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Overview of Call Recording

How to set up the platform to record voice calls and how to manage inbound and outbound call recordings

Georgiana Mirita avatar
Written by Georgiana Mirita
Updated this week

Intro to Call Recording

Call Recording is exactly what it sounds like: a feature that allows you to record your inbound and/or outbound calls and save the recordings to your CRM or platform.

Call Recordings are used by smrtPhone clients for a variety of reasons, including:

  • Perform quality checks on agents and keep track of their performance

  • Provide training opportunities for agents

  • Understand better why deals close or not

  • Ensure important/complex deal information is captured

  • Enable compliance while guarding against disputes

It is important to comply with all legal and regulatory guidelines regarding the disclosure around recordings.

If disclosure is required, you can train your staff to announce it or set a greeting message in your call flow (for inbound calls) because if you are on a call, you cannot turn the call recording off.

All these setting changes (on/off) are made while you are not on a call. You cannot start/stop the recording mid-call.

Call Recording comes default as ON for outgoing calls and Record from Answer for incoming calls. Only Account Owners and users with granted permissions can change these settings at any point.


TCPA, Federal and State Laws

As of February 2024, 11 states require two-party consent to legally record a phone call, meaning that everyone involved in the conversation must be made aware and agree to the recording.

We strongly advise you to check the federal and state laws for both the place you call and the receiver's location. The fines are huge and also, there are some legal consequences.

Federal Law

One-party consent is required by federal law. Thus, as long as you are a party to the conversation, you may record a phone call or other interaction. You may only record a phone call or chat if all parties involved agree and are fully aware that it will be recorded, even if you are not a party to the conversation. Additionally, the statute forbids recording talks with the intention of committing a crime or tort.

State Law

Similar to the federal statute, the majority of states have passed legislation requiring one-party consent.

Hence, certain states in the United States have rules regarding call recording that require both parties to be informed of the recording, whereas other states just require one side to know. In a number of states, recording a phone call requires the permission of all parties involved.

For example, in California, Penal Code 637.2 states that violating the telephone recording law can result in a fine of $5,000.

One party vs. Two party Consent

In addition to two primary state statutes, federal law governs telephone recordings: one-party and two-party consent.

38 states and the District of Columbia require one-party consent for recording phone calls and other conversations, while the remaining 11 states have what are known as two-party laws that demand consent from all parties before a conversation can be recorded.

Please be aware of the term two party. If your conversation will take more than 2 people, you need consent from all of them, not only one part. So, even if it is called “two-party consent,” it is in fact all-party consent.

It's important to note that you must abide by the rules of the state you are calling in order to comply with certain requirements, like the Telemarketing Sales Act and the TCPA. Whether that also applies to calls that are recorded is not entirely clear. For example, the law is unclear about which state standards you must abide by while making a phone call from a one-party consent state, like New York, to a two-party consent state, like California.

But it's always advisable to proceed cautiously. We would recommend that all-party consent be obtained as recording calls without proper consent is illegal in some areas.


Recording Inbound Calls

You can enable or disable the recordings for your incoming calls by accessing your Admin Dashboard > Admin > Call Flows.

Here, you select the flow you wish to disable or enable recordings for, select the edit button (blue phone icon), and edit your Flow accordingly.

This setting is available when you customize your Call Flow and select some of the applets (like Dial Applet or Round Robin Applet).

applets

The Call Recording dropdown sets how the calls will be recorded - from when they start ringing or when they are answered. You can also disable call recording for this portion of the call flow.


Recording Outbound Calls

You can enable or disable the recordings for your outbound calls by accessing Admin > Account Settings. There's only one setting for managing Outbound recordings (at the Account level, not the User level) in Account Settings.

recording

Recording Calls in a smrtDialer Campaign

You can make changes to the Campaign Calls Recording function by accessing your Campaign Settings which are found under each smrtDialer Campaign that you created.

This feature is ON by default, but Account Owner/Users with granted permissions can switch it ON or OFF at any point between dialing sessions by going to smrtDialer > Campaigns > Select the Campaign > Campaign Settings.

call rec

How Do You Listen to Recorded Calls?

smrtPhone

Your call recordings can be easily found on your smrtPhone Dashboard. Just go to the upper right corner, under My Account, and click Billing & Logs.

Here, among other information about the calls, you can see the option to listen and/or delete specific recordings.

  • Press the blue Play button ▶ to listen to those recordings. From the playback screen, the menu gives you the option to adjust the playback speed or download the recording file.

  • Press the File icon 📃 to see more details about the recording - Call ID, Direction, From/To, Date, and also the actual recording - also, this feature comes in handy in case of transfers, because you can keep track of events

  • Press the Recycle Bin icon 🗑️ to delete it

Your recordings will act exactly as you customize the setup, allowing you to listen to your call recordings and pull up the calls if you use filters like User, Direction, From/To. The recordings are available for you all the time, as long as you do not delete them.

actions

Video Calls

Video Calls store logs of their occurrence. If there is a recording of the video call, it will be visible in the Billing & Logs under Video Logs, the same way as call recordings are displayed.

Video calls store logs

smrtDialer

For smrtDialer Campaigns: each Campaign stores its own list of recordings. So, to see your smrtDialer recordings, access the Campaign you are interested in. On the right-hand part, you will see Campaign's Details found under Settings. Press the 👁 icon to see all Calls and Recordings.

view calls

This will open a window with all the calls made in that campaign. You can listen, delete the recording, or push it back to the CRM if needed.

recording

smrtPhone recordings (that can be found in Call Logs) are separate from smrtDialer Campaign recordings (that can be found at the Campaign level).


🌐 Podio

Recordings are stored in your Communications App for each call.

Podio recording storage

☁️ Salesforce

Recordings are stored in your Tasks App for each call. These provide links back to the specific recording within smrtPhone Web App. The file is not downloaded into Salesforce at this time.

🏔️ InvestorFuse

You can find the link for your recording in the Activity and Communication Log tab on your Opportunities Dashboard. The recording can be downloaded from the newly opened tab.

🥷 REISift

Find your recordings under Record > Activity Log and click on the blue call ➚ arrow.

This will open up another window where you can listen to that recorded phone call.

🟧 Forefront

To find your recordings, head to Pipeline, select the lead, and find the recording that you need. Of course, Leads, Comms and Contacts will also provide this information.

Among all the details you can see in this window, you will also find the link that corresponds to the recording. Hit Listen to recording and then again Play ▶ icon.

⬆️ Realeflow

Find your recordings in your Activity tab. For each recorded call, you will see the link to the recording in the Activity tab, under the communication history.

📼 Tape

Find your recordings in the Communications App, in the Call Recording field.

ℹ️ Invelo

Find your records in Contacts or Properties. Head to the contact of your interest and in the Call Logs, you will find the recording (if any).

REI Software CRMs

Find your recordings in your Activity tab. For each recorded call, you will see the link to the recording in the Activity tab, under the communication history.


Resend the Recording

If for any reason, the recording was not pushed to your CRM, you can activate the 🔁 button from both smrtPhone Call Logs or smrtDialer and resend the recording to your CRM.

Be aware that if you activate the Resent button multiple times, the recording will be sent as many times as you click.


Call Recording Storage

Please, be aware that storage fees apply at a rate of $0.0010 / recorded minute.

You can learn more about Managing your recording storage by reading this article here.

You can download the call recording file from the playback screen. Go to Account Menu > Billing & Logs > Call Logs. You can listen, view details of the recording, or delete it.

Call Recording Storage

Once you choose to see details, on the left side you can see: Call ID, Direction, From, To, and Date, and on the right side you can listen to the recording, modify speed, or select download from the playback screen.

Deleting Recordings

If you decide to delete the recordings, please keep in mind that they cannot be accessed anymore. Even if the link is still accessible from the CRM, that entry will be empty.

As long as you keep the recordings in smrtPhone, they are available to listen to and download. Also, they are chargeable as long as they live in smrtPhone.

You can delete smrtPhone call recordings from Call Logs. The smrtDialer recordings can only be deleted altogether from Recording Storage, where you can use bulk deletion and erase a month of recordings.

Resync Recordings

Each recording can be resynced with the CRM by clicking the 🔁Resync button.

If for any reason the recording was not pushed to your CRM, you can access both Call Logs and Total Calls from smrtDialer and resend it.

Any click on the resync button might either replace the existing recording or create a new entry in your CRM, depending on your integration. You could try refreshing the CRM page before clicking it too many times to avoid creating duplicates of the same recording attached to your Contact in your CRM.

We strongly recommend you notify your leads that the call is recorded to ensure regulatory compliance.

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