interaction data retention time.

Interaction retention policy scenarios

Some examples that demonstrate the concepts of interaction recording quality policies and how to best translate specific business use cases to successful policies in Genesys Cloud are listed.

Scenario 1: Record and retain all inbound callsClick to expand

Goal	Catch all inbound voice interactions policy to retain for potential quality, coaching, or legal review.
Impacted Lines of Business	All
Media Type	Calls
Retention Period	1 year

In this use case, the scope of the policy is broad as it covers all recorded interactions, regardless of the line of business. It is a best practice to provide the policy with a self-explanatory name where all QM administrators will understand its purpose after reading it. It is also key to only make the matching criteria selections needed to support your specific business use case.

The sample policy selections can be:

Policy Name	Calls – Record all interactions and retain for 1 year
Description	Catch all inbound voice interactions policy to retain for potential quality, coaching, or legal review
Media Type	Call
Matching Criteria selections	Conversation directions > Inbound
Actions to Perform selections	Recordings > Retain recordings > Delete recordings after: 365 Days

Scenario 2: Selective recording based on specific matching criteriaClick to expand

Goal	Regulatory mandated retention of interactions where a service cancellation was requested by the customer.
Impacted Lines of Business	Customer Experience, Customer Retention, Cancellation departments.
Media Type	All
Retention Period	3 years
Screen Recording Retention	1 year

The scope of this use case targets a subset of the agent population. Policies should have a manageable number of matching criteria selections. Identify which matching criteria field can be leveraged to identify the agent subset and/or the targeted interaction type. In this case, there are a few options you can use.

Specific users: If the agents that handle these types of interactions are a manageable number, you can select the individual agents by name.
Specific work teams: You can use this option if you are set up in a way that only specific work teams defined in Genesys Cloud take this type of interaction.
Specific queues: It can be used if only a specific set of queues handles this type of interaction.
Specific wrap-up codes: If agents are trained to select a specific disposition code(s) when a cancellation is discussed by a customer, this option can be used as well.

The best approach is to go with the option that gives you the most accurate matching of the interactions you are targeting with the least number of criteria selections. In this case, you can opt for a combination of specifying queues and wrap-up codes.

The sample policy selections can be:

Policy Name	All media types – Record interactions where a service cancellation was discussed and retain for 3 years and 1 year screen recording
Description	Regulatory mandated retention of interactions where a service cancellation was requested by the customer
Media Type	Call, Chat, Email, Message
Matching Criteria selections	Specific queues: Cancellation_Voice, Cancellation_Chat, Cancellation_Email, Cancellation_Message Specific wrap-up codes: Cancellation Request, Cancellation Actioned, Cancellation Avoided
Actions to Perform selections	Recordings > Retain recordings > Delete recordings after: 1095 Days Recordings > Initiate screen recording > Delete screen recording after: 365 Days

Scenario 3: Recurring quality evaluations based on agentsClick to expand

Goal	Create recurring evaluations and assign them to QA evaluators for agents that are part of BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice, and BH_99_Email queues.
Impacted Lines of Business	BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice, and BH_99_Email queues
Media Type	Voice, Chat, Email
Retention Period	N/A
Screen Recording Retention	N/A

This use case’s scope is to create quality management evaluations in an automated and recurring manner. This policy should not impact interaction retention; it should NOT have the Delete recordings after option selected. Identify which matching criteria field can be leveraged to identify the agent subset and/or the targeted interaction type.

The sample policy selections can be:

Policy Name	QA Evaluations – BH_99 queues
Description	Create automated web surveys for customers that interacted with agents that are part of the BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice and BH_99_Email queues
Media Type	Call, Chat, Email
Matching Criteria selections	Specific queues: BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice, BH_99_Email
Actions to Perform selections	Recordings > Retain recordings Evaluations> Create evaluations by agents

Scenario 4: Automated web survey generation based on specific matching criteriaClick to expand

Goal	Create a Quality policy that will automatically email web surveys to customers that were serviced by BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice and BH_99_Email queues.
Impacted Lines of Business	BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice, and BH_99_Email queues
Media Type	Voice, Chat, Email
Retention Period	N/A
Screen Recording Retention	N/A

This use case’s scope is to generate and email web surveys in an automated manner. This policy should not impact interaction retention; it should NOT have the Delete recordings after option selected. Identify which matching criteria field can be leveraged to identify the agent subset and/or the targeted interaction type.

The sample policy selections can be:

Policy Name	Web Surveys – BH_99 queues
Description	Create recurring evaluations and assign them to QA evaluators for agents that are part of the BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice and BH_99_Email queues
Media Type	Call, Chat, Email
Matching Criteria selections	Specific queues > BH_99_Chat, BH_99_Voice, BH_99_Email
Actions to Perform selections	Recordings > Retain recordings Surveys > Send web surveys

Scenario 5: Extended interaction retention based on specific matching criteriaClick to expand

Goal	Retain voice interactions for 100 years as outlined by legal mandate.
Impacted Lines of Business	Financial advisory department
Media Type	Calls
Retention Period	100 years

Only the financial advisory department voice interactions are impacted by this use case, but the number of queues it will target is high (1,000 queues). Since policies should have a manageable number of matching criteria selections, we will fulfill this business use case by creating multiple policies. Each policy will have its own selection of 100 queues for the financial advisory department, for 10 interaction retention quality policies. The sample policy selections can be:

Policy Name	Perpetual Retention Legal Department Policy 1
Description	Perpetually retain voice recordings for legal counseling department, policy 1 of 10
Media Type	Call
Matching Criteria selections	Specific queues> Legal_team_1, Legal_team_2, … Legal_team_400
Actions to Perform selections	Recordings > Retain recordings > Delete recordings after 36,500 Days

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