Agriculture · Case study

CBH Group

Every price and volume negotiation at CBH's grain trading centre recorded from Cisco handsets on a Red Box recorder and tagged with the contract number, so a disputed verbal contract can be found, replayed and emailed to the grower - and disputes have fallen sharply.

Price and volume agreed verbally, months before delivery. When a grower remembered the number differently, neither side had anything to check it against.

CBH Group is Australia's largest co-operative, owned by the grain growers it serves. It runs the ports and country receival sites that handle Western Australia's grain, drawn from more than 300,000 square kilometres of cropping country. Before harvest, growers ring CBH's grain trading centre to agree a price and volume for the grain they will deliver. Those calls are the contract.

The Issue

Contracts agreed by phone were rarely written down at the grower's end, and when a price or tonnage was later disputed, CBH had no record to settle it against. Over time the number of disputes had grown to the point where it was a real cost to the business, and with nothing to refer to, resolving them was slow and often came down to one recollection against another.

The Solution

CallTech installed a Red Box recorder on the Cisco telephone extensions in the grain trading area. After each call, staff tag the recording with the contract number, so any negotiation can be pulled up by contract rather than by hunting through dates and times.

When a grower now disputes a contract, CBH finds the recording, replays it to confirm the terms, and emails it to the grower as an audio file. Hearing the call has settled most disputes on the spot, and the overall number has dropped significantly.

The result

Every trading call recorded and searchable by contract number; disputes over verbal contracts down significantly.

System supplied
Red Box recording
Connected to the Cisco telephone extensions serving the grain trading area, capturing every negotiation as it happens.
Contract-number tagging
Staff label each recording with its contract number after the call, so a specific negotiation can be found months later without trawling by date or extension.
Export to the grower
Retrieved calls are played back to confirm the terms and emailed to the grower as an audio file — the dispute is settled by the record, not by argument.

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Get in touch

Verbal agreement, months before delivery?

If your business is negotiated by phone and settled later, tell us how the contracts are referenced. We'll scope a recording system you can search the same way, and give you indicative pricing.

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