Recording business phone calls

Anyone who has called a call centre before has undoubtedly heard "This call may be recorded for training purposes".

With this brief statement, whoever records the call wants to comply with GDPR legislation. From then on, the same privacy legislation will apply throughout the European Union (EU).
With us, you can choose to record all phone calls by default, this is called call recording or voice logging.

This is an easy way to listen back to business phone calls or coach colleagues using call recordings.

Regulations on recording of conversations

Before the GDPR applied, disclosure was not required as long as the recordings used were for internal use only. Today, however, this is different.

When someone calls you, privacy-sensitive data is exchanged in conversations all the time.
This may include, for instance, a phone number, a name, an account number or an address.

The GDPR therefore states that you must have a basis or reason to store and (possibly) process this data. The regulations included six possible bases in that context. You as a business owner must judge for yourself which one applies to your business.

• Before the GDPR applied, disclosure was not required as long as the recordings used were for internal use only. Today, however, this is different.

• When someone calls you, privacy-sensitive data is exchanged in conversations all the time.

• This may include, for instance, a phone number, a name, an account number or an address.

• The GDPR therefore states that you must have a basis or reason to store and (possibly) process this data. The regulations included six possible bases in that context. You as a business owner must judge for yourself which one applies to your business.

So it is always very important that you can sufficiently substantiate the basis and that you mention it in privacy statements or your privacy policy that can be viewed by interested parties.

In practice, most companies record telephone conversations to record appointments or to use them for quality purposes.

In this situation, your company does not need explicit permission from the contact person to record the conversation.

So you may record the business conversation without permission. What you do need to do is inform the party involved that the conversation is being recorded. This can be done, for instance, by a short standard message preceding the call or a welcome message.
Note: employees must also be informed that these conversations are being recorded.

The benefits of recording business phone calls

Training purposes

New employees usually cannot make perfect phone calls from day 1. It may take some time for an employee to become sufficiently trained, and in this regard, the recording of the conversations made can be a useful guide for coaching. One can then listen back to the recorded conversation together and hear these telephone practice examples.

Capturing a sale

When selling a product or service over the phone, the burden of proof is on the seller. An agreement is binding only when its undeniable nature can be demonstrated. Therefore, it is important to have the recording of a complete telephone conversation, in which context and agreements can be clearly heard. Therefore, make sure you record every conversation.

Listening back to difficult conversations

The role of online reviews cannot be underestimated at all in recent years and a lot of businesses suffer from negative reviews. It may therefore pay off to listen to the recorded conversation from all recorded conversations to which a complaint refers so that you can better assess whether the comments are justified.

The record of a conversation

For an employee on the phone, in addition to answering questions, registering an order and looking up information, it is a hopeless task to make a record of the conversation. The chances of important details being forgotten or appointments not being included correctly are considerable. To avoid this, you can record every conversation.

Recognising structures and regularity

A customer service department often comes across a lot of the same questions or problems, answered each time by a different employee. It can pay off to recognise those questions and respond to them in a targeted way. Based on these call recordings, it is possible to come up with a standard answer for all employees.

Record business calls easily and GDPR-proof at Belfabriek

At Belfabriek, call recording is included in your package. The number of recordings is unlimited and the conversations are stored in the cloud for one day. During this time the conversations can easily be listened to or downloaded online with your personal login details.
Do you prefer a longer storage time anyway? Then there are two more packages available for a fee, where the retention time of the recordings can go up to one month.
With this article, we hope to have clearly answered the question of whether recording a phone conversation is allowed.