Telephone Recorders

Which type of Telephone Conversation Recorder should you choose?

Once you have decided that you need to record your telephone conversations you need to decide which type of media you wish to record your recordings onto. This naturally depends upon your requirements.

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Recording media

For short conversations or where the recording device is only needed infrequently, a simple tape/cassette based one can be used. If the cassette recorder has a counter, you will know at which point on the tape your conversation that you wish to play back begins.

Equally some media independent recorders are available which enable you to select which recording device you use. For example the “Multimedia Recording Adaptor” will allow recording to an MP3 player or dictation machine that you may have already.

Some recording devices store telephone conversations to the PC by using the microphone input of the sound card. This package usually consists of some hardware and software for the PC. This solution provides far greater storage capability, easy to find recordings and the ability to e-mail recordings to others.

Telephone number logging

Some PC based telephone conversation recorders also provide the ability to capture the caller’s (Caller ID) and the dialled telephone number. This means that not only can you record telephone conversations but your PC can also display the telephone number which is calling you. This allows recordings to be found easily.

(Note: you must arrange to have the caller ID service from your telephone service provider for this to work).

The additional benefits of this type of recorder is that a customer database can be created and developed with recordings of telephone conversations and notes can be typed in real time to further support the conversation or thoughts and ideas following the conversation. This can form the basis of a Customer Relationship Management System.

Manual vs Automatic

With each of the types of conversation recorders described above you should also decide between devices that record automatically and those that record manually. The manual recording devices are suitable for intermittent recordings and can be started and stopped by the user. The automatic devices start either when the handset is lifted or when there is speech activity on the telephone line. Note that some recording devices offer both manual and automatic recording features.

Automatic Level Control (ALC)

Professional quality conversation recorders will have ALC built in which ensures that both the callers and the operators voice are of similar volume and quality when playing back the recordings. Lower cost devices tend to use the ALC of the PC sound card or the tape recorder to equalise the levels.

Multiple lines

When recording telephone conversations in a business, this can be done either at the telephone end using the handset, or at the telephone line end. Often the solution demands the ability to record multiple telephone lines. If this is only for 2 or 4 lines, then simple telephone based devices are available that will provide this feature and cost between £1000 and £2000.

If a large number of lines need to be recorded, then sophisticated PC based systems are available to provide this. Depending on the number of lines, costs of these systems can go from £5000 upwards.