compliance
Who Has To Consent Before You Record
Federal law permits one-party consent. Several states require everyone on the call, and the recipient's state is the one that usually decides.
Call recording is standard in sales operations and it is governed by wiretap law, which is older, stricter and more varied than most people expect.
The federal floor
The federal Wiretap Act at 18 U.S.C. 2511 prohibits intercepting wire and oral communications, with an exception where one party to the communication has consented.
That is the one-party consent rule: if you are on the call, your own consent generally suffices under federal law. It is a floor, not a ceiling.
The state layer is what matters
A number of states require the consent of all parties to the call. The specifics vary, including what counts as consent, whether it must be express, and what the exceptions are.
The complication for any business calling across state lines is which law applies when the parties are in different states. The analysis is not uniform and the conservative position is widely taken for a reason: assume the stricter rule applies, and get consent from everyone.
That conservative position is also operationally simpler, because it means one behaviour rather than a decision tree evaluated per call by a person who does not know where the number is registered.
What adequate notice looks like
If you are recording, the disclosure should be at the start of the call, before anything substantive, clear and in plain words. "This call is being recorded" is enough; buried, fast or mid-call disclosure is not.
Two further points.
Implied consent through continuation is widely used: a notice at the start, and continuing the call is treated as consent. Whether this suffices depends on the jurisdiction and on how clear the notice was.
The caller has to be able to decline. If somebody says they do not want to be recorded, the system needs a way to stop recording and continue the call. A dialler where recording cannot be turned off mid-call forces the agent to choose between ending the call and ignoring the request.
Telemarketing rules sit on top
If the calls are telemarketing, the Telemarketing Sales Rule at 16 CFR part 310 adds its own requirements independently of recording law: prompt disclosures at the start of the call, do-not-call obligations, call time restrictions and record-keeping.
Note that some of the rule's own provisions involve recorded authorisation in particular circumstances, so recording can be part of compliance elsewhere while being regulated itself. The two sets of rules are separate and both apply.
What to do with the recordings
Consent is the first question. Retention and access are the next two, and they get less attention.
Keep them for a defined period and then delete them. Indefinite retention of recorded customer conversations is a growing liability with no corresponding benefit. Pick a period that matches why you keep them, write it down, and enforce it automatically.
Restrict who can listen. A recording archive that every employee can search is a privacy incident waiting for a motive.
Know what is in them. Sales calls routinely contain card numbers, addresses and personal details that the caller volunteered. A recording containing payment card data brings its own obligations, and the usual answer is to pause recording during payment capture, which the dialler has to support.
Be able to delete one. When somebody asks for their recording to be deleted, the answer should be a search and a delete, not an explanation of why it is impossible.
The checklist
Five questions. Any uncertain answer is this week's work.
Do we announce recording at the start of every call, before anything else?
Can an agent stop recording mid-call when asked, and does the system record that it was requested?
What is our retention period, and does deletion actually happen?
Who can access the archive, and is that logged?
Do we pause recording when payment details are taken?
None of this is exotic, and all of it is considerably cheaper to set up than to retrofit after a complaint.