Call recording

How it works

How it works

The phone system records every call – on the PBX, a SIP proxy, or a media server. The file is saved with the call details: date, numbers, agent, queue, duration, and call ID. You find a recording in the call log or in the customer record in your CRM and play it right in the browser.

• Mono – both speakers on one track, smaller files
• Stereo (dual-channel) – agent and customer on separate channels, so speech analytics can tell more accurately who said what
• All calls or selected ones – record every conversation or only the ones you need
• Screen recording – some setups also save what the agent did on screen along with the audio

Metrics

How much storage you need

Work out the volume before you turn recording on. A compressed mono recording at 32 kbit/s takes about 0.24 MB per minute, or about 14 MB per hour. Stereo and separate tracks for each voice take more.

In CONTACT.WORK, 1,000 hours of conversation take about 90 GB. For example, 2,000 hours a month comes to 180 GB, or roughly 2.2 TB a year, so a 4 TB disk is enough.

• Set a retention period for each type of call and delete old files automatically
• Keep recent recordings on fast storage and older ones in an archive
• Back up recordings like any other company data

Limits

Security and the law

Recordings contain personal data. Requirements depend on the country, state, and industry, so check the rules that apply to you: how to notify callers, how long to keep recordings, and who gets access. In the US, federal law requires one party's consent, but several states – including California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington – require consent from everyone on the call, so play a recording notice at the start.

• Tell callers the call is being recorded – usually with a message in the IVR
• Let only people who need it for their job listen to and download recordings, and log every access
• Encrypt recordings at rest and in transit
• Pause recording or mask segments while the customer reads out payment card details (a PCI DSS requirement)

In CONTACT.WORK

How CONTACT.WORK uses it

CONTACT.WORK records every call in the telephony module. Each conversation is recorded in stereo, and each side's voice is also saved separately – that is the format speech analytics needs. The file format is MP3. Recordings go to reports and to your CRM, can be fetched via API, and AI writes short summaries of the conversations. Access to recordings depends on the employee's role. You choose where recordings are stored: in our cloud, which has standby servers, or on your own servers, where they never leave your infrastructure.