We have seen a surge of interest of late in customers wishing to record phone calls. It appears that their motivation is primarily ensuring that their personnel provide good customer service. This is much easier technologically than it used to be, especially for those using IP phones.
One generic solution that will work with any phone involves a device that connects between the phone and the receiver. Regardless of the type of phone, the audio level between the receiver and phone is pretty standard. As such, you can intercept and record the audio stream there with analog, digital, and IP phones. The more efficient versions connect to and work with software on a PC, such as Konexx’s USB Phone 2 PC. You can do the same thing with an external recording device such as Sys-link’s PDR3 digital recorder. The problem with this overall approach however is that to some degree, it is dependant on the phone user’s cooperation. They can disable the recording at any point.
The next approach, used only with analog lines, captures the recording at the incoming line. Products such as the XTR Analog-04 can record all calls on 4 analog lines to a central PC. This approach is affordable, and takes the control out of the hands of the person being recorded. The down side is that all calls get recorded, even those of the CEO, if he/she happens to use one of those lines.
You can get proprietary solutions that work with a specific type of phone system, but I tend to steer people away from these solutions. They lock you in to a single phone system, and make replacing it more difficult.
The use of IP phones makes the process of call recording a good bit easier. A device connected to the network can capture and store all SIP traffic, regardless of where it originates on the network. The only rub is that network switches are designed only to forward network traffic to the necessary ports, so using such technology may require some network modifications. Products such as CallRex handle this well, although they are usually not inexpensive.
Finally, there are solutions integrated directly into software-based phone systems such as 3CX. Since the call capture is done in software on the machine where all calls are routed, there is little or no incremental cost, and no network issues. If you are serious about flexible recording, you should seriously consider a software-based phone system.
Remember that there are regulations about when calls can be recording, and any warnings that are required, which vary from state to state. Before embarking on call recording, make sure you understand your rights and responsibilities.