Call Recording for Your Business Phone System

Why businesses record calls

Sales and customer service teams use recordings to train new staff, check call quality and settle disagreements about what was said. Recordings are stored centrally in the cloud and can be played back or downloaded from the PBX web portal – nobody has to remember to press a button on a recorder.

Four ways to switch recording on

• For a call queue – every call in the queue is recorded. The usual choice for call centers.
• For a user – every call that person makes or takes, on any of their devices.
• For a device – every call on that phone, whoever uses it, for example a shared front-desk phone.
• For a single call – with star codes on the phone: *80 starts, *81 stops, *82 pauses and *83 resumes recording.

Manual recording keeps only the part between *80 and *81, and a call can be started and stopped only once – use pause and resume when you need to skip a part, such as a card number being read out. A paused recording resumes on its own after one minute. Which calls end up recorded when user and device settings are combined is explained on when calls are recorded.

Listening and notes

Recorded calls appear in the call history of the user in the portal, where you can play them with the Listen button or download them as audio files. You can add notes to a recorded call, so the next person knows why it matters.

Storage and retention

Recordings are stored on our platform for up to about 30 days, without a guarantee of how long a file is kept. For guaranteed, long-term storage we connect Amazon S3: recordings are saved automatically to a bucket you own, organized by date, and you control how long they are kept. Amazon charges for S3 by usage, and Vulcan sets it up for a one-time fee – see storing recordings on Amazon S3.

Consent and notification

Laws about recording calls differ between states, and callers from another state may be covered by stricter rules. Many businesses play a short notice such as “this call may be recorded” in the greeting. We can add that to your auto attendant – check your own legal requirements with your attorney.