Recording telephone calls

There are many reasons why call centers, front office desks and private persons want to record their incoming and outgoing telephone calls, such as improving their customer service, documenting incoming change requests, documenting arrangements, conducting interviews or collecting proof.

Popular methods of telephone call recording are induction coil microphone recording and in-line recording. An induction coil microphone is portable and can quickly be attached to the back of almost any telephone handset. An in-line recording device plugs into any telephone jack or split any telephone wire. In-line recording produces the best audio quality.

As an example, an office front desk telephone service could install an in-line recording device, that split the telephone wire. The output from the in-line recording device could then be connected to the analogue microphone input jack of the office desk computer, that could record telephone calls using recording software. In order to obtain a clear recording without electrical noise, make sure, that the electrical power supply to the computer is grounded.

There exist a lot of recording software, spanning from commercial automatic telephone system recording software to default operating system recording software.

The open source operating system Ubuntu provides the Sound Recorder, that makes fine manual recording software. Make sure, that it is configured to use the correct device for sound input, that the sound input is amplified, that the sound input is the analog line in, and, that it uses an open standard file format, such as the Ogg format, which is CD quality.

Recording devices can be obtained from electronic stores, such as Würtz. Note, that Würtz recommends, that recording is not done with a computer due to noise issues. This is not correct. We tested this and found, that computer recording was perfect sound quality. We also tested analogue recording and found, that the sound quality was not acceptable.

Listen to our test recording of a phone call to the automatic phone answering machine at Lortehosting.

Read more about telephone recording at phonelosers.org.