Answered: The 8 Most Common Questions About Sales Call Recording

What is call recording?

How can I set it up?

Does it even work??

Spoiler: It does. Big time.

We’ve put together the all-time, most-asked questions about sales call recording.

And are giving you answers so you know exactly what to expect if you bring call recording software into your team.

Let’s dive in.

Question 1: How does call recording work?

How’s this for easy: No installation. No training. And close-to-zero behavior changes required from reps.

The only noticeable change? The “recording” button in the top-left corner of the Zoom.

As soon as your Gong admin hits the go button, calls get recorded and AI starts tracking them for individual rep and team insights. There are two recording options once Gong is enabled at your company:

Option 1: Gong scans your team’s calendars, then joins and records relevant meetings automatically.
Option 2: You run native recordings using your usual web conferencing tool (Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc.) and Gong automatically imports and analyzes the recording.

In both cases, you can pause, end, or resume recording at any time during a call.

That’s it. No different from other Zoom apps your sales team are already using.

And no need for major training sessions.

That said, there are a ton of learning opportunities on offer to get the most out of the platform. Our Customer Success team runs the ‘Gong Academy,’ where you can go all summa cum laude on Revenue Intelligence. There’s also a Gong Community where revenue intelligence peers share their top tips and best practices for the platform.

Question 2: What’s the best way for sales managers to coach using call recordings?

Most people think that coaching with call recordings goes like this:

1. Listen to every call.
2. Find coachable moments.
3. Play the calls with reps during coaching sessions.

This couldn’t be more wrong!

The sales coaching software does the heavy lifting for you.

Coaching with Gong goes like this:

1. Call recording solutions analyze calls automatically and flag important moments so you can skip to the good stuff.
2. Top-shelf call recording tools understand your reps’ behavior and show you where each rep could make some improvements. That’s where you focus your coaching.
3. Reps can self-coach! They’ll be able to review their own calls, ping managers and peers for help, listen to the top performers on their team, and coach their peers. It’s coaching that takes care of itself.
4. Need more inspiration? Check out these 5 hacks sales managers use to give more effective coaching with sales call recordings.

Question 3: Will my reps be comfortable with being recorded?

Always one of the first questions we hear. And we get it. It’s recording every customer interaction.

Turns out: Reps that have experienced Gong are actually the biggest advocates for call recording software.

Here’s why the love it, aside from it sending their numbers upward:

#1 They don’t need to take notes. Call recording gives reps infinite memory, so reps can focus on what they love most: customer conversations and selling.

#2 Most reps are always looking to improve their game. And call recording does just that: It pinpoints exactly where they need to make improvements to win more often. Plus, it makes call sharing incredibly easy so they can ask for support from their team and share big wins.

#3 It cuts down on admin tasks. Call recording software automates your reps’ to-do lists each time they complete a call. With Gong, reps get an email listing all the items they need to follow up on after every call. It’s like having a virtual assistant on every call.

Question 4: Which other teams use call recording?

It’s hard to name them all… because there are so many.

These are the most avid call-recording users at an average company:

Post-sales teams everywhere struggle to get the right information during handoffs. And that information about the customer’s context and business needs is critical because it helps post-sales ensure stickiness and smooth uptake. Call recordings and insights give them full visibility into customer conversations that have happened to date. What’s more, it lets them see how uptake progresses so they can detect churn signals early on and intervene.

Product teams *think* they know which features customers want, but validating their assumptions before moving into production is incredibly valuable. (Because what if they’re wrong?) There’s nothing like hearing feedback or requests directly from your market. Customers have a lot to say about new products and feature requests, and they’re saying it in conversations with your reps. Best let your product team in on that goldmine!

Your marketing team is incredibly influential — they create the public face of your product/brand/etc. Know what they’re missing? Enough direct contact with the customer. Sure, they may run user testing for their messaging, but they don’t always hear how it lands in the real world. Give them more direct connection with the frontlines. Let them hear whether their messaging works… which competitors get discussed on calls… what gets buyers really excited. It’s like a focus group but with real buyers and real conversations.

Closest to the customer wins. And for non-customer-facing teams, call recordings is a shortcut to be in the room for every big call/customer insight/competitive intel/you name it.

Question 5: Does call recording software automatically log calls in your CRM?

Yes.

End of day CRM updating? Over.

Trying to make sense of notes hours after a call? Done.

And making forecasting decisions on incomplete data? No more.

Gong’s CRM integrations do the work for you: Importing and automatically logging calls in Salesforce (for example), track activities and tying them back to opportunities, and generating a gold-mine of insights to help you course-correct deals before it’s too late.

But… How?

The call recording platform recognizes meeting participants (using their email in the meeting invitation) and ties them to an active opportunity (or an account if no opp is created). It makes the connection and automatically logs calls and recordings associated with their account.

This two-way street allows you to push Gong calls into Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics (and other CRMs) and retrieve data to get amazing Gong insights. It levels up your reporting, pipeline visibility, coaching abilities, and more.

It’s literally your CRM’s missing half.

Question 6: Is call recording legal in my country?

In the United States:

Legal.

Call-recording is legal in every US state. Most states don’t require the second party’s consent to record. Some states do.

These are the states that require all-party consent for recording:

California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington

In Canada:

Legal.

To record a call, you need to obtain informed consent by notifying others on the call that:

1. You intend to record the conversation
2. Any purposes the recording will be used for
3. That the call may only be recorded with each person’s consent.

See more: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

In Europe:

European laws vary by country, but all countries are subject to GDPR.

For call recording to comply with GDPR, it needs to ensure:

1. Active consent: Gong provides consent tools and features, including a customizable Consent Page, to assist you in obtaining call participant consent prior to recording.
2. Right to be forgotten: Gong provides simple workflows to delete information from the system if requests are made.
3. Data security: Gong follows strict international standards and regulations in order to keep your information safe, and is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001/27701 certified.

Additional laws apply in each country.

Question 7: How does call recording software obtain consent?

It depends.

Call recording software like Gong lets you pick consent that adapts to where your buyers and sellers are located.

That means you can set the consent rules for you and your buyers’ local regulations, whether it’s:

• No consent needed
• Passive consent: Participants are given a notification that the call is recorded
• Active consent: Participants need to opt in for recording to begin

Question 8: Can sensitive customer information be redacted from recordings?

Yes. (Phew!)

You can set Gong to automatically recognize sensitive information (like credit card details, for example) so it redacts the information from your recordings and transcripts without any action required from you.

Note: this isn’t the case for all call recording solutions, check before you buy!

Still have questions about call recording software? Reach out to our team. They love to answer questions.