Here are some essential facts you should know about answering services that record calls:
The best practice is to alert callers that the conversation is being recorded.
One way to alert callers that recording is happening is to play a periodic beep tone during the call. The beep lasts less than a quarter of a second and reoccurs about every twelve seconds.
The beep tone can distract some callers. An alternative is to play an initial message to notify callers that recording is taking place. A common notification is “this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”
Professional answering services that record calls can offer both notification options.
When you want to access a recording, some answering services have to manually search for the recording and email it to you. This takes time, which they often charge for. Plus you need to wait for them to work this research task into their other workload.
The best answering services provide a more comprehensive solution. They have a secure portal for clients to use to access their own recordings. These portals are available 24/7 and allow for unlimited searching, retrieval, and listening. Users can also download these recordings and save them on their local computer.
Some answering services choose not to provide an online portal to access call recordings. The problem is that they are afraid what you might hear. They want to listen to the call first.
Answering services that have nothing to hide with regards to the quality of their service offer online access to listen to calls. They gladly offer their clients direct, immediate access to recordings of their calls. It's impossible to achieve perfection on every call. Having access to online access lets you 'inspect what you expect'.
Answering services that offer open access to their call recordings are the best of the best.