5 Tips to Record Telephone Calls Easily
If you’ve ever wanted to record telephone calls, you may expect that it’s simply a matter of plugging in a phone recorder, having your conversation, and then listening to the tape afterward. While those are the basic steps, recording phone calls well, and legally, and using the recordings afterward, can be a little more complicated.
A few tips on how to record and use phone conversations can help you keep track of business (and personal business) conversations and keep track of what’s been said and what you need to do, when and about what.
1. Make sure you’re recording phone conversations legally. This article assumes you’re recording business calls, whether as part of your professional life or concerning personal business like planning a wedding or dealing with a legal matter. It should be easy to get the other person’s consent to record the call. Make sure you record yourself asking for and receiving permission, in case a question arises later. If you have permission, it’s legal to record telephone calls just about everywhere. Most people will agree to be recorded, knowing you’re using the call as a record of a business conversation. Of course, if you’re planning to tape someone without their consent and use the recording against them, you might need to seek advice elsewhere.
2. Know how your recorder works. Before you need to use your phone recorder, attach it to the phone and practice recording an actual conversation. Make sure you know what all the buttons do, how to start and stop recording, and how to fast-forward to the end of a previous conversation. You can figure out the fine points of listening to a conversation at your leisure, but you need to know all the recording controls before you try to record telephone calls.
3. Have a plan for archiving phone conversations. If your phone recorder uses cassettes, decide how you will label and store cassettes, how long you will keep them, and how you will easily find the conversations you need. If you use a digital phone recorder, you can record telephone calls and upload the data files to your computer. This makes labeling and storing phone conversations easier, and you can burn the files to a CD or back them up on another hard drive in case of a computer crash.
4. Have important calls transcribed. If you will be referring to a call often, you may want to transcribe it yourself or have it transcribed by an assistant or a transcription service. Your time is valuable. The less time you spend listening to phone conversations, and the more time you spend working on projects, the better. The reason you record telephone calls is so that you can review details and do your work faster and better. Transcribing calls saves you time and effort.
5. Maintain your phone recorder. Most recording devices run on batteries, and tape recorders need the heads cleaned from time to time. Take the time to recharge or change the batteries in your recorder regularly, clean the recording heads in your tape recorder monthly, and check your recorder before important calls to make sure it’s running correctly. Remember, you can only record telephone calls if you have a working recorder, so maintain your recording device well.
Recording phone conversations can be both easy and useful for anyone who needs to keep a record of a discussion, particularly for business use. But many people find it unnecessarily hard because they don’t take the time to learn how to use and maintain their phone recorder, or they don’t make the effort to archive their conversations well.
When you need to record telephone calls, you also need to easily access the information in those calls. When you purchase good equipment, use it well and create a system for archiving your conversations so that you can review them later, recording phone conversations can make your business life much easier.
can make your business life much easier.
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