Why aren't you recording your calls?

You just got off a call with an irate customer claiming to have never received proper instructions about using your product. Only, you did give him proper instructions, step-by-step instructions, in fact, in a conversation you had with him the previous week.

Now it's your word against his, and you have no way of proving you ever made that call.

This is just one example among dozens where recording your mobile calls makes sense. In South Africa, where call recording is not only legal but also practical, there's no reason why you shouldn't be recording your calls, says Johan Landman, Datatex Dynamics.

Not only are locally-developed and hosted professional call recording apps and services readily available, they're by-and-large exceptionally affordable, easy to use and - bar the manufacturer restrictions on some mobile handsets - very accessible.

Legal elephant

"But are you sure it's legal?", I can almost hear you asking. Before we even start listing the whys and hows of call recording, let's first get the legal elephant out of the room: yes, as long as you're a participant on a call (more on this below), you have every right to record it, and no, you don't have to tell the other party on the call that you're recording them.

Sure, it's courteous and good etiquette to announce that you're recording a conversation, but in South Africa, you're not obliged to do so. I stress in South Africa because different countries have different regulations, some requiring at least one participant to be aware of the recording, others requiring both, and some (albeit very few, like Australia and several US states) banning call recording altogether.

This is important to know if you're using a call recording app or service in South Africa and travel with your phone to a country where call recording regulations are different to ours.

In South Africa, the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act 70 of 2002, better known as RICA, allows call participants to record conversations.

If you're not a participant on the call, you're out of luck, legally-speaking, and are not allowed to record the conversation (using a phone or by any other means). It's called eavesdropping and is generally frowned upon by most societies.

"But will my recording hold up in court?" As long as you can prove that it's an original recording that has not been tampered with, almost always yes. That said, very few recordings ever get to the point where they're admitted in court; usually the playback of the recording between two parties is enough to dispel any misunderstandings and resolve any disputes without the involvement of the court.

Okay, so why should I?

There are dozens of great reasons to record your calls, not least because it's easy (and legal). It's probably quicker to list the reasons why you wouldn't want to record your calls, but since I can't think of any, I'll just go ahead and tell you why you should.

Ever signed up for a 'one-time offer' from a salesperson or marketing service, only to find out later that you didn't get half the things they promised you? Imagine you had a recording of your conversation to politely play back to said salesperson, demanding you get what you paid for. Chances are you will, and fast.

The service levels of marketing calls in South Africa in general leave much to be desired, but that's never going to change unless we hold service agents and their employers to account. Recording your calls helps you do just that - it exposes bad service at the source, and gives you recourse to act on it.

For example, just last week, a friend of mine, who doesn't speak English very well, called a company whose service agent refused to speak to him in any language but English. Fortunately, he recorded the call and sent it to the company's supervisor, who promised to send the agent for further training.

Dispute settlement - insurance claims or benefits, financial or contractual agreements, orders placed, quotes, and poor service - are probably the most obvious and useful reasons to record your calls. But with the right app, you can also use recorded calls for other tasks.

For instance, your call recorder should be able to double as a dictaphone to jog your memory, or take notes, or remember important details in an emergency. Driving behind a car advertising a service you need? Hit the app icon and record it. Driven into the back of the same car and need to take down insurance particulars, names and other details? Same thing. You can even use call recordings as a backup of your phone contacts, which are saved with your recordings (or at least they should be).

Then there are those very personal times when recording a call can literally save a life, prevent injury or preserve precious memories. Having a call recording with important medical information - especially for elderly patients who are hard of hearing or suffering from memory loss - could be invaluable in an emergency. Monitoring calls made to and by your children (ideally with their consent) can also help you curb bullying and prevent abuse before it escalates. And simply recording a call from a loved one can serve as a lasting memory of that person.

Okay, I get it, but how?

I could tell you that recording your calls is a little more complicated than finding the right service and downloading an app, but it's not, so I won't.

There are dozens of solutions on the market today, from standalone call recorders to hosted services, ranging in price from free to exorbitant. But while cost is always a factor, it doesn't rank among the more important features you should look for.

The biggest of these - and I can't stress this enough - is security. If there is even the slightest risk that your personal and sensitive phone calls could fall into the wrong hands (or ears), then you're doing it wrong.

In my opinion, the single biggest risk is not recording a call, but rather saving the recording on your phone. While every recording needs to be temporarily saved to your phone, at least while the call is in progress, it should be uploaded to a safe location - like a secure, private cloud-based storage service - almost immediately, and then completely wiped off your phone.

Storing call recordings on your phone is not only a major security risk, it also leads to other complications. For example, while individual recordings may be small, save a few hundred recordings and suddenly you're hitting the storage limits on your phone. That leaves you with two unacceptable choices - stop making recordings, or delete older recordings. Part of the value of making recordings is storing them for life, because you never know when you'll need a recording you made last week, last year, or last decade. There should also be no limit on how long your calls are, and definitely no time-based cost on your recordings.

In addition to storing your call recordings in a secure location, all recordings must be encrypted at the source (in other words, as they're being made), ideally using the highest military-spec 256-bit encryption technology available. This ensures that, should your recordings still be on your phone (if there's no Internet connection for uploading them to the cloud, for example), they're at least password protected and virtually impossible to crack. It also ensures your calls are secured once they're stored remotely, regardless of how secure the remote storage service may be.

Third and equally important, your recordings should be watermarked. Should they ever be needed by a court of law, this is a sure way of proving your recordings are original and unaltered.

Even if your call recordings are encrypted, watermarked and safely stored off your phone, there are other questions you should ask of your recording provider before you sign up.

A managed call recording service typically allocates you a personal account, through which you configure your security details (username and password), and through which you share and manage access to your recorded calls. Make sure your service provider allows you to remotely manage your account on your phone, so you can, for example, remotely block access to recording on your phone, share recorded calls with others, and retrieve calls regardless of where you are and whether or not you're carrying your phone.

Remember, the phone is just the device you're making and recording calls from; the call recordings themselves hold all the value after the fact. As such, you should also be able to link multiple devices to your account, so you can record calls from a personal phone, business phone, family phone, or even a borrowed phone. All you need is the call recording app and your account details, and you're good to go.

You should also be able to add notes and comments to your recordings - especially when you're making hundreds of calls to the same people or companies and need to flag the important calls for future reference. The service should be smart enough to allow whitelisting and blacklisting of different numbers, so your app automatically filters out calls that shouldn't be recorded.

If your service provider offers a Web-based interface to your call recording account (and they should), it should give you access to even more features. For example, while strong searching and tagging functionality should be built into the call recording app, the Web is a far more robust platform for advanced searches. You could also use the Web interface to share recordings with others, while keeping a complete audit trail of shares and listens should you need it.

Finally, it makes sense that the company you choose is both established and reputable, and guarantees the long-term storage and backups of your recordings for as long as your service is active. Even in the event of your leaving the service, your recordings should still be stored for an acceptable length of time (or until you rejoin), with the facility to download or even migrate your recordings to a different service should you want to.

Make the call

Call recording is legal (in South Africa at least), easily done, and there are enough options available both locally and overseas to satisfy almost every user's need for a professional, cost-effective recording service.

Hopefully, I've convinced you that call recording is not only practical, but practically essential, as long as you follow some rock-solid advice when choosing a recording solution. A great app that makes it easy to set up automated call recording on your phone and gives you all the functionality you need is just the starting point.

More important is the service and backup behind the app, and finding people with the right knowledge, skills, experience and track record to help you make the most of the little you should expect to pay for such a valuable service.